2014 Wrap Up

2014, one hell of a year, set some pretty ambitious goals yet somehow pulled through with them, so let's begin.

Neko Planet
Oh my glob, 5 Neko events in a row, an international and live acts, this was one hell of a challenge to organise and then to survive.  Regardless of how it was going to turn out just pulling this off made me pretty damn happy that this happened.

The actual experience was one of the toughest challenges of my life, so much went wrong (mostly behind the scenes but I'm sure a few slip ups showed) but it all worked in the end and I had an absolutely amazing team who helped make this happen, it was really special to tour with such a talented group of people.

Neko Planet was a one off, never doing that format again but as for big international acts and shows in 2015, yes, yes, yes!

Bringing over dreams came true
Around 7-10 years ago, if you asked me who I looked up to the most, I'd probably say Velvet Acid Christ and SiSeN, being in a position in 2014 where I got to bring them over into Australia and help tour them around was a pretty amazing experience that I can look back on.  It was a shame I didn't get to work on more industrial gigs (there was one in October that sadly fell through) but even if there's no more it was a great and awesome experience.

Sandy

We finally moved in together and things have been pretty awesome in terms of our relationship.  I've been very happy to have her, since sometimes I don't know how she can put up with me at times.  Anyways, it's been a great year with her and to be honest, I think in terms of issues and problems it's been the least dramatic year I've ever had in a relationship ever, so it's nice to finally feel really comfortable and settled in with a relationship.

Uni and studying
Last semester was brutal but ended up surviving, seriously I had some of the worst group members ever in some courses (people who actually failed even while being carried) and the workloads were just stupidly astronomically high, I got into the graduate programme as well which was great, being one of the top 16 marketing students in WA was a pretty great achievement.

Sydney
Absolutely have loved every minute of being in this place, people have been absolutely awesome, I've got an absolutely incredible crew here, good food, good times and the shows here have been absolutely on another unbelievable level, the last show was definitely in my opinion the show of the year and was an absolute blast.  Nothing against the other cities, definitely love travelling and putting on shows everywhere though.

Internationals x 2
Oh and we brought over Yui Kanan in Perth, so yeah, starting to get the hang of this whole international thing this year!

Bring on 2015!

Still Alive

Survived!
Last 2 months especially have been absolute hell here, final semester of uni was incredibly draining and took up a lot of my time and stress.  Just completed the grad program as well, an awesome course reserved for the top 15 elite marketing grad students.  So final exam got completed on Tuesday which means freedom!  A bit unsure on my future though, since I'd like to get some work now that I've graduated, especially since I plan to invest a fair bit of the money I earn into Neko for some pretty big 2015 shows.  Enough about me, onto what's happening with Neko.

Nekonomicon
Did the selections last month and oh boy was it hard and brutal, was very tricky to narrow it down to 24 selections and in the end the decision to make the second calendar a mixed calendar than a pure catboys ensured we got lots of really awesome catgirls that weren't able to make it into the original calendar.  Selection was nightmarish at least with catgirl selections you can kind of judge personalities, this was just a matter of picking 12 that fitted in great.  To be honest a lot of the ones that didn't make it were just as good as that got in (if we could have done another one that would have been great!), so don't feel too bad if you didn't make it in!  The calendars are going to be sent off to the printer tomorrow, with a release hopefully in a week or two's time.

Purrth
It's only a few weeks away and I'll be honest this one has snuck up on me a bit but thankfully Perth is probably the easiest show to put on in terms of being my home city and not having to worry about the logistics of travelling.  Sandy has been an absolutely amazing help with this one and a lot of the new decor has arrived which I'm really excited and happy about showing off for the first time.  Pretty hyped for this one and it's looking to be a really enjoyable and epic show.

Brisbane
Most likely next in line for a show in March.  Was planning to do it earlier but needed a hiatus away from Neko after the intense uni semester, next one should be fun, got some interesting new things planned for the next one especially since there's been some venue upgrades since we were last there.

Sydney
There was no official announcement after the last show due to my hectic schedule and also while we pulled off an absolutely epic show there's a few things we're wanting to fix with what has been a very fast, crazy growing show.  The trio of Neko overlords (Herbie, Dorian and myself) have been engaged in some pretty big meetings for our first 2015 show in Sydney, an announcement isn't too far away hopefully.

Adelaide
Haven't forgotten about Adelaide.  The plan is pretty much to hopefully put on the show in Adelaide that I never got a chance to do.  Plan is for the middle of 2015, I know it's another delay but since I don't live in Adelaide any more it's not worthwhile to return for a "small" show and really want to bring in something that's hopefully worth the wait.

Melbourne
We will be doing something in Melbourne next year but we've decided against bringing a full scale Neko Nation show over in 2015 and working on some smaller collaborative projects instead.

Japan
We are in contact with people in Japan and have some interesting options for international acts.  We're unlikely to go down the Neko Planet route of touring an expensive all live show and looking more into integrating a live act into a show such as LeLe's last Sydney performance alongside our DJs.

What's happening with Neko Nation? - October 2014

So after the last post and all the questions I'm being asked and some of the rumours I've heard, I think it's good for me to put out some official information on the future of Neko Nation.  I'll be honest that it's a lot of intentions at this stage rather than anything reliable at this stage but no solid information or plans are going to be coming out for a while.

So let's have a look at where Neko Nation is currently at, Neko Nation Sydney is coming up, that's going to be an epic an awesome show, really excited for it as Sydney always is but it's going to be a very special one since the next Sydney show isn't going to be for a while since there definitely isn't one in the works currently planned in the near future.

