 artifacts of the computers that were before now becomes more and more interesting because the people that could actually operate them are disappearing. What it takes to build up a museum, how to operate it, how to finance it, how to make it happen, is something that our next speaker is going to talk about probably I would assume from what I've seen. So please give a very warm welcome to Bert van Akker. Thank you. So I don't know if I'm going to walk so maybe I'll walk or maybe I don't know yet. Yeah as I said as my introduction my name is Bart and I'm the founder of the Home Computer Museum. We're based in Helmond in the Netherlands and we have actually mission so we stated the mission for ourselves. It's on the screens right now and it's not this one is flickering but preserve and share the history of the home computer for and with current and future generations. That's what our mission is which means we have a lot of computers. So let's see if this works. Does this work? Does this work? Okay I have to walk. So how it all started? I said I'm Bart and I'm a collector and this message is approved by my therapist. I can now freely talk about it that I am a collector. Well actually as you can see on the pictures this is how my garage looked back in 2016. No a car didn't fit at all. I used to I'm a drummer so I created my garage was used to be a studio I insulated and everything but it ended up in 2016 that my drum set was permanently permanently in my car because it didn't fit in my garage anymore. Actually I even had computers stuffed in my wife's walk-in closet so it was crazy how much computers I have. However at this moment I don't call myself a collector for the simple reason a museum director cannot be a collector. A collector is doing nothing than collecting and a museum director should do something else than collecting at least in my opinion. So as I said in 2016 I got the idea of a computer museum and the reason I got the idea is because I visited two museums one in England and one in the Netherlands. Both museums had the problem it was no interaction at all. Meaning that the computers were off or not working or and a computer I mean it's just an object it's not supposed to be nice I guess. There are computers that really are supposed to be nice but most computers are not supposed to be nice. They're objects to work with so why present them in a way that they're not used to. I mean computers should be working right that's my opinion. I didn't see any stories I did have a limited information about a computer but other than that there were no stories why is this computer made who were the people using those computers. That was that's what I found interesting about a computer. I mean computer is just a thing with plastic and metal and all that stuff that's in a computer but more interesting is the story behind the computer. Why is a computer made why who were the people using those computers and I missed that all in the museums I visited. Also I found in one museum I won't call it name but it's in England. I found misinformation I mean if you see an Amiga 1200 and the science says Amiga 500 you do something wrong. If you see a Tandy TRS 80 and it says created in 1979 that's also wrong it's 1977 and I know that as a collector but people who are not collectors and people who are not very deeply interested in computers or know about the history of computers go to a museum and see this information and assume a museum is right and that's really bad. I actually from the same museum I got a book which is even worse. They actually printed a book very expensive book and there's information inside which is wrong. There's an Amiga 1000 stated all information about an Amiga 1000 and they printed an Amiga 500. I mean how hard is that to correct the right computer. So that has to be changed in my opinion. As a collector I came to these museums and was like this has to be changed. So first thing I did was try to collaborate. I tried to collaborate with the museum in the Netherlands to say okay I have this you have don't have information it's you don't have the stories can I help you can I help you in any way to give you the information or to make it nice to make it a visible museum that not only for collectors like me or maybe people here but also for my wife. She should enjoy it as well. I tried to but it was no use. I couldn't he didn't want to at all. He's I don't like saying it that much but I think he's a hoarder. It's all his and it's not he's not able to to share if information. So that didn't work out and I wanted to wanting to do something that actually matters and help people. There's a little bit of history about me. I have a sister who's who has autism and it was discovered on pretty late age. She was 20 and then it was discovered that she was she had autism and before that before that age she was just a hard learning child. That's how it called back then. So in 20 years I had experienced one somebody with autism without any label on it without a sticker that says you have autism. When it was discovered I had a girlfriend as he studied psychology and I was really interested because I all my life I was helping my sister. So when it was discovered and my girlfriend at that time was studying psychology. I think I thought I should do that too. It was my thing. However I was studying if my technical information so studying computer stuff and I figured OK I should finish this first before I do something else. But I think I'm smart. So what I did was just read all the books from my girlfriend. I have a little bit of head start already. So I did that. But yeah I didn't do that at all. The reason is the relation ended and my