Editing The Pen Addict 576/transcript (section)

== Venue Layout and Changes ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' So I'm looking at the, the, the map that's on the website and like this room wasn't there when I went, they had the like main room with the hallway, then that like the little offshoot room, but this is like a whole different room. What's kind of funny to me, like on the map, on the website, it's not, this one isn't even on it. You have to like select a specific thing to see it, which is really strange. But I have.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It is kind of funny. So what this room, what this room is, I don't know if you remember this. It actually took me a minute. This is where the old restaurant was. Oh, that restaurant. So that restaurant is not there. So like, you remember waiting in the line to get into that? Like that's this room now. It is now like a ballroom. Okay. Right. So, um, but it was cool. Like it was, it was a good room as a good space. So, but it was off to the side and they did a couple of things to try to drive traffic that way. Again, like they put registration down that hallway towards that room. So that room, you know, after registration, I made sure to go there first. Right. That's also where Galen leather was. And a few other people that I wanted to see there. Um, so we'll come, that's just the general layout. And y'all should go click on the links. If you're just interested in hearing me talk about the size of the show, because I'm probably be referring it to it back and forth because I spent a lot of time traversing the hallways of the hotel, going back and forth, bouncing back and forth to these rooms. And you'll see why in a minute. So I knew Friday, like I kind of had to get things done. Right. So the topics we talked about on last week's show, right. I want to get a monoconib. Right. So I made sure to go see Ian. He was in the second room to go see Ian first. After I kind of walked around the room three for a minute, kind of, I was looking for a Eunice at Galen Leather. It didn't seem. So I figured I'd come back later. So I traversed the hallways back over to the second room, ran into Ian over there and picked out my monoconib that I finally wanted to get. Um, since it was Friday afternoon and he was already hopping, like this was literally where I like, I still on Friday afternoon, I was already having to wait to get like, to, to be able to like, get up to the front of the table. Right. Like I was waiting for people to finish their shopping or they're, they're talking with Ian and learning about the products. And then I could, uh, get up into the front of the table to where I could pick out my monoc nib because there's so many different finishes on these nibs. Right. So you kind of look through the trays and things like that to pick one out. So I did that. We'll talk about the exact products later. So I got my nib, picked out a pen to go with it. And then I, in the same room was Tom from sugar turtle studio, who was also at the top of my list because he had some show inks that he co-produced with diamine. I wanted to make sure to get that. And then he had mentioned to me separately that he was dropping a new Rickshaw collaboration. And it was a Sinclair with this, with this great pattern. Again, I'll elaborate on a lot of these products later. We're going to do a whole pen show hall section. So the point of me doing this is saying I started going down my list of things that I wanted to do really quickly because I knew it was going to be busy. So I did those two things. Those were the one and two on my shopping list and one and two were checked off. So I started to meander over to the main ballroom. And that's when I ran across my friend, Jacqueline from pilot who heads up their, their fine writing. Division, I believe. And she asked me, he's like, Hey, are you going to do our, our fountain pen writing analysis that we had, that we brought to this show? I was like, well, I'd heard of it, but I didn't sign up for it. So what they were doing is they brought some of the R and D department from Japan from pilot Japan. And they had this whole setup with a laptop and a pen that was wired and like a pressure sensitive plate. You would do this writing on and what it would do was would measure all these different. Um, it would analyze all like your, your handwriting flight based on your writing angle, your pressure of writing, the angle you hold the pen. It was kind of wild. And I really, I'm glad that I did this and I'll have some pictures of all this. Like I said, I've been sick since I've got back. So most of the things we talk about, I will have links to, but I don't always have pictures to things yet, but they will be coming. So my writing pressure was actually lighter than average, which I did not expect. So I've always had kind of a heavy hand when writing, but with a fountain pen, you know, that does help with writing pressure a little bit. Um, my writing angle, Myke is at 53 degrees. Congrats. So slightly, maybe slightly, maybe upright. I don't know, something like that. And I actually have an inward angle. Like I actually twist the pen a little bit, uh, 11 degrees. So like all of this is on this printout, right? And it was just kind of cool. So I got to do that, which was neat. And that was, uh, that was fun to see everyone's measurements throughout the show. We were talking about them at night and things like that. So that was nice. Um, and then I decided, well, I haven't made it into the main ballroom yet. Pilot was still, uh, outside the main room and I still wanted to see Eunice. From Galen Leather. So I trucked it back over there to room three and he was in there, but the room was so packed. I just like kind of turned around and went back. So that's kind of how it was going, right? This was Friday afternoon and the show was absolutely slammed. I was like, well, he's super busy. Like the aisles are packed. Like I'm not even going to talk to him. So now let me roll back and check out another thing that I mentioned last week. I wanted to meet, uh, Salvatore from Leonardo, the CEO of Leonardo, who we've talked very sparingly over several years since Leonardo came into existence. And that table, and this is a recurring theme was absolutely packed, right? They had like two tables. So it wasn't like a big spread and everything they brought was kind of unique. And they brought like a bunch of one-off stuff and people bought some really neat, neat Leonardo's there. So he was very busy, but I did finally, uh, get to spend about five minutes with him, talking to him, super nice, really enjoyed, uh, hanging out with him and, uh, and then let him get back to work because they, I didn't even see him on Saturday. Like it was so busy, right? Like again, recurring themes that we'll talk about a lot during the show. So at that point I had really kind of knocked out my list. Like I have to do these things. And I did that on Friday, which I don't always go into a show with like a, as direct of a list as this. Um, but I did, and I'm glad that I did because these are the things I did not want to miss. And, you know, I felt like, all right, like I'm good. Like I've got everything I need for the show, got everything done that I needed to do and spent the rest of Friday. Again, like I had four hours on Friday from one to five and, you know, that just took a bunch of the time just doing these things. So I didn't even really browse around the main room. I completely miss the external hallways. Um, you know, my friend April from plotter, I saw her in the elevator going up after the show Saturday night and our Friday. And she was like, where were you? I was like, I couldn't even make it over there. Like it was so busy and everything was going on. Like I didn't even get to parts of the show on Friday.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's good though. I think, I think so too. Like if, if you're going for a weekend, this was always like my thing with pen shows. Like this is a problem if you're going for a day, right? I understand that. But I think a lot of people that listen to this show, they're traveling in for a show, especially the one like this size, right? I feel like there's probably most people are traveling in for it. But I don't know, maybe we'll just send like a random thing. But it's this one maybe feels a bit different, but if you are going, you're traveling and you're going to stay over. If you see everything in the first day, it's like, it's less exciting for the following days. I feel like if you get, if you don't get to see everything, like every place you want to go to, like, I actually think there's a benefit in that because it like, it reinforces why you came for the weekend.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's exactly right. And now, like when I call this like the biggest and busiest show, like some people will take that as a negative, right? Or like, I'm not even necessarily saying it's a positive. It's just, it's kind of like a statement of fact, right? Like it was large and it was packed. And that is not for everyone. That is not the experience that a lot of people want to have. But I was thinking about it from not even an attendees perspective, but like I was happy for the vendors because there were so many people there and hopefully the, and hopefully they had good shows. Like I hadn't even had time to like check in with everyone, but everyone seemed like really positive, right? Having that many attendees there. But like, I could understand where, you know, that might be a huge turnoff for people too, right?