Perth was the last one announced before I decided to go on a "booking hiatus", meaning that all the announced shows are continuing till December 2014 but usually there's always been a booking plan or another show a bit further down the line that hasn't been announced.  Pretty much at the moment, there is no shows coming up, originally there were a number of shows penciled in for up to April 2015 but I decided not to go ahead with any of those due to my personal life which I wrote about in another post.

So the TL:DR of my personal life is I'm incredibly busy with big changes happening in my personal life and when my schedule allows me to fully dedicate myself back to Neko I will start booking new events again.  I'd rather not give a date which I'll end up kicking myself over in the future but it is likely I'll be aiming to announce something early next year, hopefully sooner but things are pretty full on and unpredictable right now for me to rush an announcement sooner.

I've had one or two people ask me if Neko Nation is going to be shutting down in the future and I'm can assure you it won't be closing any time soon.  My schedule is likely to be less stressful in the future and even if it doesn't, I've been trying to slowly step back and do less and less with my role at Neko Nation and despite being the so called "Supreme Neko Overlord", these events are running awesomely thanks to an epic team helping take over in more aspects these days.

I've also been asked that if I finally graduate then why don't you just run Neko Nation as a career?  It would mean you make money doing what you love and we get more events, it's win/win right?  First of all, it isn't really possible to make a career out of it and I'm honestly not motivated to make a career out of it if I could, looking at the biggest anime events in Australia, conventions, you would honestly struggle to find many people who make a living from them, if any.  I'm not motivated by money to run Neko Nation, it doesn't make a terrible amount of money and I waste a lot of time on it.

The reason I say waste a lot of time, is that it's not just the amount of time I spend getting the event running and making it happen but there's a lot of time spent on researching and experimenting all sorts of crazy concepts, live acts, decor, unique ideas and just making event with a different feel and mixing things up, plus pretty much all the money gets re-invested back into shows.  I'd feel that to make it more of a proper business or living I'd need to start being incredibly efficient with focusing only on what's required to make the event work and that honestly doesn't motivate me, besides I work at ANZ where it's much easier and less stressful for me to make money.

So yeah, I may have rambled a bit there on the whole juggling act of just ditching everything for Neko which won't happen.  Despite everything slowing down it's a temporary solution and I aim to have things running back to normal if anything probably bigger and better than ever.  One of the more interesting things to note is that a lot of my personal life is focused on a new career, now that I won't be a poor uni student, I'm hoping to re-invest some of my personal money into the show on top of the money that the shows make.

So with that said, I've got some pretty exciting and interesting intentions and plans, we've got a whole bunch of cool ideas that are slowly being implemented and making it's way into future shows, I'm looking at a pretty awesome international for next year possibly which I'm so excited for and so can't wait to announce more details soon.  The 2015 shows are going to be absolutely epic and on another level.

Light Speed Ahead

This is a massively long overdue update, to say things have been flat out here have been an absolute understatement.  Busy as usual, oh boy, it's made the rest of the year look like a walk in the park in comparison.

I had the last Neko Nation shows in August, two really awesome and successful shows in both Perth and Brisbane.  Sydney was pretty much organised just after the last Sydney show, and as for the final show of the year, Perth was going to win it out there, it's probably the easiest show to work with on my end, not really a huge surprise considering the lack of travel and interstate logistics.  Brisbane and Adelaide I decided to put on hold once things quietened down and well it's not going too for a while.

I started uni not too long after I finished the Perth show and well uni has always been there while I've been studying but this semester was an insane amount of work for my final semester in comparison to previous semesters.

There's been a fair few group issues but the reality is, most of it is due to the lack of exams, I've only got one this year and even that one is a simple open book one in my best subject.  The others, they don't want to give out exams based on what you're going to cram a few months of info for a few hours, they want to give massive assignments based on everything you've learnt.  I'm personally big on exams which is frustrating on my end, for those who've never been in uni, I find exams very much like tackling a boss monster in a video game, a tough challenge that can prove daunting at first but once you figure it out you're pretty much set, the whole levelling up and consistent dull grinding parts of a game is where I put assignments in, it's slow, tedious and while I can see its use, it's taking up so much of my time.

To make things even more extreme, it's not just about grades, work experience is a bit factor to finding a job outside of uni, while unfortunately it's an area I've struggled in the past, I got it sorted this time and ended up doing social media work for Dine for Life, great organisation and event that raised a lot of funds for charity that does awesome work for children and woman's rights in Australia and around the world.  Was an interesting experience, ended up switching from a social media role to a tech role which was always a good challenge.

The big game changer was qualifying for the graduate program, there's a big competition for all final year marketing students with only the top 16 being able to get a chance to visit all the major agencies and get training sorted out there.  Was massive surprised I ended up qualifying for this program which was really awesome, I've met up with all the agencies and it's been interesting so far but still a bit nerve wracking in terms of how I'll go.  Hopefully I'm finding work afterwards but we'll see, I've got a bit of a bizarre background and unique skills set, so it's a case of me fitting in rather than proving I'm better than others.

I've also moved house recently, me and Sandy have finally moved in together, the weekend of moving was an absolute nightmare, doing Tough Mudder the day before and completely wrecking my shoulder and having to lift heavy things with the move wasn't fun.  I've been here for around 3 weeks now, and I'm slowly getting somewhat settled in, if it wasn't for the mountains of uni work, I'd have everything all pretty much great here.

There's barely been much of a moment to really take a break here, Sydney is coming up and as for the future of Neko, will cover that in the next post.

Crank it Up!