girlfriend at that time she changed a lot. And apparently if you study psychology the first two years of your life will be finding your own problems and try to fix that. She never returned from that. So instead of finishing her study she actually ended up in a closed hospital. She's now fine again. I guess I don't have much contact with her. But that was also one of the reasons maybe I shouldn't do that. I was happy with my life at the time. So don't try to you know poke in and try to fix me because I was fine. So yeah. However I became a system administrator. Got into Linux. I actually did security for a while as well. But I ended up with voice over IP. And in my work I found a lot of people doing exactly the same as my sister was doing. Having a form of autism. And I also noticed that a lot of managers a lot of companies don't know how to act with how to respond to those people. It's a lot of communication. It's only about communication. And so in I accidentally tried to be in between a sort middleman without I was a system administrator. But I tried to be the middleman. I tried to help those people to have this miscommunication fixed. As I say I speak fluently autism because I have 20 years of experience in that. So actually helped a lot of people staying in the company. And instead of you know calling in sick not being on time anymore not doing their job and eventually lose their jobs. I kept a lot of people from that. And I'm pretty proud of that. So yeah. This was I wanted to do that as well when I started with the museum. I wanted to help people and apparently in the IT I couldn't do that that much. So that was also one of the reasons I started the museum. And the third reason my wife asked me as I said I had my the walking closet of my wife was stuffed with computers and she didn't like that anymore. I am also I'm I'm I used to be a musician. I'm still a musician playing in bands and all kind of stuff. And also doing business. So I tried to make a company from a band. So I was just doing the strange things like being a bookings agency and being a band and making it a company. So my wife was used to me being away for like 75 weekends. Mostly every weekend I was away with bands and I quit with that because children. So yeah. And then suddenly was home and my wife said yeah you have a bunch of computers in the garage. I had 35 back then. You have a bunch of computers you go to all these fairs and you go to the meetings and gatherings of old computers. Why don't you do anything with that because I was used to do you know making companies not that successful but I was making companies. So yeah my wife was one of the the causes as well to create this museum. So yeah that that was the plan. Let's make a museum because why not. I mean I was here and nobody else was doing what I was thinking of. So OK let's do that. So but a museum is a terrible business plan. I mean I don't know if there are any people from companies in here but or any managers directors or anything. Founders. But the museum is a terrible business plan. It depends on external money. I mean every company that is relying on external money is not a good company especially if it's only one. I worked at a company that had one big customer and that customer was saying maybe we should shop for another one. Yeah that was a problem. I don't want that. And I see a lot of museums completely relying on external on subsidy on external money money. They don't make their own and I don't think that's a good idea because if you have external money that means somebody else is making decision if they give you money. And what if they decide something else. What if they decide OK no we're not doing that anymore. So let's do something else. And then you suddenly have no money and you are relying on it. So you have no money and you have no money and your company goes down. It's always nonprofit which is not a problem. But most people think if it's nonprofit it doesn't it means no revenue and that's wrong. A museum is a company so it should have revenue in my opinion. It depends on goodwill. Goodwill of people volunteers you name it. It depends on people trying to help you which I love. I don't say you shouldn't it is one of the facts. And most museums it's not a business model. It's like OK we have subsidy. We ask for subsidy. We ask for money. We ask for funding. And we just you know put a lot of stuff in make it nice make information and that's it. And we'll keep it going as long as the money flows in. But there's no business models no retainable business model in that. So so I wrote a business plan because it was a terrible idea. That's how I am. So this actually a screenshot of my business model of my laptop of this one. But I made a photo of my I don't I don't. So the business plan first in one point zero and I could tell you it's still one point zero. We haven't changed. It should be an interactive museum. Computers should be on working. They have tools to be used. So it seems to be working. Plus if a computer is working it will stay alive. Everybody here knows that if you keep a system off for a long long time the batteries will die and eventually batteries will leak. Capacitors will die and leak. Hard disks will fail especially the rotating ones. They will fail. Rubber will just you know completely this this mental and meaning that it can't be read anymore. It can be used to to read data. So interactive means computers should be on computers should be working meaning the life will be prolonged. Simple as that all electronics should be on because it makes their life longer. We should be independent. I don't want to be dependent on anything. I don't want to be dependent