CDA-EX about

the SOFWhere site ("Silly Old Farts Where are you") website which was in limited operation for a couple of years. The CDAEX website has grown in size and diversity - and will grow further with contributions of insights, data and materials from all of you, I hope!

Of all the States, the Victorian group appears to meet the most, with a regular monthly lunch along with a reunion every two years. We have had seven reunions to date, which have been very well attended (from 80-100 ex-employees), with a few even coming from interstate (and one last year from USA - Bob McPhail) to join in the fun and share the happy memories. The next one is due in May, 2010 - this will be the eighth!

While CDA had over 2500 employees on the books, we have a database with only around 700 names. Of them, 130+ are on the email list, and for some others we have postal and phone data. We have put the names and their state up on the website, to see if we can gain more information on the "lost tribe" members. For privacy reasons, we will only release the email address to members wanting to contact other members (at the discretion of Bob Jensen, who is doing a great job managing the membership database for all our benefit).

The Melbourne monthly pizza lunch at the Sofia Pizza Restaurant 857 Burke Rd Camberwell, normally attracts between 10 and 20 members, and is a great way to stay in touch and enjoy a cheap lunch (byo bottle of something.It happens normally on the 3rd Friday of each month. Bob Jensen emails everyone on the email list in the preceding week, so make sure you give him your details - along with details of anyone else you think of!
Sophia Restaurant is just across the road from the Camberwell station so you can easily come by train.

We have a good deal of memorabilia which gets displayed at the biennial reunion (The Yellow Peril newsletter, photos and technical material, etc) and Alison and Adrian Bryant (pictured on the left) look after it for us. They have nearly a garage full of CDA-based material, and of course are interested in more.

We want to make the website interesting, useful and relevant to all ex-CDA employees, and invite interaction with the existing interstate groups about their membership and/or activities. Interstate individuals are of course invited to contact us direct, and we can try to put them in touch with "the locals" in their area. We have made provision on the website for potential Interstate pages.
We also now have a link to the Monash Computing Museum website -

http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/about/projects/museum/

They organise occasional tours of historical Melbourne computing locations, which are really interesting. Marcel Dayan and myself caught up with each other on the last one, and thoroughly enjoyed the tram/walking trip down memory lane!
Tours can be arranged with Graham.Farr@infotech.monash.edu.au

Check at http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~gfarr/tour/ for tour dates.

I hope you will take the time to browse around the website, and enjoy some of the photos and other information about CDA - and especially about its wonderful people.

We are all very fortunate to have worked for a progressive, innovative and caring company who put their money where their mouth was in developing its people, thereby generating a culture that was probably unique - and probably cannot be duplicated or replicated!

Kind regards from Mike Spark.