Ok, so I've made the recent announcement Neko Nation events are going to be slowing down dramatically, there were three done within one month recently and now it's going to trickle down to once every two months Australia wide.  It's a bit sad to do this because our last tour was by far one of our biggest, best and easily most fun tours I've had, sadly my personal life is not letting me able to keep up this schedule at the moment.  :(

I've started uni again and while you might ask what else is new, since I've always had uni when I started Neko Nation.  Unfortunately I'm in my final semester and while there's no exams, for the time being, this is a bad thing, believe or not.  In the final semester exams aren't a big deal in a fair few course, in mine they don't believe in the idea of testing what you've learnt over the last few months, they believe in massive assignments putting together everything you've learnt in the past three years.  In short, I've been absolutely flat out since the start of the semester.

To top it all off, I'm moving on in my personal life to find a new career, I'm almost hitting 30 and would like to start getting into a professional career, unemployment is high, the market is competitive and I'm applying left, right and centre for any sort of work and even work experience, internships to just get into the market place.  On the plus side, I'm starting work as a social media manager tomorrow, it's going to be a great experience, I'm not getting paid but it's only one day a week and it's for charity, plus more importantly it's a massive foot in the door for finding work.

So with Neko Nation, I would say the whole one show every two months should be temporary, once I graduate, shows should to be a lot more regular, most likely back to approximately once a month.

For the time being a lot of focus is on Sydney and Perth.  Perth is an obvious choice, it's the easiest show for me to put on being in my home state, everything is just easier especially the lack of travel, transport, accommodation.  It's also no secret that I'm partial to Sydney so I'm aiming to keep doing as many shows there since the show is booming there in 2014.

As for the other cities, Brisbane, we just had a sold out show and there was supposed to be another show planned for 2014 but unfortunately my schedule got too crazy and it was way easier to do Perth, especially since there's a lot of changes to be made to the next Brisbane show having just only gotten the hang of our new venue.  Adelaide I haven't forgotten about, I absolutely miss Adelaide, it's played an important part of Neko Nation's history and I'm looking forward to organising something.  I'll admit the show hasn't really been up to my standards and there's a lot we can do to improve things.  I'm leaning towards a massive relaunch possibly at Fringe?  Melbourne, still trying to figure out how to do shows in Melbourne, it's likely we're looking at doing a more intimate smallish show sometime in the future, I'm kind of partial to the last venue we used for Neko Planet.

So yeah, even if things are quiet or I'm  not saying much, stuff is being worked on in the background, there are plans but with my personal life slowing things down, it's best to keep things on the backburner and will end up going full mega blast next year!

Rest of the year

Crazy year already and I'm so freakin' excited that things have calmed down for a change.

Neko Sydney was anything but calm but in a good way, I talk up Sydney a lot but it's really the show to be, much like how Brisbane Supanova is the one to head too (not sure if still is these days), Neko Sydney is a mega highlight for all the Sydney fans and word is getting out in terms of attracting interstaters to attend, hell I'm getting a lot more interstate DJ applications for people wanting to play in Sydney now!

That last show was fantastic above words, got to celebrate it with my absolutely amazing girlfriend and it was gloriously put on and well executed by everyone on the Neko Nation team, mega congrats to everyone involved and I've said my mega special thanks to a lot of people in a previous post.

There was the special gift at the end which was incredibly touching the speech and the thank you book with people thanking me for my work being absolutely appreciative of everything which I've done which was a very emotional read but really makes me happy about what I do and keeps motivating to ensure that Neko Nation keeps going and survives for as long as possible.

Upon coming back uni results came back in, Distinction average, which is nice, I managed to get a High Distinction for once which is nice.  Dominated my charity and not for profits unit which is interesting, I absolutely hated the unit but my marks were way ahead of other courses, it's pretty crucial since it's probably the area and future I'm aiming for when it comes to my career.  Basically aiming for NFP organisation work or media buyer in a commercial company, hoping to find something since it'd be nice to actually get a decent job after spending my last 6 years or so of studying.

Had Velvet Acid Christ recently too, was fun to finally get my hands involved in the industrial scene, was pretty awesome after all this time to finally work with Velvet Acid Christ after being one of my most influential and favourite acts in my late teenage years.  Looking forward to doing another industrial gig hopefully this year, got something really exciting and awesome coming up.

In other news, hit my one year with my girlfriend which is pretty awesome too.  Somehow made it this far with no drama which is pretty awesome and it's looking likely we're going to be moving in soon, having birthday celebrations tonight which should be really awesome, so absolutely and epicly excited for another awesome year as well.

Also been gaming quite a lot too, Shadowrun, 100% Orange Juice, Hearthstone and League of Legends have been an absolute blast for me to play, god damn you Steam Sales.  XD

The Heroes behind the scenes

As I've said a lot over the last few days, Neko Nation Sydney was absolutely amazing, it was completely on another level, I had a feeling more people were going to be there and there were plans of making it a lot better but yeah, everything surpassed my already high expectations, as usual I may stand at the top of the food chain when it comes to all the praise but seriously a massive thanks to all the people involved and those who came down too make our show magical.

A lot of what has happened with Neko Sydney is done with the help of a lot of people but there's a few people in particular who do a tonne of work behind the scenes that you don't get to see, being at the venue from 6am on Saturday to 7am on Sunday, there's a very special and amazing team that turns this empty room into the amazing party that it is.

Dorian: You see anything around the venue that lights up or makes a sound that's Dorian, he's helped done an amazing job on a technical level with the show.  For him, Neko isn't a gig that he is incredibly passionate about and goes into extraordinary levels to see this venue get lit up and bring this place to life.  He has always done an amazing job but this last show with the new stage setup was on a completely new level.