on money external but also I don't want to be dependent on me. Because I will die eventually. Not planning to but something happens and I will die. And if I die should a museum then dissolve. That's weird right. So now we should continue. So we should have something independent of us that as well. I want to help people with autism. One of the main reasons I started I want to help people. I want to have good storytelling. People should have a good story to walk through have a good story to read and have all the information. I'll do a lot of research as well. Find the information. But is this information we can find. Is that correct information or is it just bogus. Quite recent example. One of the museums stated on June 5th this year that Apple existed for the Apple now the Commodore Pet was released 45 years ago. Yeah something like that. The Commodore Pet was 45 years ago. On June 5th was 1977 the Commodore Pet was released according to them. But if you did a little bit of research you know it's wrong because the Apple 2 came out on June 5th. The Commodore Pet came out in October that year. So quite a shame. We should have good future proof. I've seen a lot of museums fall down. Doing you know a museum is dying. People there are museums that do things that nobody is using anymore. Nobody is actively remembering obviously a castle. It's not that it will dissolve suddenly. But yeah it should be future proof. It should be able to continue for at least 100 years by itself. Not depending on external money etc etc. And we have a clear focus. Because calling it a computer museum is quite broad. Right. You need to the big IBM 360 and AS 400. And you need a lot of building for that. A lot of space. Especially if you want to have it interactive. I don't. You need to sort of supply that you have here over in this entire camp. It's not fun. Plus people. I don't think people really remember working with an AS 400. Some of them. So I had a clear focus and I wanted to have a museum about the home computer. Computer that people used at home. There wasn't any. At least not in Europe. So I came up with a business plan. Consisting of three pillars. As I call it. The first pillar. Is collection. So we have a collection part. Showing everything that. We can do anything with the collection. Collecting itself. Obviously showing it. Going to fairs. Going to MCH. Care. Is helping people. Helping people with autism. Helping people with a distance to the labor market. Because we broaden it a little bit in the years. Care is helping people. Just helping people. Going back to work. And commercial. We also have a commercial branch. And commercial meaning. We do services. What we can do in the museum. Think of data recovery. Reading all media. Something like that. Nobody. Who can read a five and a quarter inch here. Yeah. Good. Zip disk. Yes. This. Still. Very good. But if you read the data. If you have the data. What can you do with it. Can you open it in something modern. Maybe. Maybe not. And that's why we come in. Because we have all these old computers working with the original software. So we can just open it in the original software. So that's commercial. We also offer repairs. Since we want an interactive computer museum. We have to have knowledge of all these computers. Right. So we have to repair them because most of the computers we get. Are broken. We get them. Or we'll blow up. If we try to use them. So we have to make sure we can repair them. But why only use it internally. Why not use it externally. So that's exactly what we did. We just opened the computer repair shop. And in these times a computer repair shop by itself is not really feasible anymore. It's not a business unless you do it like huge. But yeah. Nobody is going to a shop to repair the computer anymore. It's just you know you return it throw it away. Whatever. Or repair yourself. But you don't go to a shop anymore. It's not the 1990s anymore. Or 80s. So. Yeah. We do that. And we still have a lot of people you know don't know how to reinstall windows. Sure we'll do that. Or reinstall a Mac. But also Commodore 64 that's broken. We also repair it. And we always repair. We never replace. We try to not to replace. But obviously if we have to spend six hours to repair a Commodore 64 then you could probably get another one that's probably cheaper than. And no cure. No pay. Simple as that. There's also a commercial stuff. We also sell computers. Old refurbished computers. It's also where we sell old laptops. Business laptops. We sell them. One of our biggest customers is called Stichting Leergeld. It's a foundation that gives laptops to poor families. Poor family that has a child obviously that goes to school and needs a laptop. But they counter for the laptop. So we give them a laptop. And that foundation pays us 150 euro. Not much. But what we do. Also the social service the work agency. If you have somebody who's unemployed and needs to follow a course for their work for their new work and don't have the money to buy a laptop. There we are again. We can provide those laptops. And since March this year we also do that for Ukrainian refugees. And nobody's paying that for us. But we just give them away. Somebody comes in. We give them away. And apparently we're the only one in the Netherlands who does that because we're in Helmont which is pretty south. But we get them from all over the Netherlands. People from Ukraine come to the museum to get a laptop. And it's a it's a normal laptop. It's just you know second to seventh generation Core i5. So Core i7. So they're really decent laptops. We install Windows 10 on it or Windows 11. If they possible. Install English, Ukrainian, Russian