Miss Nicole Jensen

Over the weekend I attended 10thousandgirl’s new life and financial planning workshop for young women. It kicked arse, so I vlogged about it. The second video contains more lifestyle tips and info I learned from the event, while the first video is an outline of the event itself. Forgive me, I did forget a lot between Saturday and now!

My HUGE thanks go out to the 10thousandgirl team (specifically Tara Grimshaw, Anneli Knight, & Zoe Lamont), Jo Baker, ING Direct, Napoleon Perdis Make-Up Academy and Opportunity International Australia. I owe OIA a massive apology as I completely forgot to mention their presence at the workshop entirely.

Cool things to check out:

I’m off to BTUB now. Catch you all another day!

Patron concerns regarding safety and security have been labeled “inaccurate” and “irrelevant” by Brisbane live music venue The Hi-Fi.

Retweeted at least five times was the link which exposed the relatively new venue in Brisbane as one which does not take seriously the views of its patrons, let alone one which responds to such matters in a responsible and attentive manner.

Long-time live music scene patron Kathleen was so appalled by standards of health and safety at The Hi-Fi that she took to writing to them. She commented on unnecessary queues in cold weather, broken glass, ill-placed bathrooms in the venue, poor band management and more importantly, extremely poor security.

I saw people waiting outside in a queue for 20 minutes and they had tickets. The queue wasn’t even that long, they were just being made to wait. The first band were already playing. The door staff would let people in in a trickle, or not let people in at all.

It’s winter. Queing for a show already paid for which is already starting… not a great start to the night, no.

I queued and got inside and headed for the toilets, which were to my dismay, up a flight of stairs down a deserted corridor. I don’t mind that the toilets are up a flight of stairs, but they are well away from the main room and I believe this puts your patrons at risk of assault or rape. I think you urgently need to address this by having security patrol upstairs regularly.

Issues are getting serious now; when your patrons believe that they are not safe in your venue, you are doing something wrong. Very wrong.

I was shocked that you were serving drinks in glass, especially with the recent “spate” of glassings. I was standing in the middle of the steps on the dancefloor for both sets and by the time the Dreamkillers had finished playing, there was broken glass all over the floor. The broken glass on the floor only increased while The Fireballs played. I saw punters deliberately throwing glasses on to the floor and into the crowd. I was truly horrified.

I saw the crowd break up fights and scuffles but security never intervened. Security was also nowhere to be found when punters were smashing and throwing glass. Security were nowhere to be found when a young man had a fit on the dance floor, I saw his mates carry him out. I noted one security guard on the barrier but he stayed in the one spot the entire time and didn’t move or interact with the crowd.

Like I said before; very, very wrong. And my favourite summary sentence from Kathleen:

I have never been to a venue with such weak and obviously incompetent and overwhelmed security.

This was the abysmal reply which Kathleen received from Scott Ahpee, a month later and after a second e-mail:

As the General Manager of Operations, I read through your email immediately on receipt, and clarified all matters with our venue staff.  Replying to your email was (until today) on my ‘to-do’ list, but a detailed response on every matter would require time I’ve yet to have spare.  However, since you clearly require a response immediately, I write this now.  On discussion with venue staff, management, security and production crew, as well as discussions with the tour manager of the Fireballs, I found most of your complaints to be inaccurate, and others to be irrelevant.  If you do not wish to return to the Hi-Fi, that is your choice.

Time yet to spare? Perhaps Mr Ahpee should be allocating time to deal with public complaints about his venue before a significant amount of patronage is lost? Your venue has been complained about in the retrospect of health and safety concerns, which I deem to be quite damn important. There are reports of glassings and injury as a result of lack of security and you claim them to be “inacurate”? Also, if he had so little time to write an e-mail, I question if Mr Ahpee even had such discussions with the above mentioned parties. Might want to check that ‘to-do’ list again.

Meanwhile, the Hi-Fi bar is looking to utilise my favourite social media network, Twitter. How on earth will they be able to manage a constant stream of customer comments of 140 characters if they take a month or so to reply [even if indecently] to a formal complaint?

Nicole thanks Semi-Permanent volunteer and attendee Natalie Perkins* for this guest post.

Semi-Permanent hit Brisbane on Wednesday, and I was lucky enough to grab a ticket in return for volunteering to pack the swag bags. This gave me the opportunity to see how the event was organised, as well as participating as an audience member. I left the conference full of ideas and inspiration, but I also left carrying a semi-permanent reminder of the awful seating at the Brisbane Convention Centre!

