If you happened to be in Downtown Austin during the 26th-28th, there’s a good chance you may have seen a lot of people in cosplays roaming around. While San Diego had their own little comic con, the all African American content group RDCWorld took over Austin with their own convention called “Dream Con.” With an array of panels and events set up for all attendees, ranging from a cosplay contest and multiple video game tournaments, to multiple career building meetings and an entire career fair where cosplays were invited, Dream Con was the place to be this summer!
Before diving into all the festivities that happened at this year’s Dream Con, let’s take a deeper look at how this convention started. For most looking at the convention from the outside, they may see it as just an anime and gaming convention for nerds to go to, but for creator Mark Phillips, Dream Con is so much more than that. In a recent interview with Iman Shumpert in his “Iman Amongst Men” program, Mark discussed how he didn’t want people to think that this was just an anime or gaming convention, saying the following: “Dream Con is everything. If you got a dream you should be at Dream Con. It’s not an anime convention, it’s not a gaming convention, it’s not just a pop culture convention. It’s literally everything in one. If you got a dream, whatever dream you’re going after, it’s at Dream Con.” This year marked year number 6 of Dream Con, and as the group RDCWorld always plans to make the convention better than last year, they went above and beyond for this year’s convention.
Day 1 of the convention definitely set the pace right for how the weekend was going to be! RDCWorld opened Dream Con with their welcoming ceremony, giving thanks to not only the thousands of attendees, but also the multiple huge sponsors who helped this year’s convention come to life, such as YouTube, Twitch, Nintendo, House of Highlights, and so much more. Day 1 of Dream Con also started with the beginning of the gaming tournaments for titles such as Super Smash Bros and Tekken 8, both having prize pools of $10,000. All the fun couldn’t be contained at just the Austin Convention Center though! Across the street at the Hilton Austin, multiple content creators were hosting panels where attendees could go and gain knowledge from content creators to help with their own career in content creation, such as the “Tax For Creators” panel which helped creators navigate through the complex world of taxes. Or attendees could go and talk about their favorite anime or video games and make a huge amount of friends in the process, such as the “Black Guy Dies First” panel where attendees discussed the trope of African American characters in anime, games, movies, etc. The biggest highlight of day 1 though without a doubt had to be the “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader” event, with the special guest appearance of famous rapper “Sexyy Red.” Sexyy Red showed off her true nerdy side and even performed during the after party that night!
Day 2 the fun continued right where day 1 left off! Across the street at the Hilton, there were multiple panels for streamers looking to start up their careers such as the “Empowering Streamers” panel which helped streamers with the process of networking themselves. Along with this panel was another very important panel about a topic that doesn’t get discussed enough within this community, mental health. Of course keeping the panel within the anime theme, Sharmela Christmon hosted the “Anime & Mental Health: Main Character Energy Saved My Life!” panel where she discussed how embodying “main character energy” can positively impact mental health and personal growth. Back at the convention center, we had two more celebrities pop out and show some love to Dream Con attendees. Comedian “KevOnStage” expressed his love for anime and shared hilarious stories about his binge watching with his wife. Across the way, Grammy winning producer Leon Thomas hosted a meet and greet and got to talk to Dream Con attendees and share his journey on how he went from a young child actor to a Grammy winner. Day 2 ended with “House of Highlights” hosting a basketball game amongst multiple popular content creators such as Ray, Ludwig, Duke Dennis, Sketch as referee, and so many more!
characters, One Piece characters, Dragon Ball Z characters, etc. Day 3 also included a Film Fest, where attendees looking to get into filmmaking got the chance to show off their own homemade short films to a large audience for the first time. Along with this was also what I personally believe to be the funniest event of the entire convention, the “Family Feud” show, with famous youtuber “Berleezy” hosting with his Steve Harvey impression. The game was played by content creators from Twitch, Tiktok, and much more. Some notable names include Tony Statovci, Mari, Kalani Rodgers, and ImDontai. To end off the day, RDCWorld hosted their own meet and greet where they got to personally meet all the attendees and thank them face to face for not only supporting them by coming to Dream Con, but supporting them by showing love in all of their videos and social media posts. To end off Dream Con, RDCWorld hosted the closing ceremony, where all celebrities and content creators joined on stage and one last time thanked all attendees for showing up and for all their energy they brought to the convention.
Safe to say that if you weren’t at Dream Con this year, you missed out on the time of your life! Make sure to show up next year to get the chance to meet some of your favorite content creators, and gain knowledge from these successful creators to help you boost your career.
All photos were shot by Houston photographer Kevin Biggens. You can find more of his work on his Instagram @frostylenss
