Adventure Time

It's been an interesting past few months.  After kick starting off the Neko Nation tour in Adelaide things have not slowed down a single bit in my life. With shows all around Australia including Brisbane last weekend and only Perth to go.  There's been no weekends off with Chinatown Harajuku no Yoko kicking getting launched last month and working at Kodomo no Hi Festival.

These last 2 months have taught me a lot and that I'm basically pushing my limits incredibly hard to the edge, I'm a workaholic and have no problems admitting that as my social life is an absolute wreck at the moment on having no time to see people and those times that I do I'm either too sick or working at social occasions.

This tour has been a blast and I've learnt a lot from it, it far from feels like repeating the same show 5 times over, each show is quite different, there's so many different people on board, different venues and different crowds, it's absolutely crazy, fun and amazing to travel around and do this.  While I'm glad I have the chance to do this, I'm proving that I'm not doing well to cope with all this.  Not only does the show involve a lot of work but that's on top of the store, my day job plus my new projects.

I'm now seriously looking at my future plans for the year and looking at dropping out of Tokyo Hardcore soon.  There's so much stress coming from here that it makes sense to start dropping my commitment out of here soon, especially with the number of hours going into it and myself not getting really much out of it in terms of personal satisfaction.

As such I'm looking to really need to make a move onto continuing my studies since my transfer didn't work out originally I'd like to give it another shot since I would like to start to get a proper career going.  Neko Nation and Tokyo Hardcore doesn't exactly pay the bills and the job that does isn't likely to last much longer, unless you all decide to throw away your Internet banking and embrace cheques again!

I'm leaning towards finishing off my commerce degree although looking at switching from accounting to marketing.  I think lots of people laughed and joked that I couldn't be an accountant and the path I'm going down is proving less and less likely to suit an accounting role.  In general, marketing has been the one subject I seem to be very highly obsessed with, I seem to be analysing so many marketing campaigns just for the fun of it, that I probably should actually consider doing this for a living.  I only studied marketing once and I got over 90% in my final exam and pretty much virtually dominated the class in terms of work and participation on all the optional work as well.  I'm pretty keen to go back to university and prove myself since while I don't miss assignments and exams I wouldn't mind giving it another crack.

I have intentions to finish off this year quite hugely and with a bang although for now, it's time to figure out how to get through this hectic month and let things quieten down soon as I work my way to recovery.

Neko Nation Brisbane - May 2012

Flying to Brisbane is always a fun experience, I was very excited for the Brisbane show, Brisbane produced our most successful city launch and this time we had a few more tricks up our sleeve with the likes of S3RL, Triex, more catgirls, sushi, lighting and sound, so it was going to be a very exciting show to put on.

The event turned out to be an absolutely amazing night.  It was a huge achievement to do things a lot bigger and better.  I've heard good feedback about the event which is good since I was a bit nervous it wasn't the case as this was probably the most stressful show on the tour due to constantly being needed all over the place, so I didn't really get to enjoy the event as much as I would have liked compared to other shows, however it does happen from time to time.

I stayed at a famous geek/party house in Brisbane and got to spend some time in the city checking out MOS Burger which served some nice burgers with amazing Japanese style service.  Benjamin did an epic job as a host for our time in Brisbane and I had an absolute blast.  Sadly it got cut short when I fell pretty ill the next day, the one downside about this touring is the glamour, travel, fun and adventure is also plagued with lots of hard work, stress and emotions, which has really caught up to me again, so I'm going to have to take it easy despite a crazy schedule ahead.

I had a blast in Brisbane, S3RL, Triex and Lacehunter in particular pulled off some incredible sets (while I struggled to pull off a set as well as I'd like too.  The massive conga lines and the absolutely epic dancing and crazy crowd that makes the Brisbane show so unique and impressive.  Now to get better and get ready for the next show in Perth!

March-April 2012 Updates

It's been a very interesting past month, I'm not heavily into the swing of things in terms of event promoting with lot been happening over the last month and the next month.

I guess the big things have been all happening in Adelaide here where I'm starting to really feel like a well known part of the anime/cosplay scene now with my work.  Neko Nation came and went last month and my god that was such an amazing night.  From my end, pulling off the December show to me was about bring true justice to pull off the concept in a huge new exciting way that was a bit more than a party that would be seen as a significant event, I felt like that I almost pulled this off in December but walked away thinking that there were just a fair few touches that needed to be done and I think the event in March was probably one of the first events I've walked away with very little I wanted to change, we hit 300 (which I now need to get a Boku tattoo for according to Susannah) and everyone told me they had a fantastic time, it was a great way to kick off the tour!

