[Refer to GLOA x CDAO Project 1 report here - [REPORT] GLOA x CDAO 2023 Project 1: Monsoon Sessions Season 3]
[Refer to GLOA x CDAO Project 2 report here - [REPORT] GLOA x CDAO 2023 Project 2: South East Asia Web3 Roadshow]
Project 3: Nepal Tour
November’s tour to Nepal was Goa Music Lab’s prime project of 2023, with planning underway since May. While we were committed to accomplish the tour in some shape or form, invaluable support from CDAO (arriving in August) helped ensure the viability of this tour, and increased the quality of production. Through GLOA’s support from CreativesDAO, NEAR entered a brand new market for the first time: Nepal.
The premise of the tour was to co-produce two distinctly different boutique festivals: Atma Taal, near Pokhara (organic in nature / non-commercial), and the second Robots & Animals, in Kathmandu (an arts/tech/music extravaganza). While the former was to be about arts & offline, the latter featured tech-related presentations and workshops to complement its high quality musical lineup.
Despite long, hard days and regular challenges, the Nepal trip was historic, and prolific. Through our collective efforts, it planted long-term seeds, and blossomed invaluable connections. As a legacy project, it was primarily intended to set the stage for recurring networking and growth efforts, and to continue building a presence in the country, plus perhaps some sort of cultural exchange.
Summary of Accomplishments
- 14 live shows (5 @ each festival, 4 popups)
- Live attendance between festivals and popups: over 400 people
- Reached around 120,000 accounts, nearly 40K “engaged”
- Posts collected over 200,000 views
- Close to 1000 flyers distributed, and several dozen large street posters around cities
- Innovative follow up actions enabled to regularly publish/share quality Nepal footage and offer exclusive content/perks to ticketholders/ future wallet holders
Festival 1: Atma Taal, November 8-12 2023 @ Begnas Lake
The seeds of Atma Taal were planted in May 2022, following Sea’s initial visit to Nepal for a Vipassana course at Begnas Lake. The connections he made, and followed up with a year later, led to what became Atma Taal: 5 days at beautiful Begnas Lake.
Initially, there were three participating venues: Classic Chill, Sanu Lake and a remote house. We originally allocated significant budget to rent a lakeside house for the week, mostly for housing artists & crew, but also intended as the Saturday evening / late night music venue.
The prospective house was a constant headache for months, its location and/or availability changing multiple times, before finally being cancelled the week ahead of the festival, when the owners jacked up the price at the last moment. This was a blessing in disguise, as the house was too remote - accessible only by terrible roads - and would have been unpractical to regularly commute anywhere else (30 minutes from the main stage area).
In the end, the entire festival was hosted at, or near, Classic Chill: a wonderfully relaxed and beautiful oasis on the shores of stunning Begnas Lake. Our accommodation - and that of our guests - was a few minutes walk away, making for a more intimate and “festival-feeling” vibe. Daytime workshops were spread out, before everybody congregated in the evenings for live music.
Fireside music at Atma Taal
Despite heaps of logistical and technical issues, opening night on Wednesday November 8 went as smoothly as any event in my 20+ year career has ever transpired. We featured “teaser” sets from three of the weekend’s primary artists: Noble Luke (Goa Music Lab), Habibi and Eric Mandala.
Thursday followed an “open mic” format, it encouraged performances from the many musicians and performers in attendance. In the wake of Wednesday’s smooth running, this was perhaps the hardest day of the tour, with countless challenges and problems, from door complexities, sound issues, and one particularly egotistical band, plus a late night visit from the police (no problem in the end).
Friday was the Goa Music Lab night, featuring a live analog electronica set from Noble Luke & ANIMISM. It was enjoyed by the biggest crowd of the weekend, with a packed dancefloor enthralled by the live performance.
Noble Luke & ANIMISM live at Atma Taal, November 10 2023
Saturday was an extended day of workshops, before a lineup change brought Canada’s Eric Mandala to perform several hours of ecstatic dance with live instrumentalists. The popular late night DJ party was hosted at a guesthouse up a hill, 15 minutes away by shuttle bus, and featured several local and global DJs performing until sunrise.
Analog synth workshop at Atma Taal
The Sunday finale featured beats from DJ 01 and Raw Key, ahead of a sunset closing ceremony interlude, and then a quirky No Talent Show - encouraging absolutely anybody to get up on stage. This brought everybody at the festival together for a fitting finale.
By the end of the five days, Atma Taal felt fulfilling and complete. Feedback from guests was excellent. As a team-building exercise, it was fantastic. Several visited us at Robots & Animals in Kathmandu later in the month.