Herbie: Without him, Neko Nation wouldn't be in Sydney, despite all the problems with our first Eastern States show in Melbourne, he did everything in his power to bring the event to Sydney and make it work from it's small underground beginnings to what it is today.  Herbie has been in charge of making and creating a lot of the decor you've seen such as the massive cats and takes care of a lot of the huger tasks that while you don't see such as dealing with the venue and ensuring the night runs smoothly, heck even my accommodation!  Herbie doesn't usually get as much credit as I do but he deserves too, if not more for helping create Neko in Sydney.

Bri, Conal, James, Nathan: I'm sorry if I left anyone out but these are the ones I usually remember seeing at setup and packup at all the Neko Nation events.  There is a tonne of work to get the venue setup and it's thanks a lot to our awesome pack and setup crew who put in insane amounts of hours and help to get Neko Nation ready within half a day.  Seriously what you guys do is absolutely incredible and Neko Nation doesn't happen without you all.  I know there's probably a few more that help out here and there but those 4 are the ones that generally stick out.

Seriously mega thanks to you all and everyone else for making such an amazing night!  <3

Nekobook

So we're going to be launching Nekobook again for 2015, I put up a personal announcement and realised that there's been a lot of questions people have been asking in regards to the applications, so I'll try to answer as much as I can here.

Minimum requirements:
Here's the three main requirements that we're asking, we want this to be as open as possible but we do have three requests.

1. Initiate
Basically you are responsible for getting the photo, finding a photographer, modelling, getting clothing, basically if you are interested in getting involved you will find a way and put in the effort, we are unable to help specific individuals with finding outfits or photographers.

2. Effort
We ask that all photos put in effort, so obvious number rule, no selfies, no instagram pics, however you can use them as starting points to ask us what we think of the idea.  No lazy backgrounds, so get out of your bedroom or bathroom, studio is good but we want to keep studio shots to a minimum, we prefer people out in the wild and can look dull if there's too much white space.  Also get a decent camera/photographer involved, make it look professional, even if it's going to charity, people won't pay for the calendar without decent quality images.

3. Resolution
While the photos may look good on the computer, printing is a totally different ball game.  Basically we need a horizontal picture of 2480 x 3508 pixels, less than this it will pixelate and blur.  There will be a hole punched in the top so be careful featuring around the whole.

Selection Process
The most frequently asked question is what are we looking for, I can not stress this enough, variety.  I don't want a calendar of 12 identical looking people and outfits.  We are not necessarily picking the 12 best photos but rather 12 unique different photos that stick out.  Get creative, get interesting and we honestly can't make a strong decision till later on in the process.  There will be a second person involved in the selection this year who has had far more experience in modelling and photography than I have.

Catboys?
With 0 applicants last year, it was a pretty easy but sad decision not to do one, we hope that this changes this year.  We will be re-assessing the situation a few times throughout the selection process, while we are keen on doing one and we know there was demand, we can only make one if we have enough catboys in the calendar.  We may look at a mixed calendar potentially with catgirls who missed out on the original calendar.

Application Dates
The final date will be October 15th.  We will be looking at doing some selections and applications earlier as a reward for those who submitted in earlier, I will have more details on this soon.

Neko Nation Updates May

Sydney
S3RL and GPK announced, catgirl applications opened (check Neko Nation Sydney group).  This show is going to be massive, likely to be the biggest budget show in history (talking at least 5 figure expenses), DJ's from 6 different states and territories, three floors, fastest selling earlybirds in history, this will be mega.

Purrth
Earlybirds sold out and releasing tickets in Tokyo Underground very soon.  Catgirl, Catboy and DJ applications are now open, only anime, gaming, Japanese related sets only.  Going to be an awesome show, should be great back at Gilks, got a few new interesting setup things to play around with, particularly on the top floor with the gaming, mega excited about this.

Brisbane
Coniston Lane has changed their team, management, owners, our contract became void and we've been on the hunt for a new venue.  There's one venue heavily sticking out and we're going to take it slowly and make sure that we can make Neko Nation amazingly well in this venue, there's a lot of potential with the place we're looking at, it's just a matter of seeing if we can all get on the same page with the venue negotiations, should be an update within two weeks.

Adelaide
AVCon won't be taking place this year, new team, new objectives and a new focus, despite us not coming back this year, we did have two amazing shows at AVCon in 2012 and 2013, we had fun and we still wish AVCon the best of luck this year.  With the lack of AVCon show, Brisbane venue drama and uni assignments, I'll be hopefully booking at Adelaide at the end of the month now, most likely a show a few months before the end of the year back in Producers.

Melbourne
At this stage we're taking a break and helping work with Tokyo Fantastic Night at the moment who are doing a Japanese club night at the moment with past Neko Nation DJ's.  We'll let them do their thing in the meantime and keeping in contact in regards to trying to work together to bring another Melbourne show in the future.

Neko Planet
For the time being, turning it's focus onto a new division which will help work with Riveting Promotions to help with alt/industrial acts in Australia, in particular Perth, should be an exciting new challenge and lots of awesome events I'm looking forward to helping out with, including the upcoming Velvet Acid Christ show on June 14th @ Bakery in Perth.  As for the future of the Neko Planet that was seen last month, it's likely I'll do something in the future but that's at least a year away and I've got Neko Nation and other things to focus on at the moment

The reality of assymetry

While I can't say I'm noticing too much of this talk at the moment, I feel now is probably a good time to discuss the issue of why certain Neko Nation's appear to be "better" than others.  I think some people believe in the whole "McDonald's" like approach of consistency and the idea that no matter where you are in the world you can get a Big Mac that tastes virtually the same wherever.  The whole idea of simply copying and pasting events doesn't work and even if it did it's virtually impossible for us to do.