languages so they can use them. And there's warranty on it as well. They return it if it's broken and we just repair it. It's that simple. Thankful. We have a lot of companies sponsoring laptops to us for that. Especially for this reason. And we also sell them so you can also go to the museum and buy a laptop. It's always below the 300 euro. Because we have shops nearby that sell Chromebooks for 300 euro. We know these Chromebooks are crap. But a normal consumer goes either a new laptop or a secondhand laptop for 300. They go for a new one. Then six months later they return to us because their laptop is broken. But that's another story. So that's that was the business plan. And I wrote it down. I just did that. You saw it. I just made a word document and I wrote it down. And back then I was still using open office. I guess I don't know. So that was the end of 2016. And then 2016 and 17 started. I had a plan. But I need a building. And it needed to have some requirements. I mean we can't just have a building for a standard house has to be a good building. And I wanted to have a specific inner city center. I didn't want to be on an industrial area or so. The reason is I. The reason is museums why on an industrial area. It's really hard to get to. Usually they don't have a train station nearby or you have to go with a bus. Secondly if I go to an industrial area it means I have to provide food for people. Sounds stupid but people come in and they stay for a few hours hopefully. And maybe they're hungry. So that means I have to provide food. And I'm not a cook. So no I don't want to spend money on that. So no I stay in the city center. If somebody's hungry go outside there's plenty of food over there. That's their job. So I want to be in the city center. And I wanted to rent. Not anti-crack I don't know in the English term but temporary. So if I don't want to. The simple reason again I don't want to have a three weeks notice. So like you have to three weeks and you have to get out of the building. And that's not very nice to have in the museum right. Especially if you know how many stuff we have now it's not fun to move anymore. Really. So I came I had this this idea I wanted to have a decently sized building. At first I asked for 1500 square meters but yeah they didn't have that. So I asked to the city city of Helmholtz because I reside in the city of Helmholtz and yeah why not. So I go into the city of Helmholtz. And they had a plan. They had a big building in their mind where they could host four museums in. There were two other museums in Helmholtz that were getting out of their building because their building was there down. And they thought of the idea. OK we have this to build two museums and then the home computer museum and they found something else for a museum. Great. Great idea. Good this plan. One big building. Multiple museums. I think it was good idea. But yeah it was the city city council is not going to work. They didn't and they just put in more build more people and more. Eventually I think we were 15 companies in the same building and the building wasn't any bigger. It was a building that already existed and was empty for a long time. So yeah I ended up with like maybe 100 square meters. I was like now it's going to happen. But yeah the city was still you know this is going to happen. This is going to happen. So at some point I remember it was in October and I was talking with with one of the people from the city and she said to me maybe you should start already. With the museum. So OK. I was like yeah sure let's do that. And now we still speak a lot. She meant back then that I should start promoting it on the Internet. But I was already ahead of that. I was already doing that at the time. So my key was OK I have to rent a building. So I did. I read the building. I didn't want to rely on anything. So I just started. I just went ahead make some phone calls and found an empty building 500 square meters in the city of Helmholt. And it was. That's me. These are screenshots from YouTube. So yeah. So this was an empty building. It was completely empty. No power. No floor. It still had a wall in middle in the building. And it was empty for multiple years. Used to be a solar thing. Some bathing studio or something. And they went bankrupt and they just removed everything that was copper. So you can imagine that all cables were just trashed off. So it was a mess inside. So we got this building. By the end of 2017. We got a key for building. We went into the building. We found out there was no floor. So we called up the the owner of the building and said there's no floor. How can I use this? All right. There's a floor. Yeah. OK. We will make it sure that you get a floor. Oh perfect. So I figured out. Let's do six weeks from now. So I calculate six weeks or something like that. So I calculated a few weeks and I came up with 17 March of the 17th 2018. That will be our opening day. So I put it on the internet and somebody else would I put it on the internet. We are going to open. We have a building and we're going to open on March 17 2018. Cool. But the building owner wasn't that fast. Actually she was so slow if they were so slow that 10 days before our opening they poured down the floor and there was no electricity. There was nothing in there. So in 10 days we built a museum and I don't know if this is going to work. Yeah maybe. Maybe it's work. Yeah. That's me again. So I'm going to skip through it easy because can I skip through it. No yes not. No I can't get through it. Can I skip. No I can't skip. I don't have any sound. I don't need sounds. Nevermind. Now it doesn't work. It. Yeah it's. I don't need