Editing The Pen Addict 271/transcript (section)

== Andy Wellfley ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Now that me and Tony, we've rekindled our love, there's no rivalry anymore between me and Tony. My rivalry has moved to Andy Wellfley. Andy Wellfley.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, we'll get y'all together one of these years. Me and Andy have spent a bunch of time together. That's right. Y'all have been out WWDC and all that stuff. That's right. So I just met, I met Andy at last year. He, uh, the pen show, he came to the, uh, to the party and we have a great picture of us. Like I'm trying to stab him with a pen and he's trying to stab me with a pencil. It's really good. Um, so this is going to be a really good show. And on my shopping list, you know, I have all these crazy big expensive purchases and I'm about to get someone in trouble right here, but I'm going to do it anyway. I hear Ryan Krusak might have something special for the show. And you know, I love Ryan's work, especially since he's changed over to these Ebonite sections and these new legend models. I say that knowing that he also had a machinery malfunction last week, just like Brian Gray did before DC that put him behind schedule. So Ryan, you know, I love you. I'm not trying to get you in trouble, but I hear rumors of something, whether he could get them done with his machinery failure. I don't know, but, um, I will be talking with him when I get there. Um, cause I want to see what's up, but that's what I'm going to do. That's just, uh, I have little birdies that, um, told me this. So now if you've never been to a pen show and you live in the area, you need to make a plan to come to San Francisco and Matt Armstrong, who will be there working for Van S pens. He did a video this week called the pen show primer. It is absolutely fantastic. He kind of went through everything that anyone who's new to a show or even experienced with a show would think about. Like he covered so much. I like, I couldn't think of anything that he left out. It's like 30 or 40 minutes long. And this is good for any pen show. This isn't San Francisco specific. It's general pen show. Um, you know, information, especially to give you a paint that picture. The first time you're going to a show, a couple of things that Matt mentioned that I wanted to elaborate on were one, bring your own paper. Like that's not something a lot of people think about, but if you want to test out inks, you don't always have paper available at whatever table you're at or the ink testing station.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I think even more important than that is that you want to be able to test pens and ink on the paper that you're going to be using every day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Exactly. You don't have a baseline. So you bring your paper because you know how pens and inks and nibs act on that paper. So therefore you have something to compare it to. So I thought, I think that's a super important thing. The other one point he made, which kind of came to bear in DC, and I'm kind of sad about because I would normally recommend this backpacks are a tough, tough way to go in a pen show. It's you need a bag, but you need something smaller that can go on the side or the front because it like in DC, it got so packed. If you have a backpack on your bag, you're slinging around, bonking into people and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And I'm a huge, I'm the biggest backpack fan I know. And I was like, oh man, I can kind of see that. Like, I really want to take a backpack, but you kind of need something smaller inside or front carry.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Some of those lines, like the tables and stuff, they get so busy. It's impossible to walk past people with backpacks. Yeah. Yeah. And it's frustrating. Like it's frustrating. It's for everybody.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Smaller bags, smaller bags seem to do the trick. And I thought, I don't know, I thought that was a good point to make, even though I'm like, oh man, I really want.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, I just straight up recommend don't take a backpack down to the, don't take any bag down to the show floor because that maximizes the amount of stuff you can carry, which means you'll buy more. So like, you know, my tip is just like, just hold anything you can hold.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. Which I hate, you know, because like Tony says in the chat, backpacks are just more comfortable. Yeah. But you start whacking people, you know, as you're walking and your whole day is filled with, oh, excuse me. Oh, excuse me. Oh, oh, sorry. Sorry about that. So anyway, um, Matt's got some great, great points. And he goes into the experience of working a pen show too. So it's kind of cool if you want some behind the scenes stuff. So I really enjoyed his video yesterday. I laughed a lot and, uh, it was fun. So, and he, he definitely, uh, is on the fishing vest train. So yeah, fishing vests. I see why they're so legit at pen shows, you know, when you, when you talk about it that way, it's the way to go.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. Carry it all on your person physically.