Re: Did anyone else go to a computer camp back in the day?

[Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2012, Apple2Games wrote:

> This morning while waiting for the camp bus to come around and pickup my 
> son... he asked me if I had ever gone to camp and what it was like.  I 
> told him I had back in the late 70s & early 80s and that I had gone to 
> computer camp.  Which he responded back "Pac-Man Camp?" Anyhow... got me 
> thinking about it and what memory remains is that it was in Moodus 
> Connecticut and was either Computer Camps International or New England 
> Computer Camps.  I know there were other campers there... anyone?
No, I was 19 when I got my first computer, in 1979.  I can't remember when 
compuer camps started up, but I'd say it was after that, leaving me too 
old for camp.

I suspect, but can't remember or don't know, that the first computer camps 
were likely in the technical realm.  Go to camp and put together a 
computer, or something like that.  There were some camps for amateur 
radio, go away for two weeks and come back with a ham license.  I had the 
impression those were simply subletting camp space from another camp, the 
rest of the summer it was a traditional camp.  So I can imagine, actually 
I think I can picture something, where the organizers of that camp started 
a computer camp along the same lines.

Of course, whether or not that really happened, they really took off as 
"go to camp and learn to program, or play computer games", which of course 
counted on a higher level of penetration for home computers.

There were probably also "day computer camps", go visit a school each day 
for two weeks in the summer, do the same sort of thing, you just don't 
sleep there.  Of course, the cheap variation of that was "hang out at the 
computer store as much as possible".

   Michael