Secret Identities @ ECAASU'09

Hey guys, Jerry here. This is my first post on this blog. And I'm really happy that it's going to be about my first ECAASU.

This past weekend, myself and the editor crew got a very rare opportunity to just hang out together. Seriously, in the past 2-3 years we've been talking this is like....our 3rd time all meeting together at once. So that alone made it pretty cool.

But let me start from the beginning. About a week before ECAASU when we knew we were going and were going to try to sell a book...that we didn't have. We knew we had to offer everyone something. So we made a bookplate with an original drawing that I had done for it, that we could all sign on. The idea being that when people that preorder a book receive their copy, they could stick the bookplate(which is essentially a large sticker) on the inside cover and voila, they'd have a signed copy. The above image is what the bookplate actually looked like. So on each bookplate each editor signed it and I would do a quick doodle on the corner.

Anyway, while we were there we ran a workshop which consisted of about 50 or so students. We then broke the group up into 5 smaller groups. And each group then had about 20 minutes to collaborate with each other on creating an Asian American superhero. I was really pyshced at how serious the kids took this exercise. There was basically no goofing off.

While the students were coming up with ideas, we the editors walked around the class to give some tips here and there on what we would do. After the exercise was done, we held a vote to see which character was the best. And while Jeff, Parry and Keith were holding a Q&A, I was sketching out the winning character which we then raffled off to a lucky winner. And I believe Donna was her name. You know...I didn't even have the sense to take a picture of the sketch. So you'll have to trust me that it came out OK and that Donna actually liked it. haha

After the workshop, we then headed over to a theatre to give our keynote speech. This was truly more than I ever expected. We were speaking to a group that had to be around 1000 deep.

I've attached a few imgs that will definitely explain better than I can write on how cool the event actually was.

-jerry
www.epicprops.com