Editing The Pen Addict 523/transcript (section)

== Orlando Show ==


'''Myke:''' I would like to make a personal request to the Orlando pen show to not be in September.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Why? It's a bad month. Oh yeah. Okay. That's, uh, that's, uh, uh, uh, St. Jude relay, uh, St. Jude. Um, it's going to be in September pretty much. There's not a lot of room on the, on, on the U S calendar. There's not a lot of October to be honest.

'''Brad:''' That's true. Uh, there was Denver for a while. Uh, Columbus doesn't happen till November.

'''Brad:''' Toronto was in October. Tokyo is in October. Yeah. I mean, October might could, could work. I mean, or if they did later in September, like if they did Dallas is late September,

'''Myke:''' not Dallas. I want September now. I want Orlando to be late in September. So then I can already be in the U S you know, then I can go to Disney world.

'''Brad:''' Gotcha.

'''Myke:''' Gotcha. Purely for me.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. What you need is Dallas to change their schedule.

'''Myke:''' I do keep finding myself in Dallas. So, you know, I might end up, I might end up going to the Dallas pen show cause I can't stop landing in Dallas.

'''Brad:''' That is a popular hub for you, right? You're going to rent. You're going to start renting a corporate apartment in Dallas cause you keep getting stuck there.

'''Myke:''' Oh dear. Talking about pen shows, Brad Dowdy. Yeah. Talking about pen shows. Let's thank our first sponsor of this week's episode. And that is the Canalea Pen Co. Canalea make the most beautiful pens inspired by images of Hawaii. Canalea's founders, Hugh and Carol believe that these locations can help recharge our spirit and connect us with nature. Today, I have a couple of things that I want to remind you about and a few pieces of information I want to give you on behalf of Canalea. So I want to let you know again to go and check out the Le Valani collection from Canalea. This is a design that represents the sky at night in Kauai with its deep dark blue, vibrant stars, and the visible shimmer of the Milky Way. The Le Valani collection consists of the fountain pen in five styles, a ballpoint, and also the return of the Maile Le band, which is a wonderful option made of Argentium silver, adorning Canalea's classic fountain pen profile. I have the Maile Le on a different pen, but it's still equally beautiful and a real wonderful addition. I think you can make an already special pen that a little bit extra special, I think makes it very wonderful gift. Canalea fountain pens feature Yoha number six nibs. You can buy steel or 18 karat gold nibs from Canalea, and they offer sizes from extra fine to 1.1 millimeter stub. Hugh smooths and tunes every nib before it leaves their shop, so your Canalea pen will write beautifully straight out of the lovely black walnut keepsake box. Recently, we told you about Canalea's Kai Huli collection. Kai Huli means a sea that dashes and recedes. With the movement of the tide, the ocean's waves will roll up onto the sand and pull back again. And when it does this, it leaves new treasures to discover on the beach, on the shore. Kai Huli is an ever-changing collection of fountain pens inspired by this idea, specifically created by Canalea to represent the varied and beautiful colors and textures of the Hawaiian islands. These pens are only available at pen shows, and were a huge hit at the St. Louis Pen Show in June. Every morning of a pen show, attendees will be able to stop by Canalea's tables to see the assortment of Kai Huli pens that the tide brought in overnight. Kai Huli will be back at both the DC Pen Show from August 5th to the 7th, and the San Francisco Pen Show from August 26th to 28th. Don't miss out, as these will be your final chances to see the Kai Huli collection in 2022. And to celebrate Canalea's anniversary month with every pen purchase at both the DC and SF Pen Shows, you will receive Kona coffee from the Green World Farms on Hawaii's Big Island, so you'll get to taste the inspiration behind the Kona Snow and Kona Cherry pens that were out, I think, maybe last year? Were those pens?

'''Brad:''' Two years. I've had my Kona Cherry for probably, it seems like two years, but I could be wrong.

