Neko Nation AVCon and beyond

It's finally been done, Neko Nation AVCon has come and gone and my god was it a huge epic massive show.  For those who went, massive thanks, there were a lot of you, from what I heard, we got 700 people there, so it was an absolutely amazing turnout!  This included interstate guests such as awesome J-Core producer, Noc.V, awesome Sydney, go-go dancers, Rachel and Mellie, plus plenty of awesome people who showed up, was absolutely amazing to see a whole bunch of new face as well as our regulars too.

On my end it was quite an interesting show, doing something at the convention was quite mindblowing due to the sheer size and opening up to the AVCon crowd.  We had a huge challenge setting up, believe it or not one of our biggest challenges was to just to find tables to put all the DJ gear on since we had so much and trying to get a table through the crowd was a nightmare but we sorted it all out and after that it all ran quite well.  It was probably one of the most tiring events ever, I was starting to fall asleep by 10pm, in comparison, our Melbourne show doesn't open doors till 10pm!

Neko Nation wasn't the only thing that happened and this year was my first year I got to fully check out AVCon and look bias of working for AVCon aside, it's by far the best con in Australia, it's slickly run, there's an overload of entertainment visually, stalls, cosplay, interactivity, gaming, panels, AVCon is a complex show and it's the only con I find myself kicking myself I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do, so mega kudos to AVCon.  I know the team work so hard and it's quite a fair bit ahead of all the other cons in Australia in terms of all the fun I had, although I'm hoping to check out SMASH since I heard it is up there in terms of the only major anime convention I'm yet to run.

I'm in a bizarre state of my life right now, I'm more or less coming down from an awesome convention, awesome friends leaving and getting back into all my uni stuff.  It's likely Neko Nation will be taking a bit of a back seat in my life for the rest of the year, things will pale in comparison to AVCon, since I think my biggest motivation is in terms of what I have achieved with Neko Nation and it's going to be hard to top AVCon but I feel like I could bring on some pretty exciting new shows and concepts, Perth has Maid Latte and Byte Nyte involved, Adelaide has Mischief the Cat playing and should be even more epic than ever this time around.

My new focus will be on uni, after weeks of dramu and being thrown into the deep end with my course, it's been tricky to stay above the surface after having moved house and thrown two Neko Nations this week.  To get through the end of this month, with the success that has happened is quite something, with that said, some pretty nasty shit has happened along the way and sacrifices have been made but nonetheless, I've survived it.

I'm looking forward to seeing what I can achieve with marketing and advertising, I absolutely hate how I must prove my skills, since I believe that success in the working world comes from applying experience and practical examples rather than trying to quote academic journals but I'm happy to take on the challenge and see how things go.  If all goes well, then I'm hoping to get two brand new non-Neko Nation events announced and worked on for later in the year!  ^^

Downhill in July

Heading into July I should usually be quite excited and over the moon, I've got two absolutely epic shows, one being the unofficial after party for SMASH, the other being Neko Nation AVCon.  It's been insanely hard to get motivation due to external factors in my life.

I've been slowly growing my paranoia about my work and feeling stress financially, a combination of less hours, bills and a centrelink application that is taking it's time.  This coupled with the fact that my uni application was sent two weeks ago and I'm still waiting for an official reply.  Keep in mind that this is to re-enrol and I've qualified on the basis of being a past student.

On the plus side, I've had some fun DJing at both Proscenium and Necromancy over the past month.  My experience with Proscenium was a nice practice and laidback in smaller environment.  Necromancy was a blast but sadly I was feeling very ill and my brain was clustering up a lot and while I've DJed on the back of feeling quite tired, it was obvious something was feeling right.  Besides that, it was definitely fun and I was quite amused that me and Scarlett had very similar DJing tastes as well, despite us only really finding out about our preferred music on the night definitely did make for some fun.  Definitely keen to give it another shot in the future, since I had a bit of a blast with going back to my industrial roots even if I was a bit rusty.

I've had a few new recent projects that I'm working on in the background, Nekobook is a bit of an interesting new one which I can't really say more about but basically it's basically about finally being able to give back.  I'm looking to get involved in setting up a new industrial event in Adelaide, I did a post to my blogger last night about this and I'm just immensely impressed at how behind this event everyone is.

Been trying to battle a bitch of a fever, just hoping I can muster up some motivation to actually get a few good events up this month, it has been tricky with how sick I've been feeling plus the Sydney event is a tricky one, since ticket sales are always going to be slow for an after party con, (people would rather wait till the after the con to head down).  Really just want to get back to university or find another job to really get myself back on track.  With that said uni is a bit frustrating that I can't really size myself against others but I know that when it comes to marketing but if I can get HD's it will all work out.

