Houston artist launches virtual pop culture convention

the con is on

Scream queen actress Tiffany Shepis will make an appearance at QuarantinedCon. Photo courtesy of Tiffany Shepis

Though states around the country— including Texas— have been slowly but surely been trying to reopen businesses and public places and so forth amid this global pandemic, there have been many events that are still cancelled and won't go down until sometime next year.

For those disappointed that Comicpalooza had to cancel its festivities this year, a new online convention is ready to sate your geeky thirst. On Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3, locals can go online and attend QuarantinedCon, a new pop-culture convention where guests can hang out with celebs, get items from vendors, and enjoy the same convention fun right in the comfort of their own home.

The con is mainly the brainchild of Dirk Strangely, a Las Vegas-born, Houston-based multimedia artist and frequent guest at comic-book conventions. He has built that convention over at his online platform known as ArtFarm.tv.

"It's something that me and a few people in my network have been building for about three years now," Strangely (government name: John Christopher Carson), tells CultureMap. "We've been helping artists manage their online business and offline business. But, when the pandemic hit, I realized the whole industry basically tanked, and all the people in my network have been wondering how they're gonna make a living… And my platform is the perfect place to have a convention.

So, what I did was put my network to use to get the word out to supply and provide people in my community and in my industry a means to continue business in a pop-culture convention industry."

This convention is a free-for-all in every sense of the term. People can check out everything from magicians to people doing balloon-animal tutorials to live concerts to watch parties over on Facebook — all for free. Strangely has already rounded up quite a collection of guests.

John Kassir, who voiced the Crypt Keeper from HBO's Tales from the Crypt, will be in the house, along with horror icon Kane Hodder (who has played Jason in many a Friday the 13th movie) and Deadwood cast members Peter Jason, Larry Cedar, and Pasha D. Lychnikoff, among others.

"Once I started getting some of them set up," says Strangely, "word of mouth started spreading like wildfire. And even with the celebrities, when I got one of them, they would tell their friends that they're doing it, and their friends — obviously they're gonna have other celebrity friends. So, they tell their friends and their friends are calling me like, 'Hey, I'd love to be part of this too.'"

Strangely is hoping that this online convention will entice other well-known conventions to hit him and his platform up about doing online extensions of their conventions that people all over the world can attend.

"Conventions are a huge part of our industry and, yes, we're helping all the people who go to conventions," he says. "But what about the actual conventions themselves. We are going to help them do their own virtual, online conventions and provide a full-blown experience like they provide physically. And, if we do go back to gathering again soon, we're also gonna do it to supplement their convention. So, they're not limited to who can come to their convention geographically."

For more info on QuarantinedCon, visit the official site.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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UH lands $11.8M for first-of-its-kind early language development study

speech funding

Researchers at the University of Houston have secured an $11.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of early language development.

Led by Elena Grigorenko, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Psychology, and research professor Jack Fletcher, the study will follow 3,600 children aged 18 to 24 months to uncover how language skills develop at this critical stage and why some children experience delays that can influence later growth.

The NIH funding will also support the development of the new national Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders at UH, which aims to bring experts from psychology, education, health and measurement sciences to study how children learn language.

“This will be the first national study to estimate how common late talking is using a large, representative sample of Houston toddlers,” Grigorenko said in a news release. “By following these children as they grow, we hope to better understand the developmental pathways that can lead to conditions such as developmental language disorder and autism.”

UH’s team will partner with the pediatric clinic network at Texas Children’s Hospital, where children will be screened for early language development, allowing researchers to identify those who show signs of delayed speech. Next, researchers will follow the cohort through early childhood to examine how language abilities evolve and how early delays may lead to later challenges.

The Clinical Research Center on Developmental Language Disorders will be the 14th national research center established at UH, and will include researchers from multiple UH departments, as well as partners at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Center for Learning Disorders.

“This level of investment from the National Institutes of Health reflects the significance of this work to address a complex challenge affecting children, families and communities,” Claudia Neuhauser, vice president for research at UH, said in a news release. “By bringing together experts from multiple disciplines and partnering with major health systems across the region, the project reflects our commitment to advancing discoveries that impact our community.”

Rice Alliance names Houston healthtech exec as first head of platform

new hire

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship has named its first head of platform.

Houston entrepreneur Laura Neder stepped into the newly created role last month, according to an email from Rice Alliance. Neder will focus on building and growing Houston’s Venture Advantage Platform.

The emerging platform, which is being promoted by Rice Alliance and the Ion, aims to connect founders with the "people, capital and expertise they need to scale."

"I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it takes to make an innovation ecosystem more navigable, more connected, and more useful for founders," Neder said in a LinkedIn post. "I’m grateful for the opportunity to do that work at Rice Alliance, alongside a team with a long history of supporting entrepreneurship and innovation."

"Houston has the talent, institutions, and industry base to create real advantage for founders," she added. "I’m looking forward to listening, learning, and building stronger pathways across the ecosystem."

Neder most recently served as CEO of Houston-based Careset, where she helped bring the Medicare data startup to commercialization. Prior to that, Neder served as COO of Houston-based telemedicine startup 2nd.MD, which was acquired for $460 million by Accolade in 2021.

"Laura brings a rare combination of founder empathy, operational experience and ecosystem leadership," Rice Alliance shared.

Neder and Rice Alliance also shared that the organization is hiring developers to design the new Venture Advantage Platform. Learn more here.

Elon Musk's SpaceX files initial paperwork to sell shares to the public

Incoming IPO

Elon Musk's space exploration company has filed preliminary paperwork to sell shares to the public, according to two sources familiar with the filing, a blockbuster offering that would likely rank as the biggest ever and could make its founder the world's first trillionaire.

A SpaceX IPO promises to be one of the biggest Wall Street events of the year, with several investment banks lining up to help raise tens of billions to fund Musk's ambitions to set up a base on the moon, put datacenters the size of several football fields in orbit and possibly one day send a man to Mars.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the confidential registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SpaceX did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Exactly how much SpaceX plans to raise has not been disclosed but the figure is reportedly as much as $75 billion. At that level, the offering would easily eclipse the $29 billion that Saudi Aramco raised in its IPO in 2019.

The offering, coming possibly in June, could value all the shares of SpaceX at $1.5 trillion, nearly double what the company was valued in December when some minority owners sold their stakes, according to research firm Pitchbook, before an acquisition that increased its size.

Musk owns 42% of the SpaceX now, according to Pitchbook, though that figure will change with the IPO when new owners are issued shares. In any case, he is likely to pierce the trillion dollar mark because he is already close. Forbes magazine estimates Musk's net worth at roughly $823 billion.

In addition to making reusable rockets to hurl astronauts and hardware into orbit, SpaceX owns Starlink, the world’s largest satellite communications company. The company also recently brought under its roof two other Musk businesses, social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and artificial intelligence business, xAI, in a controversial transaction because both the seller and the buyer were controlled by him.

SpaceX has become the biggest commercial launch company in its industry, responsible for sending payloads into orbit for customers across the globe, but has also benefited from big taxpayer spending. That has raised conflicts of interest issues given that Musk was the biggest donor to President Donald Trump's campaign and is still a big backer.

In the past five years, SpaceX won $6 billion in contracts from NASA, the Defense Department and other U.S. government agencies, according to USAspending.gov.

Among current SpaceX owners is Donald Trump Jr, the president's oldest son. He owns a shares through 1789 Capital. That venture capital firm made him a partner shortly after his father won the presidency for a second time and has been buying up federal contractors seeking to win taxpayer money ever since.

The White House and Trump himself have repeatedly denied there are any conflicts of interest between his role as president and his family's businesses.

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