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SMASH! 2010 Report – A (long) inside perspective

Inside the hallways of Sydney Town Hall, volunteers shuffle in line to sign on for the morning. There's a slight sense of uncertainty as vendors, volunteers and contractors look at each other knowing something is about to happen, but not knowing when it will start.

Some of them are restless with excitement, shifting their weight from foot to foot and warming themselves after the cold of the morning. Suddenly, someone runs in through the dinky loading dock.

"Those of you who are volunteers, I need you to drop your stuff and come with me now! Don't worry about your tags yet, just come with me!"

Everyone exchanges looks for a second before several volunteers shrug their bags off their shoulders, dumping them unceremoniously at their feet, and race off after the staff member who is already on his way out.

"Hi Mike!" I hear a familiar voice behind me. I spin around, as fast as a guy carrying 10-15kg of camera gear can, and am greeted by one of SMASH!'s board members Michael Camilleri.

He shakes my free hand warmly. "I'm so glad you could make it!"

SMASH!, or the Sydney Manga and Anime SHow!, has been running for the past four years. It originally started out at the University of New South Wales' Roundhouse, but after reaching about 2700 attendees, a larger venue was required. This year it moved to Sydney Town Hall, a move that echoes the first step made by the former University of Sydney-based Animania.

I was invited to SMASH! as a backstage and guest photographer. This is my account of the day, from behind the scenes, to reveal the normally hidden (and seldomly recognised) side of the effort that goes into running a convention.

As I'm surveying the long line into the convention, a man dressed in long, flowing Japanese robes steps out carrying his weapon - a guitar. Standing between the two lines for door sales and pre-registered patrons, he rocks out, lifting his guitar into the air and above his head. He has a small following cheering him on and waving their arms in the air.

Meanwhile inside the venue, registration volunteers are sitting behind laptops, getting ready for the first set of patrons and waiting for the doors to open. There's no hyped up count-down. There's a sense of orderly excitement, but for the most part things seem under control.

A smart gentleman walks down the front of the registration desk, touching his earpiece for a second. He's dressed in a modest suit, but he's not there to impress. His red name tag reads Thomas Munro. He's the president of SMASH! and at the moment he's, well, presiding.

Next to me, on one of the registration machines, SMASH! staffboard member Rob Howard is typing away madly on a laptop running Linux.

Thomas, in contact over the radio to his staff announces they're going to start letting people in. Rob is still typing furiously, but stops for a brief moment, blinking at the screen.

"We can't - our server just went down," he says, looking up at Thomas.

The look on Thomas' face isn't frustration. It isn't disappointment. It says get it done. He gives Rob an estimate of ten minutes before the first non-processed patrons will make their way to the door, and then gives the okay for people to come in. They're just going to have to deal with it. Rob keeps working behind the scenes, the system comes up, and no one is ever the wiser.

Upstairs, high above Centennial Hall, Jacky and Janet Fan and are working on the audiovisual elements of the convention. As I make my way over to where they're working I have a slight chuckle at the preview display for their main display. It's the slide for recent Supanova convention - Jacky also does AV work for Supanova.

It's one of the first signs of a theme that plays itself out throughout the convention. It's no secret that Supanova, Animania and SMASH! have content overlaps and are rivals in certain aspects. So it should come to no surprise that more of the same faces keep appearing at different conventions, even as staff.

Downstairs, as I walk past the clubs and communities section of the convention, someone calls out to me.

"Mum!! Mum!"

Slightly confused, I turn around spot a familiar couple. I used to work with them in Animania, in the very same building just a few years ago, as their HR Coordinator, or "Mum" as they used to call me. Now they're together and running their own stall. Not only does the building make me feel a little nostalgic, but so too do the people.

On the main stage, Dave Harmon, Neal Downward and another fellow who I'm having difficulty tracking down are running the first stage event Scott Huttington, but not all is going quite to plan. The projector in Centennial Hall has failed at a critical moment and it takes time to power back up. The trio do their best to make do without any visual aides, but there's only so much that can be done.

Backstage in the green room, a member of Town Hall's audiovisual crew fills up a tumbler with water and while drinking it with one hand, searches through his mobile phone for one of his contacts. He paces back and forth as it dials.

"Yeah mate? I've got a problem with the projector in the hall. ... No, the one in the sky. ... Yeah, I need to pull a favour from you."

Doing the rounds, I start to wander over to the Panel Room, but get side-tracked by the Maid Cafe. They're in the middle of a final prep talk. They all huddle around their boss-lady, hip to hip in their little outfits, as she offers words of advice and some last minute reminders.

In the panel room, I meet with Issac Leung, media coordinator and fellow photographer. His career in journalism ideally suits him for the role and as it turns out the publishing company he works for is one of my employer's rivals! Talk about small worlds colliding!

