Software & Computer Museum is heading to WAWTech +Summer: retro gaming and a Commodore 64 workshop
On July 18, Warsaw will host WAWTech + Summer — according to the organizers, the city’s largest technology festival. We’re happy to share the good news: Software & Computer Museum will be there with its retro zone, and the museum’s co-founder Oleksandr Kovalenko will lead a workshop on the legendary Commodore 64.
If you’ll be in Warsaw that day, it’s a great chance to meet us far beyond Kharkiv.
What WAWTech + Summer is
WAWTech is a project by the Ukrainian IT community DOU that has grown into a major tech event in Poland’s capital. The summer edition of the festival takes place in an open-air format at Tor Służewiec racecourse (Puławska 266) — one day outdoors, with no stuffy conference halls.
The organizers call it “not a conference, but a summer techno festival.” Several worlds coexist there at once. On the main stage there are short keynotes, panel discussions, morning yoga, and DJ sets. Nearby, the workshop zone is buzzing. Visitors can learn about local AI stations and bring old computers back to life. There’s also Job Speed Dating with employers, a food court, a kids’ space zone, board games, and ping-pong. That’s why the organizers expect up to 5,000 guests, with the core audience made up of more than 3,000 engineers.
In short, the atmosphere is more festival-like than academic — and that’s exactly where what we’re bringing fits in perfectly.
Our retro zone
We’re bringing Retro Gaming Zone to the festival — an interactive space where classics of the last millennium are not kept behind glass, but switched on and played live.
The zone will feature:
🔹8-bit Nintendo Famicom
🔹16-bit Sega and SNES
🔹Sony PlayStation 1
🔹Commodore 64 home computer
🔹a variety of handheld consoles
For some people, this will be their first encounter with the kind of hardware their parents grew up with. For others, it will be a return to their own childhood, when loading a game from a cassette felt like real magic. A joystick in your hands and the familiar glow of an old screen make the history of technology a very vivid experience — exactly what our museum is all about.
A computer that asks for nothing
The highlight of our participation will be the workshop “Commodore 64: No Cloud, No AI, No Subscriptions,” which will take place from 11:30 to 12:30.
It will be led by Software & Computer Museum co-founder Oleksandr Kovalenko, who also works as IT Director at Plarium. Oleksandr is one of the three enthusiasts who opened Ukraine’s first museum of software and computers in Kharkiv back in 2017, so he tells the story of hardware not from a textbook, but with a collector’s passion.
At the center of the talk is a machine that still remains the best-selling home computer in history. Oleksandr will show how a device with 64 KB of memory and a processor running at about 1 MHz once outpaced Apple and IBM, became a cultural icon, and still fascinates enthusiasts today — including how an old C64 can be connected to the modern internet.
A few facts about the “people’s” computer
A few numbers and details show the scale of the Commodore 64:
Commodore 64 was released in 1982 with a starting price of $595 — much cheaper than the Apple II and IBM PC, and that affordability is what made it a mass-market hit.
Guinness World Records recognized it as the best-selling personal computer of all time. Sales estimates vary, but the usual figure is between 12 and 17 million units sold.
Its SID sound chip made C64 music iconic and effectively launched an entire chiptune culture, echoes of which are still heard in electronic music today.
The BASIC programming language for it was licensed from what was then still a young Microsoft.
The philosophy behind the workshop title was perhaps best expressed by Commodore founder Jack Tramiel: “We must build computers for the masses, not the classes.” That idea — an affordable computer without cloud services, subscriptions, or “smart” assistants, fully owned by its user — is what turned the C64 into a phenomenon. In today’s world of monthly subscriptions, that idea sounds almost provocative.
Why this matters to us
Software & Computer Museum began in Kharkiv in 2017 as a place where the history of technology could be not only seen, but felt. In May 2026, after a forced pause, we reopened our doors to visitors. That makes every opportunity to appear on an international stage even more valuable to us.
For us, this trip is more than nostalgia. It’s a chance to tell a European audience about Ukrainians who preserve the history of technology and to show that the work is still alive despite the war. It’s also a reminder that, in the middle of the AI era, it’s worth remembering where it all began.
See you in Warsaw
If you’re in Warsaw on July 18, be sure to stop by our retro zone at Tor Służewiec and Oleksandr Kovalenko’s workshop at 11:30.
Pick up a joystick, hear the story of the Commodore 64 from first-hand experience, and see for yourself that classics never age.
The full agenda, festival details, and tickets are available at wawtech.io/summer.
See you by the Commodore 64!