My VidCon Australia Experience!

Early last month, Australia had it's very first VidCon!! When I found out VidCon was finally coming to Australia, I was so excited! I was lucky enough to get tickets as a birthday present and I'm so endlessly grateful to have gotten the chance to go to VidCon and meet my favourite creators! This was my experience.

We had community passes which meant we could go to the community panels and enter the meet-and-greet lottery. Through the meet-and-greet lottery, we got the chance to meet Shaaanxo, HeyImBee and Rackaracka! So on the first day of VidCon we had to wake up at 6am because our first meet and greet was at 9:30am. For anyone that knows me knows that I struggle with waking up in the mornings. So this was a challenge. It took us a bit over an hour to get there, but Shelby and I were so excited!!

Our first meet and greet was with Shaaanxo who I've been watching for four years! She's one of my favourite beauty gurus and I was literally freaking out so much before meeting her. Finding the meet and greet room was the hardest for us, but it turned out that we were literally standing right in front of it the whole time but we just never noticed. We waited in line for about 20 mins and it was so weird seeing her in person after watching her behind a screen for years. When it was my turn to go up to her, I felt so at ease because of how welcoming and kind she was. I gave her the letter I wrote and she said she loved my outfit! (Which was actually inspired by her!). We took our pictures and then left. It was amazing because she actually took her time to talk to us and was such a lovely person overall!

After meeting Shaaanxo, we actually ran into an old friend of mine named Ruby and her friend Steven! They're both YouTubers as well, so you should totally check them out! It was so nice to finally see Ruby since we hadn't seen each other for years!! We ended up spending our whole weekend together.

One of the best things about VidCon was that everyone was so nice, like it was just so easy to make new friends! And it was amazing because everyone had their cameras out and were vlogging, so I felt so comfortable and in my element.

The first panel we went to was called Crafting a Community. This was basically all about how to increase engagement and build a community on YouTube. I thought this was perfect since I'm a small YouTuber trying to grow my channel. The panelists were Dani Mansutti, MatPat, Tyler Oakley and Jake Bley. So basically what they said was to just be yourself and have your own style that will make your channel stand out. I liked that each of them gave us a little insight on how they started their YouTube channel and what they did to increase engagement.

The next panel we went to was with Jennxpenn, Ricky Dillon, Nathan Zed and Mathew McKenna for Growing Up Online. This was definitely my favourite panel! I found this one so inspiring as these YouTubers started their channels when they were so young!! Jenn started hers when she was about 11, and now she's 21 and still making videos! I think this panel was one of the more personal ones as each of them talked about their journey/growing up on YouTube. They talked about bullying at school, confusion with career pathways and much more! The part that really stood out for me was when Jenn told us that she was planning to study psychology in college, but one of her teachers actually said she has a special talent for YouTube and to stick with that. So the point of what she said was to just do what you love and you might not get support at the start, but you definitely will in the future. Her words really stuck with me, and to be honest, really changed my mindset about a lot of things.

From that moment, I knew that I had to meet Jenn and explain to her how much she's actually helped me by just being herself. Sadly, I didn't actually get to meet her or tell her in person all the things I wanted to say. So instead, I decided to tweet her a screenshot of everything I wrote to explain just how grateful I was to have been at that panel to hear what she had to say. And lucky for me, she actually responded back! I wasn't expecting her to actually see it because by the time I tweeted that @ her, she was in LA!

After Jenn's panel, we went to go line up to meet HeyImBee! She's a gaming YouTuber, and I am obsessed with all her Sims 4 series (especially the bumble/villareal one!). I think we waited in line for about 45 mins, and we didn't expect there to be so many people because the line-up for Shannon's was so much shorter! Shelby and I were probably the oldest to meet her but we didn't care, we were still as excited as all the little kids there. I LOVED talking to Bee, I felt like I was talking to my best friend that I've known for my whole life, but we only talked for like 10 mins. She was one of the sweetest people I've ever met in my life and we even vlogged together! She was such a cutie and I got to tell her a little story and her reaction was like a proud mum! If you want to see me vlogging with Bee, click here!

We ended up going home after Bee's meet and greet because we were so tired! We really wanted to stay for the Featured Creator Show because The Gabbie Show was going to perform her new single Out Loud. I kind of regretted leaving early now because I wish I got to see all the performances from the show! Luckily, our friend Steven went to the show and vlogged most of it! I will link it below for you guys to check it out if you want to see it!

The next day we got to meet Rackaracka!! The line-up was MASSIVE! And I think we had to wait about an hour to meet them! Shelby and I were both freaking out because we had no idea what poses to do with them, so we ended up calling Ruby (who was standing at the gates waiting for us to meet Rackaracka) to help us figure out poses. Ruby told me to ask them to bow down to me like I was a queen and I was like 'oh my god yes!' So I went up to them and I was like 'do you reckon you could bow down to me?' and they were like 'oh yeah of course!' And the picture actually turned out pretty good. It was an iconic moment.

The only bad thing I have to say about VidCon Australia was that some of us didn't get our meet and greet photos till about three weeks later! I'm not sure what exactly happened, but myself and a few others couldn't access our photos through the code that they gave us. I freaked out so much because I got my photos with Rackaracka straight away, but my photos with Shaaanxo never came through. So I had to email them, and I didn't get a response till three weeks later with a link to my photos. Other than that, my VidCon experience was pretty good! And I can't wait to do it all again next year!

Be sure to check out my VidCon vlog if you haven't already done so! :) x

#VidConAustralia