The reality is that it simply doesn't work like that and there are so many reasons but I'll rush through some of the common ones.  Venues vary insanely, no two venues are alike and I can assure you that if we could get 5 venues around the country that were the same oh boy would that make my life a lot easier (and probably a lot more boring too).  They all have different setups, rules of what we can and can't do, when they open, close, certain things they can do awesomely, different rates, just that alone should explain enough.

There are differences in the crowds, numbers being the obvious ones but the crowds in terms of musical tastes, preferences, fashion, energy, socialising are dramatically different depending on the city.  It's not simply a case of the cosplay/anime scene being the same nationwide plus throw in the complexity of how different scenes see Neko in different cities.  In one city, the rave scene and Neko Nation goes hand in hand, in another city, the rave scene won't touch our event.

Staffing plays a huge role, certain things happen because of special people, depending on the cities, we've seen Touhou, Moe Swag, Vocaloid, MLP, industrial, hardstyle musically.  Certain things happen in certain cities because of the people who have worked for something for that show and some things aren't feasible to travel and post around (no matter how many times you ask, we can't put bacon cheeseburger sushi in the post).  Plus it goes onto logistics, I can do more shows in Perth because it's closer and nearer, Brisbane is far away and harder as an example, it can also work in reverse, S3RL will appear more in his hometown Brisbane than elsewhere.  Then yeah, budget, more people = more money to spend on the show.  Certain cities get more frequent shows and bigger shows simply because the budget is there, it's simple supply and demand.  At the moment Sydney averages ten times as many people as Melbourne at shows and this isn't an exaggeration!

I'll touch on the S3RL issue a lot because this is something that always get asked all the time when is S3RL coming to *insert home city here*.  It depends on a whole bunch of factors as mentioned above, Perth, there will be a return in the near future if all goes to plan.  Adelaide, originally was part of our AVCon plan but that ended up falling through this year, once Adelaide gets bigger I'll be able to look into it again.

So yeah, this is something I could really go on with in terms of all the minor details, I should also mention that a lot of it simply comes down to my team that I work with, there is no competition between cities and the managers who run each city, they are aware of what happens in the other cities and keep an eye on the ideas that all the other cities do but at the end of the day we're all working by deciding what works and is relevant for each scenario, show and city.

Full Circle

Rewind over a decade ago and I was pretty much still 17, staring up at my calendar counting down the months when I could check out awesome industrial events, heck I still remember my favourite night was this bizarre anime/industrial/rave hybrid.  I was listening to tonnes of industrial acts, in particular my favourite at the time being Velvet Acid Christ and well, it's kind of amusing looking back and seeing what's happened now.


A decade ago things were different, Livejournal was social media of choice, underground raves required you to figure out a secret meeting point to get a physical map without internet help to find you way there and Covenant performed at Metro City, the biggest nightclub in Perth.  My first live club gig, which was amazing and pretty much shortly after turning 18, started working with Outbreed and learned my craft with events, I learned the basics, I learned the advanced stuff, I've worked from all sorts of events, to illegal underground raves to monthly house nights to major festivals like BDO and I've seen all sorts of crazy things, sex, drugs, undercover cops, raids, mafias.  It was one crazy rollercoaster of an eyeopener into the world of events.

I remember being surrounded by people who went out, telling me about getting jaded and how while you're having fun now, you'll grow up, you'll get bored out of this life within a year or two.  You'll change, you'll grow out of it all, this is a temporary life until you figure out where you want to be.  Over a decade later, I never really did.

I've ended up here, creating an event that was partly influenced by the first event I got to work with (along with a lot of Japanese events I was influenced by), heck the original creator of Outbreed flew back down to check out this event from Singapore recently and was quite amazed and impressed.  I would be told that kandi, happy hardcore and PLUR was something that would be dead constantly when I first started raving yet, I've had people thank me for helping revive that rave scene over in Sydney.  I've ended up DJing at a whole bunch of other clubs all around Australia and meeting absolutely amazing musicians, models, promoters and all sorts of awesome peeps.

Funnily enough now, Neko Nation was created because of my two passions, the industrial/alt scene was too full and there wasn't really much I could add over here, yet now ironically enough, it was all my work in the anime/cosplay scene that caught the attention of various people in the alt scene across Australia and heck, now I'm getting involved with Velvet Acid Christ over next month is pretty damn sweet.

To make me even happier the position I saw myself in many, many years ago is the position I've seen a fair few people who work with me are here right now, while I want to be doing events for a long time, I know one day it will end up stopping and some of the awesome people I've had in higher up positions, I'm really looking forward to the amazing events they create in the future.

So yeah, somehow I couldn't imagine over a decade ago I'd be here and it was something I never ever thought about or aimed for but somehow, I survived and somehow made it here, which is absolutely crazy.

Neko Planet: Tour Diary - Melbourne (Sunday)

Melbourne - Final Finale

I pretty much spent so much of Melbourne sleeping, I don't really have much in the way of interesting tour stories here, sorry!  From a personal point of view, 4 shows was probably way more than I could handle in a row, especially with such a late finish in Sydney.  But the show must go on and it was time to get the final show on the road!

Prelude

Melbourne was the last show on the tour and it was always going to be an interesting one since we rarely do Melbourne shows, so it was always going to be interesting to see how this one shows up, especially being on the Supanova weekend, everyone always says we should do a super epic mega convention con after party but if you look back at most of your con experiences a lot of people do get super tired and while there's definitely some that want to party hard, a lot of people want a chance to finally escape their outfit and have a mega rest.  With that said, generally being on a con weekend doesn't effect us to much.

