The Wait For It Podcast
Hosted by MrEricAlmighty and PhilTheFilipino, the guys discuss all things in Pop Culture from movies, gaming, anime and anything in between. New episodes every Wednesday, all you have to do is...WAIT FOR IT!
The Wait For It Podcast
StingrayCon: A Celebration of Nerd Culture
StingrayCon is an annual convention in Jacksonville Florida that celebrates nerd culture and is deeply rooted in community building and inclusion. In this episode with Joseph Rawlins, we explore its origins, the diverse fandoms represented, and future plans for its growth, emphasizing the importance of connection and creativity for local students.
• Introduction to StingrayCon and its community significance
• Origins rooted in post-COVID connections for students
• Growth trajectory from a small event to a large gathering
• Diverse fandoms including D&D, anime, and young adult literature
• Challenges faced by the convention’s organizer
• Future plans including educational components and expansion
• How to stay updated on StingrayCon developments
Everything you need to know about Stingray Con!
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Speaker 2:Gaming. Wait for it, anime.
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Speaker 1:Mr Eric Almighty and Phil the Filipino.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they've got you covered, and all you gotta do is wait for it. This is the Wait For it Podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Wait For it Podcast. I am your co-host, phil Barrera, aka Phil the Filipino.
Speaker 1:And I'm your other co-host, Mr Eric Almighty, and for this special bonus episode. We are going to be talking about StingrayCon, which is a convention here in Florida at Atlantic Coast High School, and it's a celebration of nerd culture that occurs annually here in our hometown. The event is managed by our guest here and the Nerd Club, a group that supports over 200 students' geek passions and Phil. This has been an event that we have sponsored with and is now on our calendar to look forward to each and every year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was such a bummer last year that I had to miss it because of work, but this time around will not be the case and going forward I'll make sure to be there all the time. So very, very excited to welcome in our guest Joseph Rawlins and Joseph, thank you so much for making the time and, yeah, how are you this evening?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great. It's, you know, crunch time for StingrayCon, so every single day it's just a hustle. I've been eight hours a day of, you know, posting, posting social media, managing, answering questions, but first out the gate. Thank you guys so much for sponsoring the con. Without sponsors like you guys, it makes it so much harder to get things going and it really helps us to get trophies in. We were able to stock 20 Gundam models for Awesomest Prime and Kaikou and I to help out with this year. But yeah, I am tired but excited. I think that's kind of the theme for right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eric, we know all about that con prep and it is the days leading up to it. Days, weeks, even months can be incredibly stressful. So we certainly understand and obviously you know the community here in Jacksonville appreciates what you and your team is doing. So, to kind of kick things off, we want to ask you kind of right off the bat, eric we've had an opportunity to partner with other schools who have done things that are similar to what StingrayCon does. So I just want to ask Joseph what has been the inspiration behind StingrayCon? How did this all start? What has been the inspiration behind StingrayCon?
Speaker 3:How did this all start? Stingraycon took off quickly following COVID. We moved to an online format once all the schools shut down, because I noticed that a lot of the students that I had previously in Nerd Club it first started off as Comic Book Club about 17 years ago when I first started teaching, and then I had requests well, can we add anime to the club? Sure, let's add anime. So now we've got cosplay or comic book and anime club, and then it was well, can we add cosplay? And then eventually just the name was getting too long so I said we're just going to call it Nerd Club and be done with it. So now we have Nerd Club. Covid hit and a lot of the students that I was working with already tend to be loners in Nerd Club Not everyone, but that's kind of a it comes with the territory of being a geek and being a nerd, and it was really tough on them.
Speaker 3:I noticed throughout that period of time being away from school, and so I developed an online community that was across the entire Duval County Public Schools District in which we would get together and we would meet up and go to like Supa once we were able to get out, you know, masked up and get ramen and eat together and go to the movies together. We would rent out entire theaters so that the group could go and then eventually it evolved into you know what's the next level. So we throw a convention together. The first year was pretty small. I think we had something like 10 vendors, maybe we showed like a movie and we had maybe like a 16 player bracket for Smash Brothers and a cosplay contest, and then the next year it was quickly 50 vendors and now we're looking at like 85 vendors this year with so many things like new things constantly coming up because we just want to keep pushing the envelope to make it bigger and better every year.