Unfortunately, the panel on budget cosplay was a little underattended, likely due to the early starting time, the casual approach taken to it and the remote location of the room compared to the rest of Town Hall. I don't stick around and instead wander the venue.

Back to backstage and just underneath the main stage, vice-president Nadia Attlee and others work from their base of operations. It's a little cubby-hole where a lot of the strategic planning seems to occur from and resembles a pseudo-office for the would-be policy makers.

About this time, Town Hall staff are rigging up another projector on a makeshift platform in the upstairs gallery. They drop in one that they've been able to find and the day quietly goes on. Most attendees remain unaware that anything has happened at all.

As lunch rolls around, I find myself in the Green Room, chatting among some of the staff and volunteers (technically, they're all volunteers) about what they do. While we're talking, Gap coordinator Juliet Tran is busy cleaning up the room which, at every event I've seen so far, seems to be a near endless task. It's not something she's been told to do - it's people like Juliet who take the initiative that do what needs to be done. Meanwhile, other people wearily limp into the room, collapsing on to chairs or sitting on the floor.

Occasionally a staff member will rush into the room, look around, and grab a few volunteers who will follow after them. The cackle of communications over the radio never seems to stop, and outside in the hallway, there almost always seems to be someone holding an impromptu meeting or organising something.

Lunch arrives quite late after many calls for someone called Ray. Ray Elinon turns out to be the operations manager for SMASH! who had already gone out to get the 20 or so pizzas. They're rationed out, just two or three pieces each. However, amid the confusion, the pizza makers added bacon to the vegeterian alternative. As one of the guests is vegetarian, someone is tasked with the job of finding an alternative meal for them.

While I'm there, I meet a fellow photographer who goes by the name of Aerhi Sou and we chat for a while. On the main stage, Japanese seiyuu Miyamura Yoko is going through her panel. Aerhi, myself and the other photographers have been briefed not to take any photos of her and it is strictly enforced as I find out later in the day. A few volunteers give me a stern word for even approaching the stage with camera in hand when she's on. Despite that, I keep hearing volunteers backstage saying it is devastating to have to tell people to do so.

Talking to a few of the staff from SMASH! is an interesting insight into the emotional drain of the day that many never see. (Tangenting, my significant other who still works in the convention scene feels tired even looking at the day's proceedings in photographs!) One of the people I spoke to was volunteer coordinator Geelong Ung. If anyone could be forgiven for being tired, it would probably be him. Riding on very little sleep, he was still kicking along, doing what he could and still not considering it to be quite enough, despite the fact that he's one of the few faces I recognise that volunteer not only in SMASH!, but also for Supanova and Animania.

The day was also starting to take its toll on the maids from the cafe.

"It's actually hard work, you know? You have to be nice to everyone even if they don't deserve it!" one of them said, slumped over on a chair.

Prominent characters such as Luke Hill, dressed up as "Vash the Stampede", might look full of energy and life, but when you've had little sleep, you just have to take a nap where you can.

As the day finally did wind down, I found myself again talking to Michael from almost 10 hours earlier in the morning. We stand in a tiny little booth, chatting about how the day went and where SMASH! was going to go. With some arguing that SMASH! is Michael's little baby, there is certainly a sense of pride in being able to see it go to the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre (SCEC), especially in just the four years that it has been around.

Unfortunately, Michael will be returning to Japan and won't be around at the time, but I have a feeling he won't be able to stay away for too long.

On the way home, there were a couple of post-convention issues I had a think about.

Notably, I've wondered whether moving to the SCEC would be too big of a step for SMASH! in terms of manpower and skills. SMASH! has always had the backing of UNSW's Roundhouse infrastructure or Town Hall's* AV contractors to make sure everything went to plan or that someone could back them up.

SMASH! has never had to fly their own rigging, rent their own equipment or train staff to deal with the setup and operation. They do of course, have knowledgable people such as Jacky Fan and Anthony Fok who are experienced in these operations through other conventions, but SMASH! by itself seems to have always been able to bypass building the necessary infrastructure.

I asked Thomas what he thought the biggest challenge was and one of them was the transition to Town Hall from Roundhouse.

"After working in the Roundhouse for so many years, it's certainly easy to get attached to a venue and how things operate in it. Learning how to adapt our event to fit the limitations of Town Hall was definitely a tricky process," he wrote in an email. "The move to the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre is obviously a huge one and as exciting as it is, it is also rather daunting."

But after talking to several people within SMASH!, it seems that they aren't content to just sit around and fall into a safe rhythm of producing the same event year in and out.

"Every year we try to do things that simply has not been done by anyone in Australia before, from voice actors from Japan to the maid cafe. We aren't content to simply rinse and repeat what happened the year before and are determined that every year should be a new and different experience," Thomas said.

