Apollo's Part 2

The Apollo Awards were born. The opportunity for fans worldwide to show the main stream media that we did have a voice and it was a loud one. That we weren't just a bunch of strange people that dressed up and lived in the basements of our parents or similar places.

Science fiction and fantasy products ruled the world when it came to making money for studios etc and we wanted it known that we deserved to have our thoughts and opinions heard and respected. So we set off to help the world have their say. That's the two of us on the right,in an early planning meeting  at the home of our creative consultant, see we had people with important titles working on this, this was a planning day to start chasing the funding for the project.

Then something interesting happened, we discovered it wasn't enough to  simply have this great idea, one we knew the world would embrace and rally around. We found out the need for the business structure that went with it. The hours spent creating business and marketing plans and strategies for how to approach which company and organization. When and where to meet , how to say what needed to be said but in such away that it was not asking for a hand out. And thus was born 101010 Productions Pty Ltd.

This was created for the sole purpose of staging "The Apollo Awards". For those really clever ones reading this you will of course have worked out the 101010 is binary for 42, the answer to life the universe and everything. Yes we are that conceited to name our company that way because we had all the answers.  With this side of things completed  we went in search of sponsors ( if only Leonard Nimoy had hosted this in search of) and we found tremendous support and enthusiasm and encouragement for the project but alas no money. 

We became even more creative and redesigned the whole show but it was just not possible to be able to stage the event and the associated voting that went with it. So by know you are all thinking wow this is a bit of a bummer blog, lost dreams and hopes. Shattered  beliefs and expectations. But it's not. Many things that were created along this journey are still happening and in no small way this honours what we started out doing.

Soon I'll be blogging about "The Pythia Festival" about the "Australian Fan Awards", and a host of other activities all of which were born from and created to support "The Apollo Awards"

Are "The Apollo Awards" dead and gone? Let me  quote one of my life long hero's, Captain James T. Kirk.

"There are always possibilities" Spock would say.

Apollo's All Part 1.

In my recent New York blogs I mentioned "The Apollo Project" and thought I would take the opportunity to talk about what was one of the most exciting and yet disappointing times of my life.

Let's be very clear on one thing, I'm a fan, I have been since seeing my first episode of Dr Who over 40 years ago. I grew up with original Star Trek, all the shows of Irwin Allen such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space etc all the way through to today's adventures.

So it used to always annoy me that my shows received only limited if any sort of recognition from any or all awards shows. In 1988 I feel into the convention scene as I have mention in past issues and found like minded people to share my frustrations and excitements with. We had our own awards and spoke long and loudly to anyone who would listen but this still wasn't enough.

In 2004 I meet and started working with an awesome individual who shared many of the same ideas as myself. Together we started forming a concept to showcase the best that fans could offer in the way of costuming, model making, writing, and short films. These would all be presented at an awards ceremony after an Australian wide competition. It was and still is a great idea and may happen, but as we worked on this an greater undertaking was born, "THE APOLLO PROJECT". Imagine the Oscars meet MTV. Below is a part of our pitch document.

The Apollo Awards Ceremony is a gala red-carpet event presented in front of a live audience hosted in picture-perfect, subtropical Queensland, Australia.

The inaugural event will honour NASA astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, famously recognisable from the first moon landing in Apollo 11, and three actors: Richard Hatch, Jamie Bamber, and Michael Forest - all of whom have portrayed characters named "Apollo".

This was to be a worldwide effort to raise our voices and and show our support not just for the special effects but for everyone who contributes to sci-fi/ fantasy being what it is. The image on the right was the design of the award. You can see from the names above we certainly had some support for the project.

This was the start of what was going to a integrated website that would allow the world to talk and vote and show the mainstream media that we were more than just people who dressed up on the  weekend, but it was an expensive exercise and we were in the market at the wrong time.

I'll continue with the creation and journey the "The Apollo Project" took me on in my next blog. Plus tell you how it changed me and my world and how it still continues to do so.

New York New York Part 2

The show started and what a show it was, I am yet to experience anything like it, at one point they closed the venue because it had reached it's capacity of 120,000 people.  

The costuming or cosplay if you want to call it that was amazing. My favourite piece of "performance art" was a fellow dressed as the Joker who had a life size Robin dummy. He would stop drop the dummy on the ground and start beating it with crowbar recreating the scene from the original death in the family. He would then just move on to the next spot. Fans making the effort to be a part of the festivities by simply wear a pair of Hulk hands up to the most elaborate outfits you could imagine. 

The variations and effort that fans went to was truly inspiring. Even pets get in on the joy and excitement of the day.

The diversity of what was there, from gaming to comic books to film and television. Endless rows of artists showing the wares. Fans pitching their fan films, an entire area dedicated to pod casters who were doing "live shows" from the event. This was a wonderland of epic proportions.

But the time came for us to launch of project and to do this we had the help of long-time friend Richard Hatch. 

Amongst the thousands at New York Comic Con a crowd gathered to see what all the fuss  and giant countdown timer was all about, the Apollo Project was launched, no not an attempt to land a man on the moon, but a global voting and awards event for Sci-fi fantasy. I will discuss the Apollo Project in a future blog. Whilst the project is yet to be fully realized the memoires of that weekend and the fans and frenzy of such a large convention will long stay with me.

I never got to a single panel or workshop or saw much of the event itself. I did a quick stroll around when I had the opportunity but not long enough to  fully take it all in. Yet the excitement, fun and wonder was infectious.  To miss quote a certain Time Lord " One I shall come back again, yes I shall come back"

New York New York. Part 1

A couple of years ago during one of my periods of attempted world domination I set off with my then partner in crime to launch a project at New York Comic Con. Now I had been to Las Vegas and attended the Creation Star Trek Convention, so I was pretty sure I knew what to expect.