sounds. OK. Now I'll leave it on. I'll just tell about it. It's working apparently. This is our intro. Do I still have time. So this is actually what happened between March 9 and March 17. As you can see the building the concrete floor was made on Friday 9 of March. And as we said we opened on March 17. We everybody and everybody knew that we were open at that of we're going to open at a time our sponsors and I still remember our biggest our only sponsor actually came in while we were doing this and he said to us. Yeah no you're not going to make it like what a bet. We worked every day every single day from eight in the morning to two in the night with a team of about six people. And I can tell you after the yeah the last day I had pain. I had pain in muscles. I didn't know I had those metals. It was incredible. I couldn't this was doing this was painful. Just standing was painful. It was crazy. So it's it's on YouTube. You can find it. So I'm not doing this because yeah I'm a museum director so I will tell I will talk. I could talk for hours. If I if you're ever in the museum don't ask me to to do a tour because I can talk for eight hours and yes I did that already. So anyway that's a as you can see it's very empty. The lights it was just this was with one screw the lights were bolted to the concrete to the ceiling. There were cables hanging everywhere but we managed. We were open on March 17. We were open with twenty five computers that were working. Oddly enough all the computers from the 90s were broken but we were hoping that all these computers at that time I had about four hundred computers in stock and there was cattle around in several storage units and in my garage at home and but we had with 25 computers working we were open and people could enjoy and we had a great day that day and I slept a few days after that. But yeah we had 10 days of building and we started and in by the end of 2018 I'm still holding nothing but at the end of 2018 we were nearly bankrupt because we didn't have any budget at all. The total budget we had at the time was twenty five thousand dollar euros not dollars euros that was about ten thousand of my personal money and the rest were sponsors and the city that give a bit of money. That was it and again no electricity so we had to really do every electricity. We had to go from the from the box all the way and we had to do with with high power and it was crazy. There were no lights. We had to pay for that. There were no walls just to make it nice. There was nothing but we managed to do it for some somehow but by the end of 2018 we were we were nearly bankrupt actually we were bankrupt on paper but since we were still communicating with the people who we are owning money to they kept us open and they kept us because we were still you know asking everybody asking the city to help us out because there were no not not enough visitors. We didn't have any budget to make to make any commercial outings or anything. There was nothing so we were just sitting in and we didn't know anything and I was really in doubt of throwing the towel in the ring. I was just you know giving up almost but my my other founder Patrick said you can't stop now. You've become you came so far and you can't stop. Also I did I still stopped working because this museum took up all my time. I stopped working. I didn't have any income anymore. I didn't have any benefits. I just completely stopped. And yeah so by the end of 2018 my savings were completely gone. I was in debt a lot. The museum was in debt. We were two months or three months behind on rent to the building so it didn't it wasn't nice. Thankfully another company went bankrupt in the same street as we are and the company at that time was repairing computers. So we heard that we found out that they were bankrupt or that the the city in the city was close was closing down the my com for the people who know from the Netherlands. We heard this this company was closing down so we went to that to that company and said I've heard you closing down and told us yeah we're closing down. This morning we heard that we have to go away by 12. They heard that morning they have to go away by 12 to the entire building had to be empty was impossible to do. So I asked him very polite we are good friends with them. We had an agreement. They were wearing the new computers we were repairing the old computers that was our agreement with we did. So I asked them is it OK if I put up a sign over here. And they said no no absolutely not. We are not allowed to put any signs up. But I'm away on quarter to 12 and I don't care what happens after that. So at 12 exactly two papers on the front door if you look for repairs go to the home computer museum and we picked up all repairs from that shop went to the home computer museum and that's how we survived. That was our thing that we could survive. So there's also yeah. More than full our full time work. We had I worked easy 72 hours a week easy the entire year. Well actually I'm still doing that most of the time. Yeah. See I'm not even half in my presentation yet. My god. We had a first major story I'll come back at the story. It was an August and for some complete co-incidence I I ended up sitting next at a bar at a cafe in the city a small city near the near the sea. We just I went there with my family was a good day. Nice weather. And I said OK I've been working for 72 hours a week. Let's do a day off for me for one day. So that morning we went I stopped in my car with my family and we drove to the sea to see sure and we sit there at some random bar and I had a shirt on and in the back you can see the old brands and the guy next to me said