Show

The show actually went a lot better and more fun than I expected considering the state of mind I was in near the end.  There were a lot of people new to Neko in general and I think the whole idea of a gothic lolita rapper definitely threw people off guard in terms of what to made of MC Melody Doll but people definitely did enjoy it and got into the night which was great.  By this stage the show was really running on autopilot, the management at this venue was awesome and my Melbourne guy absolutely knew everything that needed to be done while I'm pretty sure I somehow used a metal pole as a pillow to get through this show.

And it was over, it was such an amazing tour and one of the most stressful, insanest and craziest experiences of my life but it was fun and an amazing achievement to finally get it all and it was a great time, which I got so much out off in terms of life experience.  Will we see another Neko Planet in the future, most likely but after a tour like that, that's the furtherest thing from your mind and all you just want to do is sleep.  Despite all the craziness, pretty much as soon as I got back, I started booking more upcoming Neko Nation shows, it's time to rest here but not for long!

Neko Planet: Tour Diary - Sydney (Saturday)

Sydney - Wow, Fantastic Baby!

Our flight to Sydney was an epic one, ok, I don't remember anything since I was asleep for it but we had S3RL, SiSeN, GPK, LeLe and Killswitch Engage all on the same flight.  So much musical talent on one flight was pretty epic.  Sydney was where this trip was about to get real, I was pretty much running on adrenaline averaging a few hours of sleep at the hotels and trying to get half an hour or so on the plane, caffeine was turning from a luxury into my oxygen.  Unlike the other shows, I told the major acts to honestly get some sleep before the show and not to bother showing them around Sydney, for me, HAHAHAHAHA, I went straight to the venue to get started to work and a few bits of running around to get started on this one.

Prelude
Despite the lack of sleep, it's good to be back in Sydney though, it was probably one of the shows I was looking forward the most if not probably the most, our ticket sales were the best in Sydney and that city is going through a massive growth and interest of Japanese music having just had Kyary the month before.  So setup for this one was always going to be quite a challenge but Sydney team being awesome had so much completed and sorted when I rocked up and we had one hell of an amazing setup for Sydney, from the kandi tables, gaming rooms to even cats firing lasers and breathing smoke, Sydney's setup is on another level thanks to Herbie and Dorian.


Show
So while it was the show I was most excited about on tour, it was probably the show where I was by far the least active.  You might think that with an Access All Areas pass, sitting behind the merch desk all night probably doesn't sound like the most exciting place to be but on how little sleep I had, I was pretty keen, plus I've never worked a merch desk before and it's pretty important to work as many roles as you can in your event, besides photography and security I've virtually worked almost every role involved in the show!

Even though I was sitting behind the merch desk most of the night, got a pretty awesome view and the Sydney crowd is always epic to hang out with and talk too.  The performances on this night were absolutely incredible, the Sydney crowd is always loaded with energy, while in many other cities it starts to wind down around 2am, Sydney just keeps going harder and faster with a lot of the rave scene making it down to our event and even more this time with S3RL being on board.  Even on the 4th night, all the main acts did an absolutely awesome job and they stayed quite late and decided to party with everyone, as they loved the friendly, colourful and fun vibe that Sydney offered.  Insanis also really boosted our acts too, headed by Mellie and Rachel, aka. Australia's #1 catgirl who's famous for doing our artwork really boosted SiSeN's and S3RL's sets.

Sydney was also the only show I actually got to play a DJ set, even at 4:45 in the morning, Sydney still partied insanely hard, I barely remembered what I played and it definitely wasn't my best set but my god this crowd was eating it up and really helped pick me up for a bit.  The later finishing time meant I didn't get back to the hotel until around 7:45am, I squeezed in 2 hours of sleep, went crazy on coffee and food till it was off on the plane for the finale in Melbourne.

Neko Planet: Tour Diary - Brisbane (Friday)

Brisbane, things get real

We touch down in Brisbane, it's a nice feeling for all, LeLe is happy that she's in a bit more familiar territory, I'm happy because Brisbane and Perth feel very similar and GPK and SiSeN are excited as Brisbane is set to be one of the bigger shows on tour, although this could be because GPK has started to constantly sing and go on about how amazing the Mortal Kombat theme song is (yes, that terrible song, XD). We feel a bit recharged as being LeLe's home town she shows us around to Sunnybank, a place also known as I can't believe that we're still in Australia! I'm not the biggest fan of Chinese food but we're taken to the most amazing Chinese restaurant and chow down like crazy.

Prelude
So I get onto setup for the event and once again, the curse of Brisbane roads seems to strike me again, for some odd reason I always keep getting lost, stuck in traffic jams and in general, I should never ever drive in Brisbane, at one point, I was pretty certain I should have just abandoned my van and walked to the venue. To make matters worse, at one point I accidentally forgot to put the handbrake on when I was parking for the hotel, it's kind of a big deal on a 30 degree hill! Luckily some quick reflexes got out of that drama. In short, I'm a good driver but I probably deserved every single racist asian driver joke that day. >.>

Show
Brisbane was where we had a lot of support acts and they played a much huger role in the night, since including the DJ's we had 5 in Brisbane and the show went a lot later. I was immensely proud of this show and as much as I want to take credit of it, Matt has really come a long way with pulling out all the stops to put together something mega impressive.

Due to the later finish, all the main acts didn't have to stay till pack up and while they were free to leave around half way in the night they actually really wanted to stay and really had a lot of fun, especially on what was the biggest crowd on tour at that point which they had fun with. For me, I didn't get back to the hotel till 6am and I was also the car dramas didn't end as the parking malfunctioned and the staff had to let me park in the staff parking section, nothing is ever simple and goes to plan! I swear I crashed through the front door and was probably as loud as Neko Planet when coming in but thankfully the person I was a sharing a room with heard nothing, being that out of it and sleeping really hard.

