First, I wanted to thank Ted Rall for pulling together a great show AND keeping everything running on time. As was said several times, this was the convention that shouldn’t have happened, but Ted somehow managed to put together a densely packed yet still highly entertaining outing. The speakers who came were notable for being simultaneously inspiring and enraging, both in what they had to say and in the reaction and subsequent conversations they generated among us.
Kudos too to David Horsey, who was a knowledgeable and exceedingly generous host -- the Friday night pub crawl in particular was epic, and set a new standard for trolling back alleys for funky bars. I also wanted to thank fellow Seattleite Sara Thaves for her generosity. I don’t think there was anyone there who didn’t fall in love with Seattle within a day of arriving, thanks to Dave and Sara.
Special credit goes to Drew Rougier-Chapman as well, who almost single-handedly ran this year’s Cartoonists’ Rights Network fundraiser Friday evening, after Bro Russell was unable to make the convention due to illness.
Every convention it seems has one delightful surprise, and this year it was a group of Arab cartoonists the State Dept. dropped on us at the last minute. The 6 guys from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait (and their two translators) threw themselves into the convention with great enthusiasm, even going with us on the pub crawl Friday.
Finally, the weather was perfect -- in fact, unnaturally so, we were told over and over again by the locals. If you missed it, well, you really missed something this year.
As Ted just noted, there will be more reports coming your way soon, enumerating not only the fun we had in Seattle, but a number of important changes and developments regarding the future of this Association, all of which were discussed in great depth by the attending membership. This really was a detailed and working convention, as evidenced by the record setting 4-hour business/future of the AAEC meeting Saturday morning that resulted in quite a few proposals which we voted to put into motion -- or put down for good.
In addition to what Ted mentioned, I want to point out several developments, including a new committee that has been tasked with looking into what we can do (and afford to do) to update the AAEC site to bring it more in line with Web 2.0 thinking; and an invitation from Lucy Caswell to explore the possibility of having the 2013 convention at Ohio State in conjunction with the Festival of Cartoon Art and the grand opening of the new cartoon museum there.
So, suddenly we went from almost having no convention this year to having firm leads for the next five. If that isn’t a good sign, I don’t know what is. —JP Trostle
Pix online from the Seattle Convention:
http://picasaweb.google.com/parkertoons/AAECSeattle2009#
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41520526@N04/
http://blog.cagle.com/wolverton/2009/07/03/
aaec-convention-in-seattle-selected-photos/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/japenet/
More Links
Catch a few minutes of Mike Peters on stage at Cartoonapalloza at Town Hall on July 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzjHTNfz0hk
Daryl Cagle posted a half-dozen vlog entries online while in Seattle. Catch the live interviews here:
Cartoonists talk shop:
http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/07/03/video-cartoonists-talk-shop-at-aaec-convention/
http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/07/03/video-cartoonists-on-using-twitter-facebook/
Steve Kelley
http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/07/04/video-interview-with-new-orleans-cartoonist-steve-kelley/
Mikhaela Reid and Jen Sorenson
http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/07/07/video-interview-with-mikhaela-reid-and-jen-sorenson/
Tim Eagan
http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/07/04/video-interview-with-tim-eagan-of-deep-cover/
Cam Cardow
http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/07/04/video-interview-with-canadian-cartoonist-cam-cardow/
