Muki.Dorifuto.com Photography talk with random tangents into the unknown

Smash! 2011 – A long(er) inside perspective on the event and its management

They say that late is better than never, right? I've had to question that while writing up a post-convention report from my attendance at Smash! 2011.

Please be warned, this is long, and may offend.

Before I start, I'll present you with a couple of warnings.

1. This is long. This has taken me a long time to write because there are a lot of things to say. Even then, I haven't said all that I can and I can't possibly claim this report of sorts to be conclusive.
2. This is personal opinion. You may disagree with what I write. That's fair. I have tried to provide reasoning behind my opinion, but you may still disagree. That's not necessarily bad, but just as I'll respect your right to a differing opinion, I ask that you respect mine.
3. This is not timely. I've been having difficulty deciding whether or not to post this and had decided to delay it to outside the "honeymoon" period of a convention. I further underestimated the time it would take to write, the time I had available. It is very late. I'm also aware that the timing places it about the same time as Animania. This is not intentional.
4. Finally, this is not a positive report. You're likely here because you liked the event, and opposing viewpoints are naturally met with some resistance. It's also one of the reasons this report is late. I had considered that posting this would result in the possibility of never being invited back to the event, but I'm hoping the organisers will see that this is not a baseless attack and that though I'd like all of my reports to be positive, I'm not in the business of spinning negative issues into positive ones for the sake of getting along.

Hey. There's daylight. It's soft and glowy. Daylight isn't usually around, is it? What time is it? Wait, what day is it?

It's amazing how fast you can jump out of bed when you realise you're late. I'm meant to be shooting for the Sydney Manga and Anime Show at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, but here I am snoozing away.

As I run past the exhibition halls, I wonder if all this space will ever get used. The thought it is pushed out of my mind as I notice up ahead that the area is densely packed full of people. Is this another event? No. There are people dressed in costumes — cosplayers. Was there an evacuation like there was several years ago? As I get closer I realise the line goes out the door and around the corner. I slow my pace and realise if they haven't gotten in yet, it's likely I haven't missed anything.

I step out for a second to survey the scene, only to be met with a line that disappears around the corner. I consider for a second that perhaps I misread my clock this morning and I'm actually not running that late, but as I make my way past the registration desks, I notice there are already people inside.

As I stand there, trying to figure out which desk is for door sales and which is for pre-registered patrons, I realise I've managed to wander past their staff and into the venue itself. I quickly come back and try to find someone that will help me find my pass, and eventually find a free volunteer and Rob Howard.

Rob is one of those guys that I always see in person, on the web and on Twitter, but somehow never get to speak to. When I see him, he's dressed casually — a red tee and jeans — waving down patrons to try and bring some order to the chaos. The software behind the ticketing system is his creation, from the creation of PDF-based barcode tickets to its integration with PayPal and BPAY. In fact, Rob is responsible for the back-end side of Smash!'s website and its mini-sites, such as its recruitment drive. He's been Smash!'s code monkey for a while now, and although he used to also be their secretary, it looks like he stepped down to concentrate just on coding this year.

As fate would have it, I never end up speaking to Rob. He lets my volunteer handler know where I should go and quickly heads back into the fray. I don't blame him for not being able to have a chat — the first three hours of a convention are when ticketing is taken to its peak.

I make it as far as the entrance to the venue before my handler stops to have a chat with some friends. It's apparent that many volunteers aren't aware of who is or isn't around and many people are meeting for the first time that day. After stopping a few more times, we make it to the info desk, where I meet Juliet Tran, another member of Smash!'s board.

I don't know it at the time, but Juliet would be at the info desk for most of the day, tirelessly answering the same questions, over and over, like an automated robot, or an IT support desk for those who know what it's like. Have you tried plugging it in?

I wander into the vendors area and for a moment I'm slightly confused. Volunteers are handing out showbags at the door to the hall, leading me to incorrectly wonder if that's the entire size of the venue. No, definitely not. Where's the main stage? I wander off like a kid exploring a new house.

The auditorium is giant. It's huge. I wonder for a second whether it's too big, but am distracted by the weight of my bags and the uncomfortable warmth in the room. It doesn't make sense to turn on the air conditioning when there are so few people in the auditorium, but it reminds me that I need to dump my stuff in the staff room.

After dropping my bags off and stripping off some of my clothes, I realise it's going to be particularly difficult to capture the behind-the-scenes side of Smash!. There really isn't much of a backstage area like in Town Hall, just a small room for staff to eat lunch and another identical, but separate room for their operations.