I was wrong.

In my various roles I am an Event Sales specialist my then partner is an event management specialist so between us we were confident that we knew what we were doing to establish our site on the convention floor and present our concept.

This is where the universe reeled back and with enormous amounts of laughter said  "puny humans" and proceeded to show us the error of our ways. We had organized everything and timed things perfectly from our arrival and set-up to the delivery of our AV equipment. Many emails between us and the event coordinators and the contractors had our schedules  set and ready to go to maximize our time in New York and deliver our message.

I just didn't realize how long both coffee breaks and lunch breaks take.

The entire operations of the floor shut down during these periods, whilst people continued to work on their stands nothing was delivered, nothing could be connected and nothing could be done about it. If not for large amounts of coffee I would have gone mad.

If you have ever stood in line waiting to be served, inching slowly forward waiting for your turn with your deli number in hand, then you're next and the person serving goes to lunch. That's how it feels.

I had rung the av supplier, our equipment had been delivered a hour ago a quick check with

the operations coordinator  and I found it was at the loading dock, but it couldn't be delivered because the loading dock staff were on lunch. I was then informed that the crew that were doing the delivers to the sites on the floor would be on lunch after the dock team came back. This meant a av set up that I could go and carry back to my stand myself would not be delivered for over two hours.

This is just the way it is. We thought we were ready for anything but we weren't, so all of you planning to set up in the USA, go for it, but talk to someone who's been there first. We sorted it all out, I missed getting to go to a museum I really wanted to go to, but the adventure was now only beginning.

The doors were about to open with 120,000 fans arriving . What happened next?

More to come.  

Life in the Dark Times

Too many young readers of this you will find it difficult to believe that there was actually a time when there was very little science-fiction or fantasy on TV or at the movies. To many of us this is known as the "Dark Times".

Star Trek the next generation didn't arrive until 1987, and that was only in the USA. For many of us in other countries we would rely on friends to tape episodes and send them to us by mail. I can hear the horrified screams of the none believers now, "you had to wait how long to watch things".  I remember my first viewing of a Next Generation episode here in Australia, to convert it to the Australian system someone had played the tape back on their US compatible equipment and then recorded it using a video camera that had framed the tv, it was all very high tech.

We were of course with out any Doctor Who after 1989  and the only English sci-fi was Blakes's 7 that ended in 1982. Yes  this was the time that produced the original Star Wars 1977 and then the first Star Trek movie 1979, plus we had Alien thrown in there for good measure, but it was still only every two years or so that we saw any new product.

So what did we do to keep the faith, to hold onto our fandom and dream of the heady days that were to come.


We would have club meetings. In Fan clubs around the world people  would get together and discuss their favourite shows and episodes, talk about conventions,  a rare thing to attend a convention in those times. Write new stories using, a typewriter and publish them using photocopiers or other ancient technology. 


It was called costuming in those days and not cosplay, as the concept of performing as your character was still in it's infancy, and if you came wearing a costume that had only a passing resemblance to the character or in a full Marvin the Paranoid Android outfit you were applauded for your efforts.

But those days did have their perils. I remember being at a small convention in Melbourne, where a well known costumer had arrived in is Marvin outfit  only to discover that the elevator to the convention floor was out of order and he had to walk up stairs. So he promptly removed the costume.

It was a sight not soon forgotten  to see several men carrying bits of Marvin into the convention floor and one fellow in is underwear then proceeding to climb back into the suit.
We are blessed today with such variety of product and activities at our disposal. The ability to communicate easily, but every now and then take the time to just get together for no other reason than to say hello.

It still fascinates me that the fan community is one of the most inclusive of groups world wide welcoming all comers,  perhaps that is the greatest legacy of the Dark Times.

The Blue Hat Blogs

So what are the Blue Hat Blogs and who am I writing them. In recent years the blue hat has become my trade mark whilst hosting at the Supanova Pop Culture Conventions, if you want to know more about them go here and have a look, www.supanova.com.au. But before them I was a fan, a promoter, a guest and of course an MC over the past 25 years.

The hat is here.

I attended my first convention in 1988, it was held in the Tower Mill Hotel in Brisbane Australia. The tower Mill had two interesting features, one being its revolving restaurant and the other the fact that the building was round.

The restaurant will feature later in a story of terror and amazement, but let’s talk about the hotel being round. The function rooms were located on the ground floor and had curved walls; this meant the further back you were in the room the less you saw of the main presentations. It also raised some interesting issues regarding static displays as the tables didn't quite fit properly.

But considering Brisbane was in the grip of Expo 88 at the time it all seemed perfectly reasonable.

Back to the restaurant.

I have long had a love affair with the works of Gerry Anderson, one of my favourite characters being that of Captain Scarlet, most likely because my acting is just as wooden, so for my first convention I went all out and arrived in costume as said puppet. I ventured forth to meet with others where I had been told.

Excuse the photo it is the only one I have

When you step out of the elevator doors at the restaurant our table will be directly in front of you. Do you remember I said it was a revolving restaurant? So there was a table in front of me but not full of people i knew.

This is where the terror and amazement comes in, I promptly wandered around till I found them. Terror on behalf of the other diner’s, amazement on behalf of those I was meeting.

That was my introduction to conventions, and I shall elaborate more of the good the bad and the amazing journey I have had in further blogs.