Originally Posted by
penwash
Jon, you pinpoint exactly where the disconnect is. I agree that reddit is populated by beginner users using beginner pens, but which other *crowd* of young generation is more likely to become pen collectors in the future? At least the ones in the reddit crowd are reachable. Does PCA want to reach them?
This should be a key platform for those who are being elected as the next PCA President. I think
I'll be honest: that depends.
Look, I've hung out on reddit for almost two years now. I have some pretty strong opinions about how that all flows, and where I happen to think that
audience is. But all that aside, there is one aspect to it that ties in: they pretty much have about
jack interest in vintage, and at the moment what PCA has to offer won't be of interest. I'm not certain that needs to be corrected.
Why? Hey, no one reached out to me with some kind of hand-holding and comfy seat cushion. When I got interested in pens,
I sought out the information, and I developed an interest in both new AND old pens, and I went looking for more resources. I realized PCA had something to offer me, and I went for it.
People who whine about paying more than a Jinhao price for a pen are not going to be easily persuaded to pay money to join and
only get a thrice-yearly mag and access to some digital files. As far as outreach for anyone getting into fountain pens with what is newly manufactured, that stuff is covered by the blogs and the sellers like Goulet, Anderson, etc.
Don't get me wrong: I've been banging my head against the desk to figure out ways to make this all work, and I don't think all of the impetus needs to be coming from one side. I think it is a little incumbent on the newcomers
themselves to try to understand a bit about what pen collecting is about, what it takes to gather vintage, etc. In a way, they need to reach out to the collectors just as the collectors need to reach out to the new users.
I'm open for suggestions, though I don't have any input save for friends. I've talked a bit at length with people like Brad Dowdy and Matt Armstrong about this, as well as a number of the people who put on pen shows. I think it is a movement and a topic worth discussing, having an open dialog, and making progress - if I didn't think so, I probably wouldn't hang in reddit. But it is going to take some care, because while the common denominator is the fountain pen, there are an
awful lot of differences between the two audiences.
Bookmarks