It's frustrating, I've got the ultimate catgirl and events working perfectly but it's all counterbalanced by work and study issues, if I can seriously get this all sorted my life will finally be perfect, if I was in Perth the latter problems would be fixed but realistically the problems would just be reversed.  Really hoping for finances to be fixed soon due to the ridiculous amounts of stress it's causing and the massive plans I have for 2013 as well too....

Adelaide Cyber Event 2012

There was a Facebook post today posted up about how there needs to be an pure industrial event in Adelaide.  While most people including myself were quick to argue that this wasn't a viable idea it didn't take long for the Adelaide Industrial Fans group to spring up and already attract 100 members, quite a decent amount all active and ready to go ahead and pretty much create an event.  This is one of the things I love about Adelaide, it's seems across the scenes you get such a great variety of people who are really supportive at trying to make things happen that doesn't really happen in other cities to this extent (Brisbane comes close), I seriously love the fact that Adelaide truly is a city which is focused more on the idea of an event itself.

Anyways, I decided to write this post as a bit of my view in regards to how I'd like to see this event go about and a few pieces of food for thought in regards to how to see this event go quite a successful way.

The biggest problem has been the popularity of the industrial genre, we've seen big booms over the past few years thanks to the rise and proliferation of the likes of Combichrist and Angelspit and continued it's boom with aggrotech thanks to the likes of Nachtmahr, Eisenfunk, X-RX, Psyclon Nine and Aesthetic Perfection are a few that stuck out but all booms must bust and this is one that has been going a bit downhill and one alone that can't be completely relied on for an event.

The event needs to go forward and adapt and evolve and I think another genre that has gone down a similar route has been Drum and Bass, this genre has boomed through the last decade thanks to the help of the likes of Pendulum in particular, especially for someone who grew up in the Perth rave scene!  This has been a genre that has declined due to the boom of dubstep, which while has stolen interest from many other genres, Drum n Bass has seen quite a decline and had to adapt by merging with dubstep events to get out there.  Pendulum even moved onto their new Knife Party project to ensure their survival.

I shouldn't say that this means the end of industrial or the need to sell out but it's simply a case of evolution, remember that at one point that goth scene evolved by choosing to take on industrial, a style of music that even today still has a few purists debating whether or not is should have a place in goth clubs.  So for industrial events here in Australia to move on and progress it needs to take on new genres to really give it more of an appeal, variety and interest.

Let's not forget that industrial isn't a unique genre on it's own, X-RX are heavily influenced by hardstyle, Angels on Acid are heavily influenced by psytrance, Eisenfunk's Pong was heavily influenced by chiptunes and so on and so forth.  We've also seen the likes of Cyberia in Melbourne embrace the growing popularity of electro and dubstep into their event which has seen amazing results for them.  So without a doubt branching on the growing popularity of EDM music would be a must for this event.  With that said, even Adelaide's EDM and rave scene is small and definitely not going to be the saviour to make this event truly work.

I think the key has to be in Adelaide's unique community aspect, I think I'd like to see an interesting variety of guest DJ's in, whether it's from the geek or rave scenes, just to try to slowly get some new crowds interested into the event.  I'd like to even consider getting those new to DJing into it regularly who are passionate about music, the industrial and goth scenes aren't exactly too fussed about top notch beat and key matching so spicing it up with some interesting new music and variety would also be a fun thing for these new people to brag about to bring more people down.  At the same time if possible getting a live act every now and then to make sure that the professionalism is there will highly help too.  Plus all this will ensure a great amount of variety too which I believe is one of the reasons why there has been so much interest in here too.

I would like to see it done irregularly and if possible to be insanely different everytime, I feel complacency would be the biggest threat to any sort of niche breakaway event, especially with the amount of excitement to pull of the industrial only event, constantly mixing things up a bit is important to ensure that it's not stale and that there is a curiousity factor for every event.  Whether it's through new DJ's and more importantly the variety of styles of music from the DJ's, the use of theming in particular the decoration, drinks and design of the venue and the event rather than relying on the attendees to dress up and involving some interesting and unique sponsors for prize giveaways as well.

I personally sense a strong challenge here, let's face it, it's the third goth event in a city where even two goth events feels a bit overcrowded in a subculture where the numbers are dying but there is a strong passionate team behind it who have seen a lot and have some interesting ideas, experience and strengths.  I don't know if it can be a regular thing or if it can be a big event but I think it will end up being a fun one if it goes ahead.

Adelaide cybergoths, it's time to shine soon, or is that glow?  XP