to me can I ask you something. Yes you sure. I see the brands Acorn and Sinclair on there. And I said yeah I'm from a computer museum. Yeah yeah I'm the first importer of the of the Netherlands of Sinclair and Acorn the guy was sitting next to me literally. How you I can't I can't figure that it was sitting there. So we started to talk and he also import imported laser he imported Acorn he imported a lot of brands and his brother-in-law was the first one importing IBM into the Netherlands. This was a guy that was completely unknown on the internet but he was very key to the role of computers in the Netherlands. His name is Paul Pardom. He still lives. He's very nice bloke and so we got to make but the thing is he sold Sinclair. He sold Acorn. He gave up all with importing that and he kept only one company one company alone and that is laser laser computers. That was he was the only guy in the Netherlands importing laser computers. Actually they were made in the Netherlands the laser computers. And yeah that's also Katja Schuurman was back then some kind of famous girl from a soap series which is still going on by the way. And and he was telling he wrote he made sure the song was written for her and he booked her and yeah that's how Katja became famous and laser computer became famous laser computers at some point was the biggest in the Netherlands. And after a while he gave up a lot of competition from the Chinese market. Dell American but but Acer and all that kind of brands. So he sold his company laser computers sold in late 1999 and the guy who took it over. Yeah he fucked it up. That's his simple and laser computers gone. The thing is you can't couldn't find this information at all. His name was completely he doesn't have linked in. He doesn't have any social media. He's completely offline basically. You couldn't find this information. And we have proof obviously. So what we did is we let him share this story create this entire story how he became the importer of laser computers. And that's what we published on our website and we are still the only one who published the full story of laser computers. So that was the first story we did that in 2018. So 2019 we weren't bankrupt. So that was good. And we started to have a stable income because we were helping people. We were helping people with autism helping people with this to labor market and the Dutch government gives money for that. So we had stable income. We had volunteers as well. It was a great system and we still have that same system. And we had the first contact regarding a new building because the current the building we rented was only for two years. Because when we started to rent it the city told us after two years we have this major building the big building with the four museums in ready. But in early 2009 to 18 just after we opened the city decided yeah you're not coming in that building. So but we had to do anything else. And yeah the landlord really wasn't pleased with us because we were still behind with rent. So there was no chance we could ever had a successor longer rent period. So we need to have a new building and it happens that the building next to us which was much larger and much better street was empty. And we could got in contact with the landlord the owner of that building. And he was enthusiastic about it. I have 10 minutes. Great. I'm still in 2019. There was no no and we want the average price. That was a big one. We won the heritage price by the end of 2019 because our combination of social cultural entrepreneurship. That's the reason why we got the price. And it was not decided by a judge it was decided by the audience which was quite easy because they had a voting system and you ask a computer museum for voting systems. Yeah we can fix that. So this is our new building. The entire yellow part is completely us. Thousand ninety square meters and we moved in by the end of two thousand and nineteen and we were closed for the entire month of January 2020 and we figured out it is a good day to open on the second of February 2020 and we opened that day and we had a YouTube coming over it was great and a lot of people were enthusiastic about us. Yeah then Corona and stuffs happened. We moved to a new building. We opened on the second of February 2020 and we were closed on March the 15th. Yeah that wasn't a great success. But since we had some time on our hands we had didn't have any visitors. We started to repair on our status and status is a Dutch cut computer. It's a really big computer and yeah there's not there's no information at all. No schematics. No documentation. No pictures. No videos up to then. And we had to we took on the challenge to repair that to get that machine booting again just because we can. And we had some time on our hands. We saved. We managed to stay afloat as a company by selling laptops. We sold in three weeks more than 100 laptops to the foundation that gives to poor families because suddenly home schooling became something and we had to deliver laptops. It was like the McDonald's at our place in the front they were giving out laptops in the back they were installing laptops and I was doing the administration to send bills. It's a crazy time but we in three weeks time we had so we sold more than 100 laptops. And we started to do the Dutch heritage. We received a hole born which is a Dutch computer. If you happen to be in the retro village we have the whole born over there working. And we started to do Dutch heritage because the home computer stuff you know it's great but we needed to do more and we find the Aztes which is also a Dutch computer and we have two computers. So that's what we did. And instead of