One of the best ways to interest people in mechanical instruments is
for the instruments to be in places where people can experience them.
Unless already interested, it would be the rare case that someone
attends a mechanical music event or plans a vacation around a dedicated
museum location.  People develop emotional attachments to memorable
experiences.  It is necessary to create the nostalgia of tomorrow.

Last year I went to the Petaluma River Festival and saw all manner
of fun exhibits with a bit of steam punk feel.  This would have been
a terrific place to put out a funky military organ playing quirky
tunes.  Or inside the shelter would have been a great place for
something mellow, maybe a Reproduco or a non-abrasive orchestrion with
flute pipes as background music to sipping lemonade.

Many community festivals and parades exist which could use exactly
the kind of fun entertainment mechanical instruments provide.  Maybe
someone will bring out an instrument to the park in Sausalito next
year, to spur on the kids with some Easter egg hunting music?

One of the things that is fun in the spring is to go on the
neighborhood tours of local homes that offer open house because of
their gardens or interiors or antique collections.  Wouldn't it be
wonderful to find a music box or a parlor instrument playing in one
of the houses?  I have seen them once in a while, but they are always
silent.

I have also found that people are more interested in mechanical
instruments once they understand the connection that they have to the
present.  Engineers are easy prey, but even non-technical people are
amazed to realize that these instruments are early mechanical versions
of computers: they have data files with binary encoding and the memory
of the data is loaded by applying a control signal to the input of
a pneumatic transistor.  People are fascinated by this.  You can trace
the evolution from punched paper rolls to punched computer cards to
magnetic tape and then magnetic disk storage of the 1s and 0s just like
on the rolls.  And that is still the way it is done today.  They only
thing that has changed is the density of the information.

Another way to get people interested is the concept of "better than
a recording."  Absolutely everyone is on the edge of their seat to
think that notes will come out of a reproducing piano as played by
Gershwin himself.  No Blu-ray DVD and loudspeaker system in the home
can come close to an instrument recreating the performance.  People
love the idea that no modern invention has been able to do better or
even as well.

Happy exhibiting,
Dave Theis