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So that's that I'm ready. Come and see me. Come say hi. And I'll be around the hotel. Most of the show. I love this show. The people are awesome and there's very few shows I can tell you I will definitely be at next year, San Francisco. You can just, I will, I will book my book, my table before I leave this show. It's that good of a show. So love it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Today's show is brought to you in part by our friends over at Squarespace. Use the offer code ink, I N K at checkout and you will get 10% of your first purchase. Make your next move of Squarespace. They let you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain name, award winning templates, 24 seven customer support and more. They are the all in one place for you to put your next project online. There's nothing to install with Squarespace. There are no patches to worry about. No upgrades needed. You don't have to worry about any of these things. They've got you covered. Talking about this being an all in one place, Squarespace lets you create any type of website. Whether you're looking to create an online store, a portfolio, a blog, a site for your business or more, Squarespace have got the tools that you need. I'm using Squarespace right now to build a website for my wedding. So when we send out all of our RSVPs and stuff, I want to be able to give people a URL that they can go to to get information about the wedding, about the planning and all the dates and the locations. As well, we're going to be collecting RSVPs through a Squarespace website. It has all of the abilities to do that. All the functionality is there. If they have wedding templates, I enabled one of the templates. It's got all the pages and I'm just going in and changing what I need to change. Like building, I haven't built a website on Squarespace from scratch in a while. And I am being reminded just how easy it is to click into things, change the text, change the color, change the font or just drag and drop or just clicking boxes. It's so, so easy to do. There is no wonder that Squarespace's templates have won many awards because they all do look so fantastic. You can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required. Just go to squarespace.com. Then when you decide to sign up, their plans start at just $12 a month and you can get 10% off your first purchase if you use the offer code INK at checkout. And this will also help support this show. I'd like to thank Squarespace for the support of the Pen Addict and Relay FM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So attention, pen show promoters, as Matt mentions on his video and it's something we discuss all the time. Go build your site in Squarespace, take online payments, make everybody's life easier by having an updated website and Squarespace is the way to go. It's so simple and it's worth the small amount of time to relieve so much pain in the pen show website landscape. So that's my rant. We're going to talk. I do have a follow-up question about pen shows, but I want to talk about this new recent acquisition you have first.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So a couple of weeks ago, we spoke about a pen that Thomas Hall had collaborated with Franklin Christophe, like for a charity pen. So it is a Model 20 edition and you can get either the pocket or full size. And it has a Tubaldi Imperio finial. So we have spoken about this celluloid in the past. We both have pens made out of it, which we got access to this material via the help of Thomas a couple of years ago. And he still had a rod of this stuff left. So it made a small amount. It made this available to Franklin Christophe so they could create a limited run of pens together with the money going to charity. I have mine now. I believe I'm the first person to get mine because of some funny circumstances. Yeah, hilarious. In that there was maybe like one available, which was being used for pictures and stuff. And Thomas, being the wonderful person that he is, because I was already in America, got in touch with Scott over at Franklin Christophe and we worked together and we got it sent out to me and it arrived for me last week. And I have it and I got the pocket 20 because I don't have a pocket Franklin Christophe of any kind. It's beautiful. I love the dark finish on the acrylic. I love something I've not noticed. Maybe I haven't had a recent enough Franklin Christophe, but how the nib is kind of like is like a hood that goes around it now from from the grip section. That feels new to me. They haven't always done that, have they?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, no. It's they've done it in a couple of models in the past year or two.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. See, I don't know. I haven't bought one for a couple of years. Because the last Franklin Christophe that I got was your one and I don't think that has it, if memory serves.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So yeah, this is it. I really love the pocket edition and it's beautiful and the video is fantastic. So I just wanted to mention, I just wanted to extend a thanks to Thomas and Scott for helping that because it just meant that I was already here. I could get it all sorted. I didn't need to worry about the shipping and now I have it and it's on my person and I love it. And everyone hates you because you got it first and we all want ours. Look, every now and then I deserve to get something first because I usually get everything last.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You do. You do. So more real time follow up in the chat room. Myke Madison, Franklin Christophe, Guru Extraordinaire. The Model 20 and the 31 have the style you're talking about.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that would be why because I don't have any, I don't have any 20s.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. And the 31 is brand new ish, like in the past few months. Okie dokie. All right. So I want to hit a bunch of Ask TPA today because we honestly didn't have a huge show planned because Myke's traveling. I'm trying to get out of town and there was only so much time this week. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We're only at 34 minutes already before we even hit the Ask TPA. So just a short one today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. This is, I always feel the guilt before some shows. Like this is when I felt guilty. Like, did I plan enough? Did I do enough for the people on this show? And then here we are 30 something minutes in. But I want to continue.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, it's still unknown as to whether we've done enough for the people, right? It may have been terrible at this point, but we've, pure minutes wise, I think we've provided adequate enjoyment.