I was very excited for this show and absolutely loved it and had a blast, Matt our Brisbane manager was getting very heavily involved and really want to do something spectacular, he really wanted to show off his event credentials, I was pretty excited with all his ideas that he had come up with but finally everything came together perfectly. This was where things started to get real and amazing, Brisbane had really good ticket sales so we had quite a really good budget for creating an amazing setup and just wow. The stage, especially the screen really took Neko Planet to a whole new level, we looked like a mega expensive and amazing technical show of the future, I can not thank Nate, Anastasia, Matt and many others who were involved with the creation and the setup of what we had in Brisbane and the main acts were truly blown away by what we had.

As soon as I went to sleep, it was only a few hours later that I had to get up and head onto Sydney.

Neko Planet: Tour Blog - Adelaide (Thursday)

Adelaide, Let's get crazy!

It's interesting for me to get back into Adelaide, this was where I used to live and there's always that quaint old country town feeling when you get in but first of all, it was time to claim my free luggage trolley, seriously, Adelaide airport is the best airport in Australia, none of this pay $4 for a luggage trolley and with how much luggage I was carrying it was incredibly a godsend.

So carrying on from SiSeN wanting to eat Australian food, GPK decides to start "blending in with the locals" and starts talking like Steve Irwin and trying to teach SiSeN how to speak old school Australian "G'Day Mate", "Crikey!" was heard from the back seat.  I proceeded to tell them my future plans about how I was going to do a show in Japan, and we'd have kangaroo girls throwing shrimp on the barbie, sausage sizzle, Fosters, Australian cocktails (goon mixed with soft drink) and AC/DC cover bands.  God we were already going crazy and it was only the second day.  XD

So we rock up the hotel we ended up with this incredibly fancy 4 star hotel which funnily enough was the cheapest of the tour (yay, Adelaide), catch up with our Adelaide crew, instead of politely saying hi, we decided to horribly act like fanboys and fangirls and cheer for them as they go through the hotel.  We talk about how the people in Adelaide have a bit of a unique accent compared to the rest of Australia and it was quite noticable, everyone seemed to say cunt a lot.  XD

We had all barely eaten so we found something somewhat Australian that wasn't a pie floater (no meat pie in pea soup, thanks Adelaide).  We scoff down pancakes and stop pretending that we're a Japanese music tour and act as Australian as possible.  Continuing on our trend as being Australian as possible, we visit as many Asian stores as possible.

Prelude

Not surprisingly Adelaide was going to be one of the smaller shows on the tour but it was going to be a fun one since it was a simpler setup, although with that said we had mass amounts of venue drama and miscommunication.  Thankfully Kevin was my awesome Adelaide manager and along with Ken we figured it all out.

Show

By far the most stressful show on my end, with all the last minute venue drama, I had Kevin who was awesome and did an amazing job sorting everything out in the end, it was really one of those shows which appeared easy at first but with so little going to plan and was a nightmare to get it all going right but somehow we got through the night.  It was another awesome performance by everyone and Adelaide's crowd might have been small but were dedicated and it's fun on my end since it's a bit of and old school reunion with people I used to see regularly that I only see when I do shows.  In particular Kevin who's one of my best friends was awesome to hang out with again.

So we had venue dramas in short it was to do with drinks and how much we owe the venue, in short the best way to get even was to get catgirls to serve shots of vodka and tequilla.  Did things go to plan, hell no.  Did everyone end up having fun, oh god yes, it was one of those things that we never would have imagine would have happened at any event let alone one I'd do and no it's never going to happen ever again.  It was a bizarre and interesting night and somehow surviving it was a huge relief, I had no idea how I was going to do the rest of this tour.

So we had dramas at this show behind the scenes, so we decide to have a meeting and sort things out since we had the three big shows coming up and we didn't want a repeat of that night.  We were somewhat satisfied at the end of it all except for one thing.  ROOM SERVICE!  I didn't have winged monkeys I could unleash onto the person who decided onto this, so we went ahead and went through almost $100 junk food combined.  To our credit, normal eating patterns go out the window with the tour.

A few hours of sleep, then it's off to the airport and sleep dep is slowly starting to kick in hard, it might be difficult to sleep on planes but I had no choice but to learn how too.

Neko Planet: Tour Blog - Perth (Wednesday)

Perth, Wednesday - BLAST OFF!

IT BEGINS!
So it begins, if felt like any other tour day, all the last minute checks are done and it's time to head out to the airport!  Energy is high on all ends even SiSeN after his mega draining trip from Berlin.  We head off to the hotel and as we soon learn we're going to start getting a taste of a lot of interesting experiences, crazy adventures and before we hit up the hotel we're getting our minivan through the carpark of doom.  We're playing a tight game of limbo with squeezing this van into this tiny parking lot, with everyone in the car freaking out if we'd take the roof of this van and if I could even park this thing, 9 adjustments later (it was my first time driving a minivan in my life, ok?!), we made it to the hotel fine and I managed to not kill anyone before the tour had officially started, awesome start!

We check out some of the sights of Perth, such as the deformed Goku (pictured) and when we met up with our Neko Perth team, SiSeN suggested he wanted to have something Australian, somehow someone convinced our group that the most Australian thing we could eat was sushi.  I honestly wanted food and just decided to go along with it as for how bad it sounded.  Plus it was the first show, I was going to get sick of sushi by the end of this tour.  XD

With how prepared I was, nothing still ever, ever goes to plan so I'm pretty much running around like crazy, happy I'm in my home town and knowing where all things are and then it's pretty much off to the venue, which is just a few hundred metres away.  Peak hour traffic and roadworks, yeah, I'm still getting the hang of
this touring thing.