It was very odd at the end of it since usually the big push and drive comes from making everything better although on the plus side it did make me feel confident that I know that this is what I'm good at doing.  It continued in Sydney which was a really fun show, it was a new city, a tricky new place but the show went good and it was lots of fun.  Sydney had a very unique atmosphere due to the venue which we could never get at another show, it was also great to have fly over guests from Adelaide with Shyen, Jadeabella and Lemphek to have some nice familiar faces around.  It was a good show for them to come too since from our point of view we had a lot of fun putting on what was a much more raw and underground event than usual that really took me back to some of the events I attended when I was younger!

Sydney was seriously a massive weight off our backs, it took us a long time to come here since just getting the support and interest has always been tricky but Rachel and Herbie really helped support us this year and also James did last year too, the wait was worth it.  I also really enjoyed taking time off in Sydney, it's a really lovely place, nice huge city to explore, lots to do in terms of exploring and wandering around.

I had an interesting opportunity to do something quite different with Chinatown to help put on and promote the Chinatown Harajuku no Yoko, while I admit it was a bit tricky at first to get it organised due to delays with our busy schedules we finally all got the ball rolling, with Chinatown and the Adelaide City Council doing a massively epic job to promote the event on newspapers, radio and local and national TV!  I was really happy with the night since it's a bit tricky doing something a bit different and new but it was really nice to help out and do something great with the community which I hope to work more with these people and the general anime, cosplay and lolita community.  It's also just great to see Adelaide getting behind really great initiatives like this.  I often hear many judge Adelaide as boring with very little to do but the reality is when there is something to do, Adelaide does support it and I'm really glad to be in such an amazing and supportive city as Adelaide.

This weekend was Neko Domination and by far my trickiest challenge since Melbourne is a city I've always had personal problems with, everything always goes against me and the cosplay scene refuses to go to Neko Nation no matter how hard we try to get them to come along.  It honestly feels like My Little Pony in the sense where the main audience isn't who we think it is but at the end of the day, if the goth/alt crowd want to support it, then why not!  They usually do in our other cities but are generally out numbered by the cosplayers and anime fans but in Melbourne it's the opposite.

Interestingly enough Melbourne worked out well for us, we got a much better turnout than we expected and the venue was quite happy.  I struggled to DJ up there due to playing for 200 minutes and going all over the place but somehow I did it in the end.  I also have to give a massive thanks to Noc.V for simply just pulling off possibly the best Neko Nation set we've heard all year.

Overall life has been interesting, life has been tiring and looking to try to get some time off soon but I feel like I'm starting to really get somewhere doing something I really enjoy and quite confident I'm good at.  ^^

Inspirations and Demotivations

Work, work and work, what else is new?

Anyways, this week has been a horrendous struggle, trying to manage Tokyo Hardcore is proving to be such a huge challenge, it's time consuming, emotional and I'm getting insanely run down for little reward.  Basically I've hit pretty much breaking point with the business, since I'm feeling too powerless and less motivated with the business.  My understanding of fashion and the lolita community is never going to be anywhere near that of Susannah's and while both me and Susannah are in this together, the reality is I'm more or less going to go by her expertise and as such I'm losing motivation as I'm honestly feeling more and more out of control.  As such to remove myself from all the dramu and stress I'm probably going to play a day or twos role in support at most now with accounts, graphics and business analysis in terms of the stuff I do best.

In exchange, I'm focusing and moving all my work towards Neko Nation.  I'm aiming to put on a show a month at least, heck in May and July it's likely I'll be doing two shows in both those months depending on how all my plans go, with that said, June I'm taking a break plus around May, I'm expecting ANZ to start cutting my hours back significantly.

I've got an insanely busy month up ahead since I'm starting on the next massive project, the Neko Nation store.  If you've been into Tokyo Hardcore or saw our table at Neko Nation Brisbane you would have a bit of an idea what this involves.  However, this should be quite exciting since we're expanding massively and getting in lots of awesome stuff which I'm very excited about.

I've got a fair few other projects I'm working on as well although these are my main ones.

I'm hoping to work more with the Japanese community and try to actually give back where I can, I'm pretty happy I'm now in a position where I've had people asking me to help out and now that I'm intending to step back more from Tokyo Hardcore I will have time for this, the next one I've got lined up is the really fun Harajuku night happening in Chinatown hopefully this month.  Should be one epic night, I thought it was awesome enough that Adelaide had two crepe places and has an epic amount of cosplayers, geeks and anime fans per capita.