Speaker 3:But I think that was what we wanted to do was, first off, get us a good fundraiser for the Nerd Club, because we had big dreams of having a cosplay workshop. So we've invested a ton into power tools and materials for our cosplay workshop. We wanted to have a Dungeons Dragons library and the ability to have virtual tabletops and things like that, and so StingrayCon serves as a fundraiser for the club. 100% of whatever money we pull in from ticket sales you know, minus security costs and janitorial costs go towards the club, and we also wanted to have a place to showcase students that you know maybe their speciality isn't athleticism or academics. They're not always the kids that when you know AB on a roll valedictorian or are the football champion on the field. And we got to see some really cool kids that you would never have noticed before, doing things like winning the cosplay contest and heading up a a smash brothers tournament, like it was. It was cool to see them kind of have their moment in the sun, you know, and that's kind of what it's all about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eric, we always talk about how conventions are an opportunity for a lot of people to obviously find their community and also the opportunity to really just be themselves and be comfortable, and it's just so cool that there's something like that here, locally, there, that people can turn to, you know, in the community has been great, and getting to see, joseph, how much inclusion and representation you also have at these events and how much of a focus and how important that is, is really big to us as well.
Speaker 1:Speaking of representation, though, I mean you saw our fandoms expressed very much here in our rooms. I'm very curious at stingray con, what are some fandoms that people can expect to see represented and what are some fandoms that are kind of close to your heart in particular?
Speaker 3:oh boy, let me. Let me start personal first. I'll go, I'll go egotistical. Um, I am a huge fan currently I don't know if I say this as a teacher but dungeon craw, crawler, carl, is my jam right now. I have read those books all the way through. I'm going through the audio books right now. I wish I could be Carl and cosplay at the con, but walking around in boxer shorts would probably not be a great idea as a public school teacher. But yeah, that's currently my obsession. I was a big TMNT guy. Raphael is my guy. Growing up, I'm a big TMNT guy. Raphael is my guy. Growing up, I'm a big Pokemon guy.
Speaker 3:But in terms of the students, let's see, this year D&D has really taken off, which kind of reflects pop culture at the moment. It's huge. It's really, you know, grown a lot in the past few years, years. D&d is big. Genshin Impact still has a lot of sway over my students and the cosplays that they want to create and invent and stuff.
Speaker 3:I also have a lot of students that are interested in. They pull from random books that I've never heard before, which is young adult literature that's come up recently, and they're wanting to be characters that I'm having to Google and figure out. This book didn't exist when I was little, you know, so I got to figure this thing out. Yeah, I think those are kind of like the, the big things that I hear students talking about a lot, and then, of course, anime, from all sorts of sources. I can't even tell you like what the the number one thing is, because it's constant chatter, you know. But uh, I would say Demon Slayer is still pretty huge. My Hero Academia has kind of taken a fall lately. I don't know what that's all about, but there's not as much interest there.
Speaker 3:Uh, yeah, and I think, uh, pokemon is on the rise. Uh, again, because of the trading card games on phones. I, I see a lot of kids playing that in class and I have to tell them put the phones away. We'll play that later. That's taken back over. That was cool because it's been a while since. You know, we had Pokemon go come out and kind of bring everybody together. But the, the trading card game, is kind of doing a good job of that and yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pokemon Phil just can't stay dead, and I think you're probably the happiest more than anybody about that.
Speaker 2:It's fantastic, and when I can actually get my hands on a physical pack of cards to purchase in a store, it's a great day. But that is very few and far between. So whenever I see one out in the wild, I just like I have to go pick it up, no matter what it is. So that's great. And it's also great to hear that there are just so many different trends. It's also great to hear that there are just so many different trends, you know, between D&D and then, of course, like you said, young adult literature and then also, coming back to anime, it's really neat that there's just such a really healthy ecosystem of different fandoms that are going on there. So you know, we talked about, obviously, a lot of the positives and how Far Stingray Con has come. We're just really curious about what are some of the challenges, some of the obstacles that you've come across in doing a convention like this, as it's grown over the years.
