Holy crap.
RivalCon is now a real thing.
This has been the predominant thought running through my head for the past few days. Something that started off as a joke in Teamspeak (as all my favorite Rival projects do) and then worked its way into a sketch in the Magic Notebook is now coming to life this June 24-25 in Marshalltown, Iowa. It’s surreal. Not so much because of my role in it, but because over the past year and a half, I got to witness the metamorphosis of a ragtag group of self-described nerds into a cohesive team of entertainers supporting a growing community. RivalCon, as an idea, is representative of the success we were hoping to achieve.
And now, it’s real.
It’s boggling to think of how far we’ve come in that time, both individually and as a team. I’ve written previously about the state of affairs when I started: questions about where the direction was going, crisis of a good chunk of RCM’s podcasts being on indefinite hiatus, whispers of whether or not the fledgling little network would – or even could – survive. The odds were not in RCM’s favor. But there was a spark of hope that made me think, long shot as it was, that it was worth risking the investment.
What had sold me was the community that RCM had formed – a group of wildly different people from an assortment of backgrounds, sprinkled here and there around the entire planet, who by chance or fate had found themselves brought together as pieces of a greater whole. Everybody brought something different to the table: Olive a wicked wit, Velvet a laugh like sunshine, Vampy a penchant for keeping things on task and moving forward, Vible a mix of drunken karaoke and insanely keen observations about the people around him.
But there was an interesting set of common traits that emerged as well. Responsibility, hard work, and a willingness to be helpful whenever possible are seen in the majority of our community members, along with a sense of playfulness and loyalty to one another that make their interactions so entertaining to watch and a joy to be a part of. When all of those different pieces came together, what emerges is something beautiful and vibrant and cohesive. It was something unique, and something certainly worth fighting to keep. The culture we built is what makes Rivalcast special.
I’ve often teased that if people enjoy our antics online, just wait til they’d see what we were like in person. While we did have various one-on-one meet-ups over the past couple of years, it was our first public gathering for Orbfest last summer proved the interest was there for in-person community events. Building on that success, and based on what we learned from the experience, RivalCon is sure to be a weekend to remember and the first new piece adding to the whole of the RCM community puzzle.
The question is: will you be a part of it?
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