The other one is a bit of an interesting one, basically looking to trying to help out with the industrial scene.  I had an absolute blast last time I went out to an industrial night this year.  I actually miss the industrial scene a lot and there's always lots of awesome people I can really relate too and just have fun stomping the night away.  It's also an interesting thing because I would like to get to the point where I'm helping out by DJing but I don't really have the intention to put on events.  I miss being involved with events and helping out in a way that doesn't involve me having to manage a night.  Far from the end of Neko Nation, personally I would love to get out and expand into other areas and enter back an old familiar scene with new faces in a new city.  With that said, I wouldn't completely rule out ever putting on an industrial event.

Also looking forward to the getting the Neko Nation shop out there, since eventually down the line I get to fill another one of my projects I've wanted to do for a while.  ^^

Things are frustrating right now, very but things will eventually be healing up soon.  The latter half of the month has lots of good stuff happening to make up for it though.  ^^

Promoters - The False gods

I had a event promoter tell me that putting on events made them feel like a god, you got to make your own special creation that people worship.  They get excited about your event, they encourage others to get excited about it and hell they're willing to pay to attend your event.  Basically you're paid to throw parties, you get paid for it, you get popular and people love you, what's not to love!

It all gets to peoples heads at times in some sort of crazy god like syndrome which I've honestly seen many get too many promoters get carried away with, even the more famous and experienced promoters get too caught up into it at times.

After a while you can get into a position where you throw successful events and you think that every event you throw will demand worship and attendance but the reality is if you can't provide people won't be interested.  The Big Day Out was a perfect example of this, to pull of 20 years of festivals is an epic achievement and the recent line-up was considered sub-par and the worst seen in quite sometime.

Big Day Out made a huge mistake, in an age of social media where they had instant feedback from fans, saying that they weren't too happy with the direction they were going.  Big Day Out's response was that our line up was amazing and that people didn't give them enough credit for their line up choice in particular Kayne West, which they copped a lot of flack for.

This is one of the biggest problems I see in event promoting that people need reasons to go, that's why they're called promoters and they didn't give people good enough reasons to go and the picture on the right shows the end result in terms of the latest Big Day Out.  This is something that happens often with smaller event promoters, events need to be unique and different and need to get people excited about going to them, which I feel people seem to get a bit lazy with it worked last time.  Having a good name or track record definitely helps but at the end of the day people won't go to a bad event.

The other thing I've noticed is a need to be seen as invincible and that a show with few numbers is the worst thing in the world, ok, financially it is but promoters need to remember that it's better to put on a good show that few people attended, because at least they can tell their friends and grow the event, while the last thing I'd want to do is throw an event with lots of people which turns out to be really bad.  They think it's an insult to their promoting skills and their popularity, sometimes these things happen and it's good if you have a few hardcore fans out of an event, events don't need to be made for the masses but for massive enjoyment, if you're not doing this you shouldn't be putting on your own events.

I've noticed that people feel a need to cancel shows if the numbers are bad and to make up all sorts of excuses for their failures, that saying a "lack of numbers" is a sign of weakness or a bad event.  I honestly go against conventional wisdom and am happy to admit an event has poor numbers, an event has poor numbers and if I can't get a decent number of people I will lose money and can't afford to put that event on again.  By being honest with my crowd, people actually respect honesty and if it's a good idea people will encourage more of their friends to support the idea, they will actually tell me if I did something wrong or why people aren't interested, by being honest to my people, my people are honest to me, I can learn, improve and make bigger and better events in the future.

In comparison, I've seen all too often that promoters feel the need to make us excuses and my god it happens so much and they end up being such see through blatant lies.  This is not how you do things.  Promoters feel the need to cover up bad numbers and make up a reason to get out of putting on an event, it's horrible and disrespectful to the punters.  By giving people a reason, you've essentially telling people that your event is not worth going to because of a given reason, people lose respect for you to think that your event was all about one detail or factor, people won't tell you what went wrong, you won't learn how to improve.  Plus lets not forget, you're lying to your fans, you want people to trust that you're putting on a good event, how are people going to trust you if you've lied to them?

Overall these things need to stop, this is 2012, we are all connected through our Facebook's and event promoters have more tools than ever to get feedback for their events.  Promoters need to learn to see this as an advantage and treat this with respect and understand that people have their needs.  Feeling the need to feed to your god like worship is one thing but please remember, put you fans first, don't treat them like idiots and actually listen to them and give them what they want.

Onwards and Upwards

It's been a dramatic past few weeks but it looks like things are back on track, there's lots of ups and downs in business, my god the highs have been high and the lows have been low.  We've gone from the best month for Neko Nation with our most epic debut Neko Nation show which was our biggest one yet, to lots of stock problems which have been plaguing Tokyo Hardcore and giving us huge headaches.  Although to make up for the lack of stock, my god is the stock piling into Tokyo Hardcore over the next month.

