Long lines are long.
1. More than 2500 people like anime and want to go to a convention it seems. Unfortunately, Town Hall doesn’t let you have more than that, so lots of people ended up getting turned away at the door. Pretty bad oversight and there were alot of angry and disappointed people who couldn’t get in. Inside the convention there were still problems, particularly during the cosplay comp, where the main hall ended up reaching capacity and you couldn’t enter unless you were either a) In cosplay or b) a Vendor. Not really a problem for us, but people were getting very annoyed.
With that said, Town Hall was much more welcoming than it has been in the past. Air conditioning was a god-send for the whole venue which is a change from the one huge fan that was used in the olden day. Despite that though, I’m kind of glad we’re moving away from Town Hall and going onto somewhere else.
2. 15 years on, Evangelion is still popular. Who would’ve thought? SMASH’s international guests were pretty awesome this year and probably the highlight of the convention. Everyone seemed to love Yuko Miyamura, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Tiffany Grant and Matt Greenfield. I watched Evangelion in dub as a child, and for me, that’s the best way to watch it. It’ll be interesting to see if SMASH can better their guest list next year.
Bad signs are bad.
3. Wtf is up with the Free <insert action here> stuff? Geez. I thought that went out years ago.
4. The Maid Cafe was weird. Sausage rolls and pies? Not exactly the stuff I’d expect from a Maid Cafe. And there was also a lack of food/drinks vendors with massive lines. That was largely due to Town Hall’s restrictions, which is probably even better reason to leave that place behind.
5. If you weren’t interested in the cosplay or you weren’t an artist, you could get bored real quick. You could do your shopping and see everything you needed to see within an hour or two. There wasn’t anything I’d consider new to SMASH this year, and if you’ve been to as many conventions as we have, that’s a bad thing. Even pictochat sucked.
Bros just sittin' around.
6. But hey, at least the club stall looked nice.
NetLogistics
Hey Sleet
Thanks for the feedback. I’m sorry you didn’t find the convention had that much new. Was there stuff you were hoping would be there that wasn’t? Or was it something else? Any ideas on things that we could bring in? We’re thinking about next year now so we’re pretty open to any suggestions.
I would just like to say about Town Hall that, while we were aware the venue had a maximum capacity when we booked it, we a) didn’t think we’d get there in the first year and b) didn’t feel there were a lot of alternatives. As you’d probably be aware as someone that organises events, there’s just not really anywhere in between the Roundhouse and ATP or the Convention Centre. Going to either of those venues wasn’t really possible this year and so Town Hall it was.
Knowing what we know now, we would have liked to have given people more warning that the event might sell out. The problem is that it’s really hard to tell. Personally, I honestly believed that in 2009 we’d sell out and yet we were nowhere close. This time around, I just wasn’t sure.
I’m sorry to all the people who were turned around and I hope they’ll give us another chance next year. Hopefully in the new space we’ll have something for everyone
Oh yeah, and what happened to Part 2 of the Survival Guide?
Well most of the problems about this year’s SMASH should be solved next year, with a different venue.
The issue I (and alot of people I know) have with conventions right now is they are always the same. Apart from the Evangelion guests this year, there wasn’t anything really new. There was a cosplay comp, there was art, there were stalls, there were some arcade games and there was a maid cafe, pretty much everything that was there the year before.
As for the Part 2 of the Survival Guide, we ended up spending too much time preparing and setting up for the convention for me to write it up :p
Yeah, that’s fair enough. I experience the same thing myself whenever I’m at Supanova/Animania/etc and would probably have a similar feeling were I not an organiser for SMASH!
I’m hoping that this is something that the new venue can solve (what can’t it solve?) given that, with the extra room, there’s hopefully the ability to run a bunch of events that we’d otherwise have a hard time justifying.
If you have any ideas for things you think could help shake things up, we’ve created a special website for them! Pop on over to http://ideas.smash.org.au/ and do our work for us!