Prelude
So setup is happening and to be honest, there's a lot of nerves on my end, Perth was a city I wasn't too excited about, there was a lot of drama about the choice of a Wednesday night, lots of complaints about the price, in short not going because of these reasons is fair enough but constantly whinging is a shit attitude, especially when I didn't even have to do a Perth show in the first place.  It's this attitude that makes promoters not bother with and skip Perth.

With that aside setup goes fine, it's an easier and smaller setup compared to the past although it's still challenging to get all the bands and the new setup, especially platform shoes and ladders never seem to be a great idea but I've gotten the hang off it.

Show
The actual show is a good start, stressful to get everything going right and even though it's not the hugest or most enthusiastic crowd (Wednesday night doesn't help here), it's an enjoyable night and from a personal point of view, three of my most favourite people on a personal level, Sandy, Tahlia and Mark.

Sandy, my girlfriend helped me get through this night and did an amazing job to help me out with all the stress in the lead up to the show and helping on the day with showing the main acts around, I could go on and on about her but will save it for another post.  Tahlia was epicly excited to get involved, one of the few people I look up to in terms of her work ethic and our approaches to our passions, careers and life plus she looked absolutely stunning with her outfit (cyber mech outfit).  Mark was amazing to see, Neko Planet and Neko Nation was heavily inspired by one of his events Mark did 10 years ago, so it was extra special for him to be there to see my twist on what he had done ten years ago and he was quite impressed to see it go nationwide.

Oh and before I forget, yes the show was awesome, the acts all got off to a good start and we slowly started to adjust into tour mode so it's a lovely start and just as it's started we were about to pack up back to the hotel at around 2am, we all get around 5 hours sleep, not much but my god if we had this much sleep on the rest of the tour, we'd be so happy.  The next day, I misjudge the traffic and I'm racing to the airport for dear life but get there with 40 minutes to spare.  I've still got a lot to learn about this whole touring thing as we board the plane for the next day for Adelaide.

Neko Planet, the creation

Neko Planet may have come and gone but I might as well post up why I ended up doing this tour.  Neko Planet was in the planning stage well over two years ago when I started talking to the acts and realising that taking Neko Nation to the next level with live acts and internationals was possible.  For me this was a pretty huge undertaking, I was barely struggling to do Eastern state shows let alone the daunting prospect of 5 shows all in one hit, organising international acts to come here and all the logistics involved.

But the reality was, the idea never went away, it was something that excited for quite a long time and to be honest, after having attended the first show with SiSeN many years ago as a massive fanboy making the trip over to Perth to Adelaide to see him, the prospect of being in charge was a mindblowing one.  With that said, of all my dreams and goals this was a bit of a farfetched one and a hugely difficult one to tackle so I needed a lot more motivation than just doing it because it was cool.

What really got me excited was once I was able to slowly raise up funds and interest, the time slowly appeared to be right, Neko Nation had started growing huger and stronger, it wasn't some shortly lived phase as it was starting to get closer to the three year mark, I decided to dive in and go for it.  For a long time Australia had seen the growth in anime, cosplay, Japanese music, we started seeing cons grow bigger and bigger, the anime and cosplay scenes growing, more interest in Japanese music and yet it was a rarity for Japanese acts to grace our shore, much like how I saw little happening when I first started Neko Nation I felt the same way when it was time to launch Neko Planet.

Ironically enough closer to the event it was far from the case, Dir En Grey and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu came over, not that it honestly interfered with our plans but if anything it worked well for us, we started to see that even though we weren't exactly going to be the first out of the blocks it was nice to see that we weren't alone and we weren't the only ones who saw it.  It got us excited that we were going to be part off and the start of a potential Japanese music revolution in Australia.

10 strange facts about me

A bit of an icebreaker to keep this blog flowing

1. I am actually allergic to cats
2. I've been working in events since 2004 and worked in all sorts of positions and places!
3. I can type upwards of 18,000 ksph
4. My preferred drink of choice is Midori
5. I was ranked in the top 0.5% of students in maths throughout primary school
6. Livejournal was my preferred social media of choice but yeah, not many people are there these days.
7. I used to have a synth dreads business before I launched Neko Nation
8. Favourite games of all time include games from SSX, Wipeout, Saints Row and Final Fantasy
9. I'm able to pass most DDR songs on expert and on doubles mode
10. I like cats, I love every kind of cat, I'm sorry I'm thinking about cats again.

Opening Update

Hi, my name is Craig, more well known as "Neko", "Catalystic" and jokingly referred to as the "Supreme Neko Overlord" and other cat god variations.

I'm most well known as the owner and founder of Neko Nation, Australia premier anime nightclub event, featuring DJ's playing anime, gaming and Japanese music, cosplay, prizes, competitions, awesome sound, lighting, decor, an open minded and friendly environment and our famous free sushi served by catgirls.  I've owned and run Neko Nation since it's first event in 2011, I've also launched Nekobook, a catgirl charity calendar in 2013 and in 2014, launched Neko Planet, which is the first Neko event to feature internationals.  Outside of Neko Nation, I study marketing and advertising full time and will finish this year, I also work for ANZ as a transaction processor.  Could go on and on but you'll find out more throughout these blog posts!

As for why I'm starting to blog again, I actually missed blogging and expressing things, I know a lot of people have gravitated away their focus from Facebook to other social mediums like Tumblr and Instagram but I personally have wished to go the other way and express myself and my thoughts through here.  Which means I doubt people many people will be interested or keep an eye on here but it's mostly for myself and posting stuff that I really doesn't feel will work on Facebook.

More posts to be written soon.