2012 Neko Finale

As I mentioned recently to people, I'm looking forward to taking time away from Neko Nation, while earlier in the year this would never have crossed my mind at all, I've had no choice recently as mentally I no longer feel I can devote enough love, time and dedication to the show as I normally have been.

I'm far from being over Neko Nation, it's a huge part of me and for a lot of people, it's pretty much what everyone associates me with.  While the job is rewarding not necessarily financially (I do have another job), it is personally mostly in how much people tell me they enjoy the event and the satisfaction knowing that I've pulled off an amazing event.  However this is also counterbalanced by the stress and time involved, a few interesting stats, each hour of the event has around a week's worth of work behind it, there's something like 30-50 people I need to deal with per event and then there's the matter of the huge and complex master spreadsheets and walk-throughs.  Despite all that, it's usually worth it.

At the moment, I feel that it's not and it's actually in no part due to my work in Neko Nation, it has been a stressful year on my end, having been caught up in a myriad of work and involvements with Tokyo Hardcore and uni.  There have been many personal problems involving others that have created problems but aren't worth talking about since the best way to deal with them is to move on and not resurrect any drama (which isn't really that exciting or interesting anyways).  I will say the timing of these problems have popped up in times when I truly needed a break.

I've looked back onto my year with Neko Nation and while it hasn't gone perfectly (the recent loss of NYE sticking out), I can be quite proud with what I've achieved this year.  I managed to pull off what was a pretty successful Australian tour and met so many wonderful people along the way, there was the incredible show with AVCon which was something I never pictured was happening anytime soon (in any convention) and our mega show in Perth where we not only proved we could stand up to a Wai-Con event on the same night but also smash attendance records.

So how did I celebrate all this?  The tour, I got involved in some of the worst personal drama I've ever had, AVCon I started uni and had lots of catching up to do and Perth I had two events on the next weekend, followed up by lots of assignments, hitting that final assignment, my body absolutely crashed physically and mentally.  While it could be just bad luck of catching something going around, regardless I'm seeing it more as huge sign of overworking.

While I can't drop my current commitments I can stop taking new ones from Neko Nation Sydney till the end of the year.  I have struggled to unwind and de-stress, so while I may be going a bit overboard with watching anime and gaming, I'm more or less making up for lost time here, heck my girlfriend bought me a PS3 at the start of the year I barely touched.

It's also a good time to actually reflect on what I've achieved so far this year and be proud of what I've done so far.  I've had a habit even after some amazing achievements to start writing notes on how things could have been done a lot better.  For once, I'm actually just going to focus on the positives and soak in some motivation and achievements and remember that if I can't make myself happy I sure as hell can't make others happy.  I've got some pretty exciting plans on the table for 2013 and this time off has allowed me some pretty awesome ideas to come to me, there's some pretty awesome new things I'm trying to involve into the show.

Don't expect to see me out too much over the next month or two, the irony of me working in a job like this is that I'm incredibly introverted and not a huge fan of places with lots of people!  I will be open to talking to people online and very small catch ups but I'm a lot happier being home since I've spent too much of my year being on my feet and dragged everywhere that I'll rarely be out much.

At the moment slowly starting to enjoy my semi-holiday off work, it's not all over yet, I've got involvement with Neko Domination, Chinatown Harajuku, Necromancy, an exam and Neko Sydney, although honestly with that on my plate that makes it the quietest period for me coming up!

For now, I'll see a lot of you later, for those playing LoL hopefully I'll see you on the battlefield soon!

Rise and Fall

I can finally say that I'm finally getting a month which actually isn't looking too crazy for month.  University is over and my god that's one nightmare I can finally put behind me.  Curtin University has proven to be a disaster, with lectures being missing, assignments that were incredibly inconsistent, assignments could be 4 weeks to complete 1,500 words and another one could be one week to write 4,000, final tests were incredibly pointless and easy (I don't see how a multiple choice test that's open book and internet is a test) and marks for completing marketing surveys.  I went to UniSA and unlike University of Adelaide or Curtin the details I needed to enrol took literally 2 minutes to find out, it took weeks or months with the other two.

Neko Nation has finally been put behind me for now, it's been an amazing last month, finally breaking the attendance record in Perth was absolutely a mind blowing achievement I'll never forget.  It was the one show where we feared the worst, having been forced up against the Wai-Con ball and with Perth attendances having been quite stable over the last year, it was insane to see so many people having so much fun, expanding to two rooms and getting gaming and an incredible lighting and staging setup was great.

