What started out as a way to say thank you to all of our staff at the end of the financial year has turned into the biggest event on the VJ social calendar.

Last Friday we held our 5th annual Night of Nights. What is NoN exactly? Well, it’s kind of a piss-take awards night where we try to celebrate some amazing efforts by the VJ gurus over the course of the year, not to mention some of the dumber things people have done that we can have a laugh at.

We all know how arbitrary some of the industry awards nights can be, and even having no nominations or winners in a category can be a bit of a laugh. But the night is designed to bring the whole agency together (we fly everyone from Sydney and Canberra down to Melbourne) and to really say thanks to all our staff for making VJ such an amazing place to work.

Where VJ began – Brett White, David Stephenson & Konrad Spilva.

A huge amount of effort goes into the night by some of our team and the passion to make the event bigger and better than the last year is overwhelming. Our digital entertainment team were even fine-tuning our Oscars-inspired intro videos right up until showtime.

There were 10 awards given out this year, from the ‘Visual Spazz’ Award and ‘Taking one for the Team’ to our ‘MVP’ and ‘Green Award’ (sadly, there was only one nomination in that category…). We also inducted out first ever guru into our ‘VJ Hall of Fame’ and personally, one of the most endearing things to me about VJ is that us old schoolers, who’ve been there for the best part of a decade, have really grown up together – throughout careers and in life in general.

I won’t carry on anymore about the evening, as if you follow us on Twitter or FB you’ve probably already seen some of the drunken/glamourous photos, the VJ movie posters or the hungover messages from our team on the following Saturday morning. This one was probably the best VJ NoN of the lot – around 150 brilliant, creative and great people all in a room together – and it makes me hugely proud and humbled to still call VJ my home away from home.