Computer museum launches £1.5m Twitter campaign

The Centre for Computing History has launched an audacious Twitter-based campaign to try and raise £1.5 million for a state of the art, Cambridge-based computer museum.

Embracing the latest trends in computing and social media, the museum (Twitter: @computingmuseum), which is currently based in Haverhill, Suffolk, has written an open letter to the ‘Twitterverse’ and asks if @charliesheen can attract 1.5 million followers in a couple of days, why can’t it raise £1.5m solely from the twitter community?

Jason Fitzpatrick of the computing museum and donor of a sizable amount of its stock has labelled the strategy the Charlie Sheen business model, though it holds more in common with Barack Obama’s presidential fundraising campaign of targeting large numbers of small donations through social media.

In the campaign’s first 12 hours – a Sunday – it raised over £1,045.29, just £1,498,954.71 short of a target that it says will allow it to create a worthy museum that provides visitors with an interactive experience with the machines that helped shape many of the programmers and software entrepreneurs of today.

However, at that rate it will take four years to reach the target and it is the rapid escalation of a following that has built behind the ranting Sheen (now over 2m) that the museum is after.

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Fitzpatrick says Twitter has already played a key role in generating contacts for donations of artefacts, but no tweet has been more significant than the single one picked up by Neil Davidson of Red Gate Software which led to a £20,000 sponsorship package from Red Gate and Arm Holdings and that is providing a snowball effect for the whole campaign.

As well as an attraction for nostalgic computer fans, the museum plans to bring some of the history and appeal to children by opening up to school visits or taking machines such as the BBC Micro into schools and giving pupils a chance to experience the simple, yet addictive computer programing which inspired children across the UK.

Fitzpatrick already has several potential sites in mind, including a 20,000 sq ft facility behind Newmarket Road.

The museum would ideally be closer to Cambridge city centre, and a 10,000 sq ft facility would be enough, however, sites have to be viable within the current cash constraints, which is why it is eager to raise further funds.

Fitzpatrick believes Cambridge is the natural home for the computer museum in the UK. From Charles Babbage’s concept of a programmable computer with his first ideas for a calculating machine in the early 1800s, through Alan Turing’s early work in computer science to the Sinclair and Acorn (BBC Micro) machines that brought home computing to the masses, Cambridge has been a key player in the industry.

• Visit http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/13891/twitter to donate.

 

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