Tag: podcast

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A Guy With A Typewriter Walks Into A Bar

So this week I had the honor to be a guest on the Pen Addict Podcast. Normally the PA podcast is recorded live with Brad and Myke, but when someone is going to be out on vacation, there are occasionally pre-recorded episodes, and this week I was the lucky guest.

It was my first time being on the other side of the podcast so to speak, and I enjoyed that aspect. I have a much greater appreciation of what is involved ever since starting up the DWRDNET Stationery Feed, so I loved to see what the guest side of the podcast experience is like. The PenAddict is an audio only podcast, but we did record on Zoom, so in all reality, if felt like chatting with a friend more than a recording.

Brad asked about how I got into the hobby and more all the way up to how the podcast got started, and then we also talked about other stationery interests as a whole. I got to touch on my first ever trip to Vanness, as well as being fortunate to have some local stores like The Gentleman Stationer or Butler Stationery in town, which were not around when I first got into the hobby in 2013.

As the title of this post and the podcast reference, we did get into the latest adventure into typewriters. That is a part of the stationery world that has really clicked with me lately, and I liked to be able to talk through some of that. We talk about how I have started to take some of the typewriters out of a new local bookstore (The Raven Book Lounge), and use them for letters or journaling while sitting at the bar. We talked about my interview with Richard Polt of the Typewriter Revolution as well as gave the shout out of the week to Michelle Geffken of Paperblogging.com. Both of these podcast episodes were linked in the show notes, and since both Richard and Michelle are also fountain pen users, it really shows how we all approach the hobby from different paths, but there are many common things that are there if you take some time to inquire about them.

We touched on my journey into pen making as well, and I was able to give some proper shoutouts and credit to people like Nic of Pens By Pasquale, who really helped me get started down that aspect of the stationery hobby.

So let me know what you think of the episode in the comments, and if there is anything that we talked about that you would like to see a post about or more information, please leave that below as well.

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Talking Through The Origins of the DWRDNET Stationery Feed

When I decided to make quick videos of swatching the 2024 inkvent calendars, I thought it would be a quick little project that I would put on Youtube, and that would be it. I had no idea that I would really enjoy the filming and video process, so as I continued to make videos, it was starting to become natural. While I love doing videos about new pens or papers, I felt like there had to be something else to do with the Youtube channel. I did a few live streams on Youtube, and I really like the interaction of people asking questions, so I started to wonder how I could continue to get that the interaction with other people, so that is when the idea came to light.

The stationery hobby is odd in that many aspects of it can have no social interaction, but when pen people get together, they always seems to want to share or show off their new pens or papers, so that interaction is normally limited to pen clubs or pen shows. I am lucky to have a couple of stores, and a very active pen club in the Nashville area, but I wanted to be able to talk to other people and bring attention to pet makers, stationery stores, or people tied in with the hobby who a larger audience might not have heard of or be familiar with.

As I was starting to get ready to go to the Arkansas Pen Show, I had already started the research to see how I could make interviews work. I knew that I would have an opportunity at the show to talk to people about interviews once I was ready to get them going. I was able to do a livestream tour of Vanness with Lisa Vanness, and that was in a way a rough test of what would evolve into the DWRDNET Stationery Feed that is now coming up on Episode 8.

I have been lucky to have existing connections with quite a few people to help me get started, but I have also had to take a leap to reach out to people who I have never met or spoken to, but I like their products or store and want to talk to them about it and help to give them a different audience to help spread the word about their business. This is not something that I ever considered I would be doing, but now it is starting to feel natural and I am enjoying the process of finding new people to talk to for future episodes.

I think it is important to support all of these small businesses as much as possible, since competing with someone like Amazon is a massive challenge. A small business is going to see the effect of every purchase in a way that someone like Amazon never would. Many of these businesses are running their store as a second job, so this is something that they are passionate about and by supporting them, everyone benefits.

So if you haven’t yet had a chance to watch any of the episodes, I would suggest checking them out. I have had people tell me that it has been great to put on in the background to listen to while working on other tasks. There are some episodes that are more visually driven, like the interview with Lisa of Olive Octopus Ink where watching is going to allow you to see all of the swatching techniques, but the audio only versions are also available if that is how you choose to consume media.

You can check out the video feed at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwFAC_8KRdr4AnR1IhPION7BN-fQvIF7E or if you can find the audio versions on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcast with hopefully more podcast providers to come in the future.

If you have suggestions of people that you would like me to try to interview, please leave those suggestions in the comments, as I have an initial list, but part of the fun of this is finding out about people I haven’t heard of and learning about them and their offerings as I am able to help share them with others.