SMASH! News

So, after all that – SMASH! is over for 2010!

It’s hard to describe what an immense pleasure it has been to plan and coordinate this year’s event. I truly believe, and I hope that you will agree, that this was our best year yet.

There are a number of people who deserve a great deal of thanks for their support to SMASH!

Yuko Miyamura, Tiffany Grant, Matt Greenfield, Shaun Healey and Mikiko Ponczcek were fantastic as our guests and made the entire event one unlike any other. If you’d told me two years ago that we’d be bringing 5 overseas guests to SMASH! in 2010, I’d have told you you were dreaming. But they were really here and so incredibly gracious and willing to help us out. We hope you enjoyed their presence as much as we did.

Our sponsors Madman Entertainment, HobbyCo, the City of Sydney, Wacom, Adobe, Kiseki Manga and Smith Micro Software helped us take the event to a whole new level this year. We don’t have the budget of a professional convention and we can do what we do only because companies like this provide incredible support. The event would not be what it was if it weren’t for sponsors who are willing to donate money, prizes, time and effort.

Our partners and friends at Supanova, Timezone and the Sydney Opera House helped get the word out out about the event. It’s hard to believe this is only Year 4 but we’re still a young event and there are plenty of people who’ve never heard of us. Thanks to our partners, that number is rapidly diminishing!

The staff of the Sydney Town Hall went above and beyond anything we could have expected. If it weren’t for the restrictions on the number of people you can physically put in the building (more on that below), we’d love to stay in Town Hall for a lot longer. Nothing was ever too much trouble and we especially would like to thank Sandra Domelow and Danielle Buckley who were kind, patient and understanding no matter how weird our requests were (Maid Cafe).

The SMASH! Management and Staff have worked on this event for almost 12 months. The event might only be for a day but I can assure you that the level of effort that was put in was incredible. No matter how unreasonable my requests were (run sheets!), the Management and Staff did it. And the event ran better because of their hard work.

The SMASH! Crew were the best group of helpers we could have ever asked for. We had a great response from people volunteering to be of assistance this year and Geelong and Kirsty spent two weeks whittling them down to the best of the best. I have only heard great comments about the Crew and I think that’s a testament to their resolve to provide the best service they could — whether that was to a staff member or a member of the public.

Speaking of which, our attendees! You blew the doors off the place! What a terrific response. At the end of the day this is really about you and your enjoyment. We’re putting on the show that we hope you enjoy and the only thing that makes it worthwhile is hearing that someone had a great time and can’t wait to come back next year.

It goes without saying that there were people who were unhappy last weekend. The two biggest issues were the venue selling out and the confiscation of weapons at the door.

I’m disappointed that anyone who wanted to come to SMASH! was unable to. All I can say is that we honestly weren’t sure that we’d get as large a turnout as we did. This was our first year in a new venue and after being two days last year we just weren’t sure what a step back to one day would mean. For emergency reasons, the venue has a limit to the number of people that are permitted inside at any one time and we were under an agreement to stop selling tickets once the maximum capacity had been reached. I’m incredibly sorry to those that travelled to SMASH!, line up and weren’t able to get in on the day. We announced the move to the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre on Saturday because we didn’t want this to ever be an issue again. I realise that’s small consolation for people that felt like they wasted their day this year but we hope you’ll be with us again next year. We’re working to making it even better than this year

In regards to the weapons confiscation, we apologise for the manner in which it was conducted. Unfortunately, a few cosplayers carried realistic looking firearms into the city and concerned members of the public called the police. I met with several officers on Saturday morning and was instructed to enforce a stricter weapons policy than normal. We’re looking at how we can best deal with this for next year but we apologise for everyone who was inconvenienced.

The things that went wrong this year fortunately seemed to be eclipsed by those that went right and we are incredibly excited about 2011. If you’ve got an idea, we’d love to hear it. We’ve created a special website at http://ideas.smash.org.au/ where you can submit, vote and comment on the ideas for next year. Please let us know what you’d like to see and we’ll do our best to make it happen =)