Meet your host
Eric Van Osten majored in journalism, public relations, and advertising at Temple University in Philadelphia and currently works at Lyons Media, where he’s editor-in-chief of the niche microchip publication, RFID Product News, and associate editor of the trade publication, Package Design Magazine. He also volunteers as the web content editor for the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, plays in a new wave band called Umlaut, and just launched the Ed2010 Philadelphia city chapter. Phew! Somehow, he found the time to chat with Ed:
How did you and Ed meet?
Somewhere along the way I acquired an Ed2010 pencil. I used it all the time, and, finally, I decided to check out the site!
You recently threw your first city chapter event. How did it go?
We had a happy hour in the beginning of February. More than 20 Edsters, including people from Rodale, Target Marketing, and Arcadia University. I was happy with the turnout, especially since the happy hour took place on the same night as the season premiere of Lost.
How did you get the happy hour-goers chatting?
We created a just-for-fun survey to get people talking about their jobs and their grammar preferences, like whether or not to use a comma before “and” in a series, and whether or not to keep question marks and exclamation points inside quotation marks. What we learned: Editorial pet peeves in the City of Brotherly Love include semi-colon misuse, two spaces after a period, and too many exclamation points (!!!).
CHECK ‘EM OUT: myspace.com/ed2010philadelphia, or contact Eric at Philadelphia@ed2010.com.