'''Myke:''' So as a note, Canalea's tables at the DC show will be located downstairs this year due to construction at the hotel. DC show promoters will have signs directing attendees to all the vendors in this location. You can find out more about Canalea's whole offering and keep up with all of their latest announcements at canaleapenco.com. Our thanks to the Canalea Pen Co for the support of this show.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, so DC Pen Show, again, if you're going, just make sure that you are aware that a lot of vendors may be in some different locations this year and that, you know, there's the main floor of the ballroom and then there's going to be a location with a lot of other great vendors in there as well. So I'll be sure to mention that again the week before the pen show, which I guess is... It's a treasure hunt this time, you know? Yeah, it's a treasure hunt and you're going to find some awesome stuff. So I just hope the signage is good and the awareness is large at the show to make sure that all vendors are, you know, accessible to all of the attendees. So yeah, we definitely want to make that a focus here on the podcast for all of you going to the DC show. Also, the DC show, they want you to buy your tickets online just because the construction is really preventing the queuing that we have been witness to get into the show. I don't think they're going to have room for that. So they're really advising you, if you're attending the show, for, you know, one day or three days to buy your tickets online to help prevent some of the blocking issues that the construction is going to cause this year at the show. So we'll revisit this next week just as a reminder to everyone. So you want to be sure to go see all of our favorite vendors like Canalea Penco, wherever they're at, at the DC show.

'''Brad:''' All right, Myke, we're going to do something today that I'll be quite honest, I don't normally like to do. And that is promote the Pen Addict membership program. Like we talk about it here. We say, hey, you know, Brad has a membership program at penaddict.com. Not to be confused with the Relay FM membership, which we also have, which is also spectacular. But, you know, it's just, you know me well, and I think the listeners know me well. Like I just try to do things and I hope you find them and I hope you think they're cool and I hope you support the things that I make. Well, one of the things I do, probably the most important thing that I do is run a membership program. It's $5 a month at the Pen Addict. And what that gets you is extra Pen Addict content. So I'm always kind of tweaking the things that I do. The newsletter I create every week is really the core of it. That's the reason to subscribe. Yeah, I've been doing that for six and a half years. We've done, what, 333 issues of the newsletter on the weekend. I really enjoy putting that together. I put a lot of time and effort into that and everyone seems to enjoy it. That's kind of the core reason. And aside from supporting me directly to sign up for Pen Addict membership, I added a new bit of content. I'm always playing around with the things that I offer for members, you know, and how, you know, what's, you know, member content, what's like public content. And most of the public content on the Pen Addict blog is reviews. Like it's just straight up review content by myself, Jeff, Sarah, and Kimberly, the staff of writers at the Pen Addict. And then, you know, obviously giveaways and just fun links and things like that. So aside from the newsletter I create for members called Refill, I created a ranking system that I've been thinking about for years in an effort to talk specifically about what I think about pens, right? So it's called the Pen Addict rating. And this was kind of came out of pretty much questions I've gotten for the entirety of the blog. Can you rate a pen? You know, can you put a pen on a, you know, on a, like a grading scale to kind of discuss, you know, your thoughts about that? And we've talked about this on the podcast before that I've always been hesitant to do that in just a traditional review format, right? I've always felt it was very, very difficult to do that when basically I review products on penaddict.com from a, the lens of a recommendation. Who would I recommend this for? How would it work for some certain people? How it doesn't work for certain people. And I never felt comfortable saying, okay, this pen is a four star out of five or this pen is a B grade on an A through F scale. Like that's never made sense to me. I didn't think there was very much context. I didn't feel like those grades could be like transferable between review to review. How does, you know, a B from a gel ink pen relate to a B in a notebook and things like that. So I've never found value in having a rating system for my product reviews or for anyone's product reviews at penaddict.com. But I do have personal ratings and rankings. And that bears out in the way I choose to use a pen on a particular day and why I would choose one pen over another one. And I'm using pens just as the general catch-all. I would, you know, I talk about pencils. I talk about papers. I've given a grade to a fountain pen converter, Myke. So we talk about lots of stationary products.