It's been a case of how dangerous mixing business and pleasure can be, running a business with your partner in troubled times has put a strain onto us and has really tested us but we've survived and things are only looking up for now.

Both myself and Susannah have been planning out big plans across the next few months, which is exciting even though we've got some busy times ahead.  With Susannah scoring work with Pimp Pad, AV-Con and Luna Magazine all in the last month, she's going to be busy as hell, while on my end ANZ is demanding I'm in 5 nights in a row now, despite all the news in the media about job cuts.

It's a worrying time as I've been struggling to cope with my schedule, money has been very tight despite money coming in, I'm not really getting much in return.  I've been getting a chance to hang out and party more, it's not often and it's a tight squeeze but at least it's happening for once, in particular it was a lot of fun to hang out with the AV-Con people, it's nice to hang out with lots of busy people who kind of understand the sort of lives that we lead.

I'm also starting to realise how awesome a lot of people in my life are.  A lot of people have been supporting what both myself and Susannah have been doing, it's great to see that people are continuing to support something very different and unique in Adelaide and all of Australia.  I've met a lot of awesome people who have helped out with our shows and taken an interest in our clothes and our work has lead to meet so many people I've looked up to for a while and also lots of really awesome new people.

More importantly, I probably seriously never stress how much Susannah actually does for me, we rely on each other so much to get through life.  We work long days and nights, rarely get breaks, get very little reward for our work and the only thing that really gets us through the tough times and in our best times we have such amazing times and fun together.  I'm looking back at all the crazy adventures over the past year and it's just nuts to think we're working in our own store and throwing parties all around the country and having lots of fun in the process.  I still can't get over how pretty she is and how amazing she has made my life, I honestly never thought I would ever meet anyone like her and anyone that came close would have no interest in me but I'm glad that I'm still with someone well beyond my dreams and now that we've survived some terrible times together I'm looking forward to lots of amazing times together soon.  ^^

Neko Nation Brisbane - the 6 month journey

Neko Nation Brisbane was a very emotional night for me in terms of what an epic achievement it was to pull this night off.  Biggest and most fun show yet, yet it was around 4 months ago that we thought the Brisbane show would never see the light of day....

In mid 2011 we launched a Neko Nation Australia tour, basically a lot of things went against us throughout the tour, it was unfortunate but also a huge learning process.

It started in August when Sydney was cancelled, lack of interest and support meant the show got called off for 2011 (now successfully relaunching in 2012). Then in September our Brisbane venue had remained quiet the whole month and didn't respond to phone calls or e-mails.  On the plus side we had successful Perth and Adelaide shows that month.

In October, Melbourne sees a dismal turnout, despite our biggest and most expensive advertising campaign yet, we played to a pretty small crowd and we ended up losing a significant amount of money in the process.  We come back home to realise that Brisbane had less than 40 clicking attending, we start to worry that an east coast tour was a bad idea where we don't have the advantage of putting on a show in a city where all our friends are.  Also after a bit of investigating we found out the venue didn't respond as it was actually shut down with no announcement made anywhere.  Quite saddened I had to cancel the event and postpone it to 2012.


In October was the Tokyo Hardcore store launch which kept Susannah's hands quite full so I got to lead the way with Neko Nation in a new direction which was to make the event a lot huger and more spectacular than ever before.  There were a few people in Brisbane who really wanted to see the event happened and helped quite a lot in particular Samantha and Jacqui and we had some awesome sponsors who helped us get a presence at Supanova.

Over the next few months and especially the last few weeks, interest in Brisbane just kept growing and growing, the excitement was as strong as Adelaide's and we got really excited when we thought that Brisbane could beat Perth.  In February it was quite possible that it could rival the Adelaide show.  In the end it ended up being an absolute blast and it was our biggest and best show yet, although we will admit Adelaide is barely trailing behind and I'm doing my best to make sure Adelaide will have a show that will rival it in terms of both size and fun!

Things are definitely looking up at Neko Nation everywhere however I guess there is one downside as we noticed we promoted our Brisbane exactly the same as in Melbourne (use of conventions, posters, Facebook spend) and as an end result, we've unfortunately had to put Neko Nation Melbourne on hiatus for the time being, due to the dramatic amount of difference in numbers and interest.

In celebration of our last show, it's back to work as usual on the next shows, Adelaide is going to be a lot of fun and Sydney should be interesting, just wish I had way more time and wasn't working every night at my other job this week!  >.<