The story of the HomeComputerMuseum starts in 2016 and has both setbacks and fortunes. Our founder and director Bart van den Akker is happy to give an inspiring presentation about how to work from a hobby to an award-winning, world-famous social enterprise.

Bart van den Akker (born 1982) has decided to change course after years of working as a system and network administrator, programmer and VoIP expert. In 2016, the entrepreneurship of many years in the music world as a musician, the urge to help people with autism and his hobby of collecting the (stories of) old computers came together. A business plan was drawn up with most people calling him crazy. Why would anyone want to start a museum? Why a computer museum, that's not heritage is it? It won't work....

In March 2018 the doors of the HomeComputerMuseum opened. A few months later it seemed almost over, but thanks to some luck it was able to start again. In 2019 we received the keys to a new building where we opened the doors in February 2020. Full of good courage, which completely disappeared 6 weeks after opening due to a pandemic. Despite this, the HomeComputerMuseum started to grow and year after year, it generated more sales compared to the previous year and grew into one of the largest museums in the world in the field of computers with a social impact that many envy and a large group of volunteers who love the company.

Inspiration for an independent museum as a social enterprise

The story of the HomeComputerMuseum is inspiring and amazing at the same time. All this is gladly explained by Bart with the necessary humor also involved. An inspiring story of a techie without museum experience who started a very special company by doing what feels right. A company that helps people, which redefines the definition of museum and shows that heritage is still being made today.

The biggest challenge for Bart is to keep the story short. It takes at least 30 minutes to tell the history of the museum, but this can easily be 2 hours. All this with or without a presentation on the screen. Humorous and above all inspiring how a museum can be a successful and independent company, which also has a real (measurable) social impact.

Heritage

The HomeComputerMuseum is the single point of contact for computer history in the Benelux. The accumulated knowledge of history and the actual investigation of claims has revealed some extraordinary facts that would otherwise have been lost. Some concrete examples of this are available which can be explained in detail. Think of the history of Girotel, Tulip Computers, Laser Computers, CD-i and the relationship with Nintendo and Sony to how the computer ended up in Dutch education. At the end of the presentation, people think differently about heritage and that things will now be heritage in a few years' time.

Digital Heritage

The HomeComputerMuseum has a unique position because of the interactive part. All more than 850 unique models are functional and can read old media. More importantly, the extracted data from this media can also be displayed on the computer with which it was originally created, without doing any conversion and potentially losing data. That is why the museum is also a member of the Digital Heritage Network. Why is it important to keep this? What are the problems with how data was stored in the past and how can we prevent this in the future? What about personal data? Questions that can be answered and where a discussion can take place.

Bart is happy to give a presentation of half an hour to a maximum of 2 hours, followed by time for questions or discussion. Please feel free to contact us to discuss the possibilities.