complaining about how it's it's terrible that we have no visitors we decided to go on the internet and we took basically we took over all social media. We have every social media can find us except for I forgot the name. I might we got all social media and we are actually the by far the largest computer museum on social media. By simple every day a picture with a nice story. That's what we do. Every day. So despite we are closed for four months. Not my one month do one month was closed because we were moving not to the pandemic. Despite that we grow we grew in revenue we grew in collection and we grew in volunteers. We grew in everything which was completely strange because we are a nonprofit organization without subsidy and we grew in 2020 in a year that we everybody was complaining that everything went bad. Despite that we had less visitors than in 2019. And by the end of the year we had a very hard time but we were saved by the sponsors people getting a year subscription. And in 2020 we were given the largest collection boxed PC games. We counted them there are twenty two hundred PC games in our museum and we got the largest collection CDI in the museum. So twenty twenty one. Yeah I'm going a little bit fast because I'm getting out of time. We were more we were more close. We had six months we were close in twenty twenty one. We had less visitors than in 2020. We became a member of the network digital heritage and the. Meaning that we are now. For museums and for other companies. We are reading old media and converting the data to a modern format. That's what we do. We became an example of social entrepreneurship by the National Office of Cultural Heritage. So that's what we also are. We got our status working. And at this moment we are the only one in the entire world that have working status. Standing and we had a massive growth on social media. The only thing we don't have I came up with the only thing we didn't have we don't have currently is an only fans but it's only social media we don't have. Yeah by the end of two thousand twenty one we were again nearly bankrupt. That's that's our thing by the end of the year getting bankrupt. But we're saved by sponsors donations and adoptions you can adopt a computer in the home computer museum. Then we make sure we give him fresh power every day. That's what we do. You can pet it and you can come and visit it as well. We became an essential museum for the preserve of the National History. So we are officially yeah Rijksmuseum but basically we can't go bankrupt because if we are nearby bankruptcy then the Netherlands will take us over and fire me. But yeah that's so we don't do that again. And we covered a lot of data. Yeah this year we opened the CDI collection. It was planned in 2020 but yeah there was something happening in the world so we didn't open. We opened the CDI collection. We actually have the largest CDI collection in the entire world. Both hardware and software. All the all the CDIs are currently are archived already and shared. That's what we also do. We open for everybody to come in and actually share the data. Three. He didn't tell me he had a three. On September 25th we have the opening of the game collection PC box game collection which is actually in the Guinness World Record and we will try this year to have that set again in the home computer museum because the old record says 1800 and recounted and we come out to 2200. So yeah we need to fix that. MCH it was the first time for us and we love it here. So we hope that we come back the next time. And I think everybody will like it likes us too because we have a lot of people coming in our tent and our visitor numbers are getting better and better. It's not still on the place where we want to be but I think this year will be doing that. Yeah and I was already out of time with this. So why are we important. I think I told that pretty much. We do preserve the history. We actually tell the stories. We make sure everything is working that the knowledge is kept how things work. And what we can learn about the history is the speed it went. We went from 1977 with a computer that was four kilobytes of memory. We went to a thing that I mean this is a computer. Everybody here has a computer. And what we learn in our computer museum is that every computer has its own story. And we actually found that a lot of people now who are in the musician or music industry started out with Atari because we found the link between Atari and becoming a musician. And that's very interesting. There's a lot of history to be found in the computer museum history about people history about technology. It's very interesting. And yeah I have one minute left. So I was I was already out of time to create more slides. So I'm fine. Yeah. That's not interesting. That's a lot of go go go. This is what other people say about us. And the fun thing I we have eight hundred and eighty nine eight hundred and eighty nine unique computers in our collection and the total registered items is thirty thousand five hundred and fifty five that's registered items not keyboards not mouse but really like a monitor or a computer or a particular piece of software or documentation that's all of you register. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah questions. We're in the retro village. Thank you very much. But that was I would have given you six hours for this talk. It's not it's not. I can feel it. No problem. Yeah. So thank you very much. Unfortunately we are out of time. We will definitely drop by either the retro village or at the museum and please everyone please give another warm round of applause for pop. Thank you very much. Thank you.