Thank you Rich for shedding light on this. Most of it makes sense to me, but the secrecy part where you weren't allowed to talk to those still at the museum is weird. I can't see any possible commercial reason for preventing former engineering staff to talk with their former colleagues or replacements. If anything you would think that any new staff would be encouraged to talk to the engineers who left to benefit from their experience. As I said this appears to be rather strange.
On Tue, 1 Nov 2022, 7:31 am Rich Alderson via cctalk, <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > First, let me thank Sellam and Tom for inviting me to comment on this > topic. > > LCM+L closed its doors to the public in March 2020, at the height of the > initial pandemic (in the sense that it had become clear that the Covid-19 > virus > was not a passing thing), because our entire mission was to make possible > actual physical contact between visitors to the museum and vintage > computing > engines of various stripe. There was no way to allow visitors to continue > to > touch all the hardware which would protect both visitors and the equipment. > > Tour guides and front desk personnel were immediately let go, because it > was > clear that it would be several months, up to a year, before we could open > again. Professional museum staff (curator, educational coordinator, etc.) > were > retained for a short while, to wind things down. The engineers were put to > work winding things down: Creating power-down-bring-up documentation, > backing > up software on those systems for which that was necessary, and generally > making > it possible to close up shop with an eye to opening again in a year (the > target > period). > > This project was the response to the original order simply to turn > everything > off. We pointed out vociferously how much damage that would do to the > dinosaurs, reminding the nontechnical powers-that-be of just how long it > had > taken to make most of the vintage hardware work again, and that they could > plan > on a month of restoration per month of down time, before the museum could > be > reopened after the decision was made to do so. > > All of the engineers, which the exception of the manager of the department, > were laid off as of 1 July 2020. None of us was allowed to return to the > museum at any future time, and no one associated with the mothballed > museum was > allowed to talk to any of us. > > All of that is by way of saying that I have no information on the internal > state of the collection, or of the museum which we built on it. > > As for the status of the collection: While we built the museum, there was > a > private foundation set up which acquired items for the collection, > generally by > purchase. After 5 years of successful operations, with year over year > increases in visitor counts, ongoing relationships with several school > districts for instructional field trips, and worldwide acclaim, the > decision > was to taken to move to a 501(c)(3) public charity. This transition was > under > way when Paul died suddenly; that placed things into limbo because the > transition was incomplete, and the estate could not do things that he could > have done in person. > > That's as much as I know. > > Rich > Alderson > > P. S. After the layoff, I looked for work for a few months, with nary a > nibble. I've officially been retired for tax purposes since > September 2021. >
