This year’s Small Press Expo was an incredible show! I’ve been going to Small Press for four years now, and this is the third year I’ve been an exhibitor. I was still riding high off the great success of Baltimore Comic-Con which took place only a month before. I met up with a lot of folks this year, and have pictures of a bunch of them below. Here’s a quick rundown of how the con went down:

Friday, October 12

• 1:00 pm - Tim and I arrived at the Marriott Bethesda North and started setting up next to Mike and Blair Kitchen and just around the corner from Jason Horn and Dean Trippe. Ran into Mike O’Brien in the registration line. Drop off non-convention stuff in the hotel room.
• 2:00 pm - Show opens, and it’s slooooooooow! Go and say hi to the other artists located around the area: Matt Dembicki, Scott White, Evan Keeling, Monica and Bram Meehan, and Jason Rodriguez. Then hooked around to say hi to Patrick Lewis and Dale Rawlings. Rebecca Simms stopped by, too (sorry about not recognizing you at first ).
• 3:00 pm - Go out and buy a bunch of books from Carla Speed McNeil, Raina Telgemeier, Jason Rodriguez, and Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey.
• 3:00 pm - 8:00 pm - Sell a whole lot of nothing :(. Seriously, Friday was very very slow. Go and say hi to Jane Irwin and Paul Sizer. Show off Inkscape to a whole bunch of people
• 9:00 pm - 11:30 pm - Head out to dinner with Dean, Dean’s wife, Jason, Raina, Marion Vitus, Dave Roman, and a bunch of other folks who I didn’t get a chance to talk with too much. Eat some very tasty Italian food.

Saturday, October 13

• 8:00 am - Go to a great bagel place to pick up breakfast and coffee.
• 10:00 am - Convention floor opens. Unlike Friday, I stay behind my table most of the day. Eat a lot of Trader Joe’s dried cranberries.
• 11:30 am - OK, I get up from my table once to take a whole ton of photos. The crowd starts to pick up a little bit. I get a chance to talk more with former tablemate Mark McMurray.
• 12:30 pm - Matt Wood stops by, and I very nicely asked him to get me a spinach pie from the bakery that he’s heading to for lunch, and so he did!.
• 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm - A little slow, but otherwise good. Get a little drawing done.
• 4:00 pm - 6:45 pm - It gets crazy. Lots of people stopping by, some from some very far-off locations, because they remember me from other conventions. How cool is that? Sell a lot of books and shake a lot of hands.
• 6:45 pm - 7:00 pm - Trade some of my books with whomever I can find, including Matt Rhodes. He wasn’t hard to find, as his purple suit stands out well in a crowd. I get a free book from Oni Press for giving them an empty box.
• 8:00 pm - 10:45pm - Meet up with Matt Wood & company and hit up Chili’s for dinner. Drink a good bit of beer. Find out that the Bottomless Chips truly are bottomless.
• 11:00 pm - midnight - Hit the after-party. Meet a whole ton of people and enjoy some of the now-depleted chocolate fountain. Marion and I draw pictures of Tim with her brush pens, and Tim and I talk Inkscape with a few artists.

Sunday, October 14

• 8:30 am - Hit the bagel place again. Run into Rafer Roberts. Eat a delicious egg-and-cheese bagel.
• 10:45 am - Hit the road and head back to Baltimore.

And now, the photos:

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 5:09 pm and is filed under A Moment of Clarity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.