Speaker 3:I would say the biggest challenge is that I'm essentially a one-man team and it's you know, it's volunteer work, and so the idea of expanding and getting other people on board is pretty hard. I think a lot of the challenges that you would see from maybe like a college football team, you see, with this because we have waves of students come through that want to take on leadership positions. This past year last year's Senior Recon I had three seniors in particular that were just absolutely amazing Allison, ola Jaslyn if you'll hear this, all props to y'all that were just crushing it and would come through and didn't mind taking on that leadership role. Right now, it's more, you know, we're still kind of looking for those people to take that spot and take the reins a little more, because they were just kind of killing it for three years and then now they're gone and graduated. We're looking for new leadership.
Speaker 3:I would say that's probably the biggest challenge.
Speaker 3:We kind of wing it on a lot of stuff that might come through a little bit, you know, but, like, I think we do a good job in terms of setting up a framework.
Speaker 3:Um, I often get lots of questions about specifics and so I can tell that some cons probably give a lot more information than we do in terms of like particulars, like is it okay if we bring this back board that's nine and a half feet tall, or is that too tall? I'm like I guys like, bring it on, let's do it. Like let's do it big, whatever you're thinking like, just let me know and let's do it. And uh, we're very blessed in a lot of ways by having the space that we have, so we don't have to pay for a venue. The school covers that, the school covers the insurance, and so we're able to in terms of tickets and vendor setups, vendor fees are only $20 to help us cover security for the day and the janitorial stuff, and so pretty much all of the proceeds we have goes right back to the kids, which is really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's really great, that it's really affordable as well, which is going to be great for families. I mean, I know this year we introduced you guys introduced a family kind of pack, which was really awesome, and I think that there's nowhere to go but up and we wrap up talking about StingrayCon for the future. What does that hold? And if people are watching this after the event has passed at the time of this recording, this is an annual event, so let us know, in addition to what the future holds, what exactly can people do to find out more about StingrayCon? Where can they go?
Speaker 3:So to find out more about StingrayCon. Where can they go? So to find out more about StingrayCon, I would recommend the Instagram first and foremost. Head over to at Stingraycom to get probably the best updates around. We also have a website it's StingrayConinfo to follow along there.
Speaker 3:Currently, and what we're looking forward to for this con is we have a couple events that are traditional Having a cosplay contest, a Smash Bros tournament. This year we're adding a few things. We've got a group coming in from Brunswick that's going to have a gladiator arena with buffer swords and spears to have a little bit of combat with foam weapons. That's going to be pretty cool. We're going to have Kawakuna is setting up a nerd lounge where they're going to be running some nerd trivia, some nerd bingo. We've got some Gundams to put together, models to put together, so that's real cool.
Speaker 3:We've got students that are running a Dungeons and Dragons like den of one shots that people can sign up for so that we can take up to six players at each table, and these students have been working hard to come up with a time bound little campaign for the convention itself and I think, moving into the future, what we'd like to do is refocus in on classes. We have perfect space at a school in terms of putting together new classrooms for educational pieces, and I'd like to refocus a little bit on that and potentially expand the con a little bit later in the day or even move into a two day event.
Speaker 1:That is amazing. Joseph, thank you so much for taking the time, first and foremost, to do this with us. Obviously, you know you've had a long day. We've all had a long day, I'm sure between nine to fives. So the fact that you're doing that on top of setting up and organizing a convention, hats off to you. I definitely would be remiss not to mention. Everything you need to know about StingrayCon is also going to be in the show notes of this episode, but the event is open to the public. You can support your local artists and vendors. Cosplay is your favorite characters, join a workshop, play some games, just to name a few of the things that you can expect to do at stingray con. Most importantly, the proceeds are going to the nerd club's general fund, so make sure to come on out, support this great local event, and there are so many reasons to make this. So mark your calendars, jot it down, get your tickets now, and then all you have to do is wait for it.
Speaker 2:This is the Wait For it Podcast.