In a way, the move is bold - an almost go-for-broke-or-go-home attitude - but the status quo of staying at Town Hall would almost certainly limit them.

"We don't want to run an event where people who want to go can't come in. Knowing that we had to turn away hundreds of people who wanted to come this year we are quietly confident that the audience is there for a venue of this size, and we're prepared to meet the challenge of filling the space with events, vendors and guests for that audience," he said.

Attendance sold out as the building had apparently reached maximum capacity. According to the venue specifications, the areas hired for SMASH! have a limit of 1500 for Centennial Hall (clubs, community and main stage), 250 for the Vestibule (art area), 1000 for Lower Town Hall (vendors), 150 for the Marconi room (panels/karaoke), and 300 for the Marconi terrace (Outdoor area, guest signing in the morning).

The sum of these figures gives us a theoretical maximum of 3200*. I haven't been able to identify the figures for the Maid Cafe and these do not appear to include hallways or the backstage area, so the final figure may be somewhat higher. Unfortunately, Town Hall staff stepped in and decided to limit capacity to 2500, I would assume to account for traffic flow.

Later in the day, volunteers were stopping people from entering different areas. I was not allowed back into building via Town Hall's main steps by Town Hall staff (despite having a pass to do so). The restrictions didn't seem to make any sense since it had seemed like some people had already gone home and it was fairly obvious that there was little risk of overcrowding.

This brings to light a few intriguing questions; does it mean that previous conventions held at Town Hall have ignored capacity limits? Given that have been no incidents with higher numbers of patrons, does it mean that Town Hall staff are being maliciously compliant? Either way, it seems that Town Hall has again fallen out of favour with conventions.

Nevertheless, SMASH! seemed to have had few problems that they've created and are responsible for themselves. It has certainly come a long way as a budget alternative convention, and it'll be interesting to see what will happen especially in terms of building their own infrastructure and the additional costs that will come with it and the new venue hire. On a more personal note however, capturing the behind the scenes effort of SMASH! has really made me realise what really drives conventions and the anime community.

It isn't a Supanova, Animania or SMASH! suit that you put on when you volunteer for any of those conventions, nor is it a management style that volunteers subscribe to. Throughout my time behind the scenes that weekend, I found myself shaking hands with old friends, seeing familiar faces, watching people I'd trained train others. An idea isn't restricted to a convention, it's born out of a person. The people drive the convention and those that do it best don't discriminate - they do it because they love it.

Why do so many parts of conventions feel similar? Because if you look hard enough, it's always the same driving force (and sometimes even the same people) working at it behind the scenes.

Full Disclosure: I've worked as a volunteer for Animania between 2003 and 2009 (and at Town Hall between 2004 and 2008). I've been active in previous clubs and societies holding attendance at conventions between 2002 and 2008 and held a voluntary position with the Sydney University Anime Society between 2005 and 2006. I currently undertake photography services for Animania and SMASH!. I do not have a preference for, nor am I affiliated with any anime convention today.

*15/8/10 - Since writing this report, I've received comment from SMASH! providing clarification on a few issues:

1. Thomas has informed me that the AV crew responsible at Town Hall were third-party contractors hired by SMASH! and that "each and every year SMASH! has engaged third-part contractors to hire AV gear, furniture, electrical equipment and other necessary infrastructure for running our events".
2. "The capacity chart in the rooms doesn't take into account the effect of different furniture configurations. The real attendance cap was 2500 and that was the point at which we had to close sales. While the numbers were probably less than that for parts of the day (especially as the event wore on) we didn't want to risk reopening sales again in case people who had left returned to a venue that they couldn't get back into."

From point 1, it is good to learn who hired who and to recognise that. This demonstrates to me that SMASH! has experience in outsourcing the hiring and deploying of infrastructure to others, having done so at Roundhouse and now Town Hall, and can draw on this experience at the SCEC. However, my main concern is SMASH!'s reliance on such third parties and the risk of locking themselves out of the design aspect of their own events.

SMASH! has traditionally outsourced the majority of these skills, while conventions such as Animania have had an increasing emphasis on designing their own AV and lighting systems, providing in-house training and purchasing equipment. At this stage, I would say that both approaches to the depth of outsourcing have pros and cons, but the jury is still out on which is better. Certainly, I have an added interest in seeing what AV/lighting tricks conventions can pull to make their events more engaging, but I am not quite representative of the target markets for these conventions. In any case, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.

On point 2, it is disappointing that Town Hall either misrepresented their capacity figures, or that SMASH! was aware of the 2500 cap despite having over 2700 visitors at Roundhouse last year. I'm more inclined to believe the former happened, but if I am wrong, please leave your feedback in the comments.

Full gallery of photos (also available on Flickr)