It's at this point I start to question what's going on between volunteers and management. Why the separation? It's a thought I dismiss at the time, but continue to ponder throughout the day. Instead, I decide to make the rounds, taking a look at each area of the venue.

It's pretty impressive, really. The number of smaller rooms around the auditorium house screenings, guest signings, the Hobby-Co build-your-own Gundam sessions. There's even a dedicated studio set up for photography. It does get slightly congested at times, but there's little you can do to move the dead-set walls.

Panels were also being held in one of the rooms and at times I felt bad for the speaker. When they're meant to be smaller, more intimate sessions, the last thing a speaker needs is noise filtering in from the outside corridor. Still, no one seemed that fazed by it, and the panel kept trucking along.

As lunch rolled around and my stomach began to protest, it was soon time to find something to eat and more importantly, something with caffeine. There was a coffee stand set up within the building, but why settle for that with Harbourside right outside the venue?

The choice of venue allows Smash! to dodge a tricky problem when it comes to convention food. There is all sorts of red tape when it comes to enabling food vendors to set up shop at an event and an additional logistical nightmare when you realise they need to have access to clean water, cool rooms, additional stock and a way to dispose of waste. Even if you can dedicate the hours to working with vendors and ensuring both parties have jumped through all the regulatory hoops, there's still a question of who the event should or shouldn't have invited, and convincing them to come.

For Smash!, there is no need to consider whether having an Italian food vendor at Japanese-themed convention is appropriate or not since it's not their concern where people go to eat, and likewise, no one expects to have Japanese-themed food if they leave the convention to eat. It's a fortunate position to be in since everyone ends up happy, no one takes on any additional risk, and no one questions the theme of their food.

Post-lunch I'm in to the meat of the matter, shooting the Madman-sponsored cosplay event. It doesn't take long for the auditorium to fill up, alleviating my earlier concerns that it's too big, and the air conditioning kicks in to keep everyone at a reasonable temperature.

The three MCs don't try to kid their way through — they're no experts on the current generation of anime or manga and they don't try to hide the fact. They do, at times, unnecessarily draw attention to the few technical failings of the AV crew (which are to be expected since it's rare for everything to go off without a hitch), but you get the continued impression of total transparency rather than a suspicion that they're only smiling to your face.

The sound and lighting crew do their best to keep each cosplayer consistently lit as they come on, but having seen the potential of the equipment the venue is running, I am left underwhelmed. I am quite biased, having had a former interest in stage lighting, but I could help but feel that the stage's potential had gone wasted.

The lighting equipment at SCEC places Smash! at an enviable position of having the most technologically advanced setup compared to any other anime convention in Australia. The stage could have been set up to provide a particular "mood", but it was obvious that there had been no attempt to work with cosplayers or to even an attempt to change it on the fly. It was the equivalent of buying a Ferrari and then driving around a race track at 40km/h — nice, shiny, attractive and more than sufficient to get you around at that speed, but completely wasted.

However, like a Ferrari, you'd be a fool to go full-pelt without some sort of training or experience, or to at least have someone qualified behind the wheel. I brought up the issue of in-house vs outsourcing AV/lighting techs last year, and it appears that either a lack of in-house technical knowledge, or the inability of the SCEC to allow them to control all elements of the stage has really stopped Smash! for realising the full potential of the venue.

Still, by last year's standards, the stage was a definite improvement and your average attendee wouldn't have expected anything more. What's important for the paying customer is that they are satisfied, right?

Well, from an attendee's point of view, I would say Smash! would have been a resounding success. It appears to have come a long way from the Roundhouse at UNSW, and been brought up to a rather professional standard. It has international guests, a modern facility to showcase from, a large number of highly successful vendors and sponsors, and will probably be able to use this clout to go on to attract further success.

Unfortunately, I can't give its management the same applause. It really pains me to write this, but while the venue has certainly grabbed the attention of attendees, the inner core of an event — the part that isn't necessarily seen — has not grown as much as it should have, in my opinion.

Smash! had a very tough challenge ahead of them in not having much experience in best utilising the venue and while I think overall they handled that quite well, there were some areas that could have been improved.

There were significant times of congestion, most notably at the escalators, pre and post major events in the auditorium, which were only made worse by the close proximity of the maid cafe. Although one level above the auditorium was blocked off, this was still accessible via other routes in the building.

There were also several other points in the venue that allowed unpaid members of the public to stumble into the convention, assisted by a lack of venue signage, and wonder what on Earth was going on. SCEC staff were able to act as doormen, but it left me wondering whether this was overlooked during planning, and what would have happened if SCEC staff were not there to complement Smash!'s volunteers.