Fire ceremony at Atma Taal
Festival 2: Robots & Animals, November 22-26 2023 @ Kathmandu
The first international Robots & Animals, following its successful debut in Goa in April 2023. The concept is an exploratory marriage of arts & emerging technologies, blending halls of knowledge with riveting live music & arts performances - for mutual inspiration.
We had two primary venue partners: Hotel Acme Inn (tech venue), and the prestigious Courtyard Pujan Hotel (arts / music). The festival began at Hotel Acme Inn on Wednesday November 22, with a few tech-centered presentations, spread around live acoustic music sets, including Brazilian jazz, a Nepal ambient producer & multi-instrumentalist, and a closing DJ set.
Opening performance of Robots & Animals Kathmandu, November 22 2023
Thursday November 23 showcased various tech presentations and workshops - following our 20-minute NEAR / CreativesDAO introductory video, to generative AI, NFTs, hybrid live/online/metaverse performances, and more.
Friday November 24 hosted Nepal blockchain pioneers, eSatya, for several hours of panels and talks, before the festival moved to Courtyard for the remainder of the weekend.
Sea chatting with the two heavyweights of eSatya: Nepal’s blockchain pioneers
The Friday night featured Nepal’s 1st Turntablist/Battle DJ: DJ Vital. Opening sets from DJ Den and live electronica from Goa’s Noble Luke, helped build energy to Vital’s performance.
There was an unfortunate incident with the police - due to a neighbouring hotel’s noise complaints - shortly before 10pm, that eventually moved the party indoors; however, this critically lost out on at least dozens of arriving guests, who departed when the music stopped for around half an hour. The hotel and 3rd party security have since apologised for the oversight.
Drone shot of Courtyard Pujan hotel on Friday November 24
Saturday November 25 was an unnecessarily long day, with gates opening at 11am for a reprise of the Brazilian jazz duo, the Bohemians. However, most guests did not arrive until after 5pm, when the analog and modular synth workshops were wrapping up. The evening featured Goa Music Lab’s live show with Noble Luke & ANIMISM, before a late-night DJ party inside.
Walkthrough of Courtyard Pujan, at Robots & Animals Kathmandu
Psycho Panda performs a modular synth set at Robots & Animals, following his modular workshop
Noble Luke & ANIMISM on Saturday November 25 @ Robots & Animals Kathmandu
Ommood performing on the closing day of Robots & Animals Kathmandu
The Sunday finale featured world producer Ommood, who performed 3 stellar hours of self-made beats. Rising Nepal band, Stotram, closed out the main stage. We conducted a live / hybrid performance experiment, broadcasting a poet in from London, followed by a DJ in Miami, both of whom performed for the curious Courtyard crowd.
Attendance was roughly 150-200 people across the 5 days. Feedback was that the event dates poised a challenge for many attendees, in the wake of two major national festivals that concluded days before Robot & Animals. There was also the matter of political unrest with the threat of riots, that kept people & vehicles locked in certain zones, most notably on the Thursday, and Friday afternoon. Coupled with the unfortunate police miscommunication on the Friday (the hotel admitted fault), and some promotional mistakes (e.g. no back up street team), these likely impacted attendance anywhere from 50-100 extra people.
Reach & Visibility
This was a clear strength of the Nepal exercise. We combined various promotional and networking methods, including physical prints/distribution of posters & flyers, online presence through social media (including popular collaboration posts with featured artists), occasional paid/targeted online ads, live popup shows to build hype, and general virility.
Total views: 200,000+
Total reach: 120,000+
Instagram accounts reached: 17,345+
Printed flyers distributed: 1000+
Street posters: 30+
30K views of our Robots & Animals KTM post, with over 115+ likes
Insights for our Robots & Animals KTM online campaign
Insights for our Atma Taal @ Begnas Lake online campaign
Another Robots & Animals KTM post
Encouraging Instagram reach & visibility.
Here are some of the design assets distributed with physical flyers and online:
Back side of the Robots & Animals Kathmandu flyer (first of two separate print runs)
The Thursday evening web3 presentations at Robots & Animals Kathmandu.
Financial Report
Budget Allocated: USD $6000
Actual spend: USD $7452 (NPR 993,824)
Tickets sold: 215
Ticket revenue: USD $1456 (NPR 194,280)
Commissions / Fees: USD $64 (promoter commissions and Ticketspice service fees)
Skyrocketing costs for Nepal blew well beyond our allocated budget, but they were fortunately offset by a reasonable number of ticket sales (around half of what we were aiming for). The biggest outlays went towards: Flights, venues, accommodation, sound equipment, artists, projectors, promotion, food, security, and transportation.