The downside is that the momentum has been trickling down to a halt, I only got the news about new years eve being cancelled early this month, even though this event was pretty much in production and had the go ahead from March this year, sadly it wasn't meant to be.  It's been frustrating as managing Neko Nation has been proven harder and harder thanks to uni commitments and my personal life.  So while there isn't much on the horizon, I'm glad things are slowing down a bit.

This month has proved to be a quiet one, unfortunately this has been in part to sickness but with that out of the way, I would have been taking it quite easy since I'm needed to catch up on actually chilling out and taking it easy, something which I've barely had any time over the past months due to all the drama and craziness.  At the moment, been investing a huge commitment of time into League of Legends, despite the ridiculousness of getting addicted to something that isn't exactly going to get me anywhere, the reality is the things that have gotten me somewhere have made me incredibly sick and it's the closest thing I somewhat have to a holiday at the moment.

Future Potential

After an attrocious experience with one unit in Curtin and a bit of research about the marketing industry, I'm having to re-evaluate all my career prospects for 2014 and have to make some serious changes in 2013.

First of all, after everything that has happened at Curtin, I'll be highly likely to switch universities, it's not a case of one problem, the unit appears to be making things up as I go along and not even giving a proper education.  Little things like giving the wrong unit outlines, wrong due dates or not knowing the due dates, unreasonable demands such as 4,000 word assignments in a week and marketing surveys for marks.  Without a doubt, I've had enough, this is not acceptable for a university.  It's likely I'll be moving to studying internally at Uni SA next semester.

I'm tossing up which route I'm looking to go down, I'm starting to realise that most of my passion is truly in event management, with 4 major projects currently in the works, it's one area I'm dangerously addicted too, despite the fact I should be calming down, organising and bringing people together is what I love best, so I'm leaning towards seeing if I can get a job professionally in this area once I graduate.  The person I originally helped with putting events on for almost a decade ago has ended up in this position and I'd love to follow in these footsteps.  Even if I don't go down this route, I still intend to keep putting on events.  <3

I looked into ad agencies, too competitive, definitely not my style, very interested in looking at working on the client side with some of the bigger corporate firms which I feel would heavily suit my style.  Going to a local uni I feel would probably enhance my contacts better for this as I've felt like I've received freedom in terms of classes, I haven't even received classes in some cases and with the lack of organisation it's likely that I can probably plan my time better around a university that proves to be more reliable.

While I'm unsure what the future hold, I've got plans to look into bigger and better things event wise for 2013, after going through a point where I thought AVCon was going to be my high point and nothing would beat it, I'm glad I've finally found some motivation to do things bigger and better than ever next year, far beyond the scope of what I could have ever achieved with Neko and also with other events I wish to work with.  Events are busy but I'm just too torn with my love for it that I want to create more and go bigger and better with my work in the future.  <3

Vs. Uni

I knew it was going to be a challenge heading back to uni but when you spend more time struggling against understanding the unit outlines and assignments rather than the actual content and courses, then there's a serious problem.  I've had the move, I've had Neko Nation AVCon and a month with no Neko Nation events and now it appears I've got the most busiest month of them all coming up.

University studies have proven to be so ridiculously inconsistant, with marks awarded for absolutely ludicrious reasons such as completing marketing surveys while some marks incredibly nigh-on impossible to get such as 4,000 word "tests" to be completed in a week filled with academic references.  I've studied at university before, I have had no problems with 5,000+ word essays and 20 minute presentations provided that you can plan your time and schedules which this course is far from giving us an option on doing.

As an end result, I've gotten sick, stress and tired, Neko Nation is likely to suffer with events being delayed which is a huge shame since even though a lot of work goes into these events, pulling off these events makes me incredibly happy.  If anything I look back on most of this year and I'm amazed at how much I've managed to achieve with the shows and involvement with Chinatown Harajuku no Yoko.  I'm looking forward to getting this uni work done since I've got a few new exciting challenges coming up which hopefully I can launch by the end of the month.

It's one month that has been hell but I'm hoping it will come to an end soon, the challenge of uni has proven to be a nasty one that I'm hoping to finally wrap up this weekend!

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