Volunteer numbers themselves were particularly low, with several volunteers and Smash! staff telling me the turn up rate had been as low as 40 per cent of the original number that they had recruited. Recruitment always aims to allow some breathing space, however in an interview with Smash! president Thomas Munro, he admitted that this year that luxury was missing.

A lack of human resources management was also evident while spending some time in Smash!'s operations room. A large floor plan of the venue, complete with pins for the expected locations of staff members was meant to ensure volunteers could be easily managed. However, most pins were in a single large box labelled "Missing".

Among volunteers, the general mood was positive, however there were an alarming number of volunteers who told me they didn't know why they had turned up at all. In particular, one volunteer was upset that they would not even be able to go to the staff afterparty as it didn't cater for those under the age of 18. Its after speaking to this one volunteer in particular that I realise what was so weird about having separate staff and operations rooms. There's a fairly clear-cut distinction between the upper and lower echelons of the organisations, something that is necessary to have some element of order, but physical separation may be pushing it just a bit too far.

While Smash! isn't treating its volunteers badly, it certainly could do better to look after them, especially since volunteers can now be quite picky about which convention they choose to freely dedicate their time to.

In addition to volunteers, I think Smash! needs to consider how it treats its guests, the paying public.

With the move to the SCEC, Smash! has reached the tipping point that similar conventions have gone through. A grassroots convention gains its credibility from the people that organise it and how they deliver. Once past a certain critical mass, what's more important is the convention's reputation rather than the people behind it. Now several years old and with enough of a following for the event to represent itself, most of the attendees at Smash! have never met or heard of members of the board, or would care to do so.

What's that got to do with how Smash! treats its guests? Well one of the main trump cards that Smash! has held all these years is that the organisers have been truthful, transparent and upfront about just about every matter related to the planning of the event. The event being responsible for its own reputation rather than its the organisers isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact it is inevitable for growth, but it doesn't mean that transparency needs to suffer.

Whether consciously realising that they aren't in the spotlight anymore or not, I feel that that the transparency of Smash!'s organisers has dropped this year. Unfortunately, the worst example of this comes from Smash!'s president. Smash! as an event would never criticise another convention, call customers losers, or consider customer queries to be beneath them, yet Thomas does all three on his publicly viewable Twitter stream in which he clearly identifies himself as an organiser of an anime convention and lists Smash!'s website as his own.

Thomas is certainly entitled to his own opinion, however it's an odd thing to post publicly, especially when he writes in an official capacity, "SMASH! wouldn't be anything without the people that come and buy tickets to the show every year. Each and every one of them deserves to give us their feedback and insist on better if something isn't good enough", demonstrating his awareness of how important Smash!'s guests are.

There are others on Smash!'s board that conduct the same behaviour of saying one thing officially and another unofficially, and while some might give them more leniency for doing so since they're unpaid, I think the issue of payment (or rather, a lack thereof) makes the matter worse.

If I were to publicly bad-mouth my employer's customers, even through unofficial channels, I would expect to be reprimanded, but possibly sympathised with since I'm just doing my job and my motivation more than likely comes from the need to secure a stable income. As a volunteer, the motivation to run a convention is entirely different and one would hope based on a love for the event. To have such clashing opinions indicates that this passion has been lost or is on its way out.

It's possible that Smash!'s upper management are experiencing a level of fatigue in running it, something I've seen happen in university societies and other conventions time and time again. Its ability to pick up again will rely on its management finding that lost passion, or handing the reins over to someone that still has it.

That may be a possibility next year, with Thomas declining to answer whether he would return as president next year, or place someone else in the role.

It's been an extremely difficult verdict to hand down, with the reluctance to do so making this post-report extremely late. No doubt, attendees had a very enjoyable time and was possibly the very best event Smash! has held to date, but it was also possibly the very worst in terms of internal organisation and for the direction of its management.

Knowing some of those involved in Smash!'s management has made this doubly difficult to post, but I do believe it is the wakeup call the organisation needs and at least outwardly states that it welcomes.

Will they take it on board? If their past performance is anything to go by, I think there's a good chance that they will. However, the kicker here is that times are changing. The real question is whether they care as much as they used to. Bring into the equation the possibility that their president and hence management team may change next year and really it's anyone's guess as to whether things get incrementally or exponentially better or worse.

Disclaimer: While I no longer work on the board of any conventions, I have been involved in the planning of Animania in the past and regularly attend anime conventions as their photographer. While I haven't intentionally worked any negative or positive bias from that position into this report, I feel the need to disclose this former position should I have been biased unconsciously.