Attendance was a little lighter than hoped for at Atma Taal - greatly benefited by the recent Rainbow festival - while Robots & Animals was rather disappointing in terms of turnout. Through this lite attendance - and the necessity of heavily discounting tickets to local Nepalese visitors - we missed a golden opportunity to re-seed our treasury, where another <>50-100 total attendees in Nepal would have helped bolster our artist roster and production. Instead, we tapped into our remaining Project 4 - India Blockchain Week in Bangalore - to cover the small deficit.
One unforeseen miscalculation was that local Nepali guests habitually use Nepal-specific payment methods for ticket purchases. However, as none of us had a local Nepali bank account, we couldn’t accept such payments, and notice was too short to organise with a local company. This may have impacted ticket sales, as the unfortunate police visit at 9:55pm on the Friday in Kathmandu, prevented dozens of arriving guests from paying and entering.
In terms of budget, managing this tour was particularly eye-opening in terms of the cost of flights, accommodation and food for artists & crew. The biggest expenses by far, were venue/hotel and transportation-related. While we initially considered booking 1-2 European-based artists, the prohibitive cost of return flights for them, quickly dispelled that idea.
This makes the concept of hybrid live/online performances more desirable - as quality, international artists can be streamed from the comforts of their homes and/or studios, instead of pay thousands of dollars in flights, hotel and food… even before their pricey artist fees.
Furthermore, next time we enter a new market, we would spend a little more advance time networking and cultivating professional relationships, particularly in onboarding reputable local promoters.
Wallets Onboarded
As noted in the original proposal, due to the illegal status of cryptocurrency in Nepal, it made promoting any token-based platforms difficult, if not legally impossible. We were assured by prestigious local partners that “cryptocurrency trading”, “crypto mining” and “nfts-as-investment” were not allowed in Nepal - but anything beyond that, was fine to integrate.
We decided to focus on other aspects of emerging tech - e.g. DAOs, Treasury, generative AI and NFT minting. A key post-event strategy is to offer whatever collection of content, to registered guests of either of the festivals… eventually requiring NEAR wallets, when the content is ready (estimated in March).
Hence, out of respect for local laws & customs, there was no wallet promotion or solicitation while in Nepal. We intend to contact the complete email list from our month tour, and encourage simple wallet sign up, that holds their NFT ticket, unlocking the token-gated VR worlds in which we’ll re-broadcast content captured from the tour.
With several hundred attendees and a wider net of artists & participants, this could result in hundreds of wallets - the challenge is keeping them active beyond any initial claim. What dApps would anybody actually regularly use?
NFT tickets through a community portal could be one answer, particularly if onboarding is closer to traditional means.
We’re undertaking these steps to present content from Nepal, and then assess NEAR wallet token-gating for access.
Steps required:
- Shard Dog or similar for easy wallet activation / claiming of Nepal Tour NFT ticket
- Backup traditional email signup, in which wallet / keys can be locked for them until future use
- Finish setting up Spatial spaces, and decorate with main stage music, generative AI art, interactive NFT artwork
- Test token-gated world / space
- Test token-gated hybrid live/virtual events, where the NFT/s used to ticketing also unlock bonus features, exclusive content, private space access, and more
Final Thoughts for GLOA x CDAO Project 3
Nepal is a legacy project for us. It’s the beginning of a long-term journey, and is a logical wider “neighbourhood” for projects based in Goa and India.
The Nepal mission is not yet complete, with several key undertakings ensuring additional rounds of visibility and onboarding:
*Post production of Nepal audio/video content, to be arranged in a virtual space, and all guests / attendees to be invited into the space (likely NEAR wallet token-gated).
- Nepal Tour Documentary, compiling all the coverage from the tour. Another opportunity to highlight CreativesDAO and NEAR. This longer production will take more time.
- Weekly live performances and mini-documentaries from the tour shared on YouTube, Instagram, etc. Weekly consistency will help boost our profile and those of the artists & supporters included.
Through our efforts in 2023 with Kathmandu’s May web3 meetup and Robots & Animals, GLOA has already become one of the most established web3-oriented communities in Nepal. We are excellently allied with eSatya: Nepal’s blockchain pioneers. Once blockchain/AI regulation is announced, and cryptocurrency becomes legal (within whatever possible constraints), we will revisit Nepal in a wallet-targeted sense. Perhaps the wider NEAR & CreativesDAO communities can meet in Kathmandu for a celebration party: The first-ever crypto/blockchain festival in Nepal.
As exhausted as we were upon returning from 5 weeks in Nepal, there was no time to rest: we soon headed to Bangalore, for India Blockchain Week. This was to be our best opportunity, of all our 4 projects, to prospectively onboard new NEAR wallets.
Next report: GLOA’s Hard Rock Cafe event at India Blockchain Week 2023