What was good was great!

The speakers were generally fabulous and were very relevant to my own area of art/ design practice. The standout speaker for me was Timba Smits, who is an absolute juggernaut of motivation, inspiration and hard work. I did a recap of Semi-Permanent on my own blog, and went into further detail on my favourite presenters

As a volunteer and a member of the audience, I was impressed with the organisation of the whole shebang. My fellow swag packers were design students from the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, and we all worked together as some kind of fabulous packing contraption to pack over 700 bags in around 2 hours. During that time I noticed that Sasha, our humble volunteer herder and conference organiser, was busily organising all the other aspects of the day. I didn’t see any dramas, everything looked under control! As a volunteer this was heartening, but as an audience member it’s even more meaningful because you want to know that the conference you’re attending is credible and well-oiled and valuable!

I was stoked to see that Mag Nation had a stall! I adore magazines and books and was keen to delve into a few throughout the day. I took home a copy of Wooden Toy issue 5.

What could have been done better?

Overall, the day felt a little bit like being in a full day of lectures at uni or TAFE. It was hard on the butt for a few reasons! The speakers did go overtime which meant that our breaks were sacrificed. Obviously if you get passionate people speaking about their creative practices, they’re going to go overtime. I don’t know if the scarce break syndrome was due to Brisbane’s Semi-Permanent being crammed into only one day, but I beg the organisers – can we graduate to a two day event next year?!

Extending the format over two days would mean that other interactive activities could be integrated – activities that alleviate the sore butt syndrome, and encourage networking and participation within the audience! I would love to see micro-activities between organiser-audience, speaker-audience, audience-audience that allow everyone to mingle and move their limbs and make connections.

Another bummer was to do with access to food/ drinks and the scarcity of time available to access those things. The convention centre has a Subway right across the road, and Melbourne St and it’s various delicious edibles about 5 minutes walk away. The shortened lunch break meant that people were scrambling to get fed and watered, and liberate their bladders! Can we integrate some kind of in-house munching experience? This would also enhance networking and community-making.

My last beef is with the swag bags themselves. I was a little horrified to see the amount of useless bits of paper in the bags. Can we rethink the concept of the swag bag for next year, so it’s inline with eco-design considerations? As a print designer, I’m already painfully aware of how much paper waste my practice produces. As an artist, I try to incorporate salvaged and reclaimed paper stock into my work as a way of off-setting my paper wasting ways. There are a bunch of smart and innovative people behind and around Semi-Permanent – this could be something that is solved in a really interesting way: through smarter packaging ideas, and encouraging sponsors to promote their products in more creative ways.

What downright sucked

THE SEATS. I will preface this by saying that I am fat, like a lot of people. I ended up with a bruise on my hip because of the stingy seating at the Brisbane Convention Centre. It made me think about how boring the venue choice was for such a creative industry. I absolutely abhor having to sit still for eight hours and it’s not just because I have a slamming booty. Do we need to sit in stadium seating? Is there any other way of holding a creative conference? 

What I find value in

As a conference attendee, I find value in the following things:

• Networking/ rapport building amongst local industry people
• Professional development – time management, industry insider tips, etc.
• Kick-arse speakers
• Access to limited edition stuff

Semi-Permanent Brisbane met most of these criteria. I did manage to do a small amount of networking (amazing considering the amount of free time was miniscule!) and I was impressed with the speakers. I would like to see more practical topics discussed – many creative people get too caught up in the creative process and neglect the management facet of their practice so I think it would be incredibly valuable to learn how other creatives do administrative stuff in an innovative way. I will be anticipating the conference next year, if just to see how many of the issues from this year are addressed. Until then, I’ll be icing my bruised hip and drawing… always with the drawing!

**Natalie is a freelance graphic designer and illustrator who doesn’t really like talking in the third person. Her personal illustrative work deals in symbolism, appropriation, the feminine, detachment and obsessive compulsion. Her proudest achievements include being on the verge of completing a double degree in visual arts and education for nearly a decade, being a housewife who can only bake cupcakes and making her debut on the Brisbane emerging arts scene this year by appearing in the Semi Permanent 2009 book and getting an invite to her first group show at KILN in July. Her work is currently showing until early May at KILN’s Works on Paper exhibition.