Our headquarters are all abuzz today with news that jetsetting international man of destiny Alexis Ohanian is locked and loaded for attending and speaking at ROFLCon III!

In any case, Alexis is a phenomenon. He’s the co-founder of this fun obscure little site on the internet called Reddit, swine defender over at Breadpig, helped to launch the cutest travel site of all time in the form of Hipmunk, is makin’ it rain over at the Institute for Higher Awesome Studies, is working on a new book about making the world suck less, and most recently was a happy warrior in the battle to protect the Internets on SOPA/PIPA.

Alexis was the fearless moderator on our LOLCats panel back in the day, and also MCed our ROFLThing-NYC event a few years back. We’re bringing him back (with a few other folks to be announced in the coming weeks) to be part of a session that collects a number of internet badasses to talk strategery on ways to scramble the United Internets security council and defend the internet the next time an attack comes around the corner.

BAM! More tomorrow, stay tuned.

(photo courtesy Laughing Squid)

He’s back! Mr. Leeroy Jenkins (Ben Schulz) of World of Warcraft fame will be returning to Cambridge and running amok, so prepare yourselves for some action, homies

So much moar coming soon y’all, get ready for an excited week! For now, at least we have chicken.

]]> http://roflcon.org/2012/01/31/alright-chums-lets-do-this/feed/ 0 http://roflcon.org/2012/01/17/joel-veitch-at-roflcon-iii/ http://roflcon.org/2012/01/17/joel-veitch-at-roflcon-iii/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:04:13 +0000 sherlock http://roflcon.org/?p=1604

Back for 2012, Joel Veitch of rather good is going to be back in Cambridge again for some love and lols and lager (perhaps not all or in that order). Since then he has continued to keep the Internet chuckling with claymation videos of Royal Wedding and all other amusing videos.

More big news soon! The week only gets more exciting from here

Exciting news ROFLers. Say welcome back to David and David DeVore for some more after dentist shenanigans! We had so much fun last time that we decided to get back together for another round of good times. So check in on the boys or watch the interview from ROFLCon II to get pumped in the coming months!

The names may be rolling out faster and faster, but the excitement never ceases!

Andy Baio is another ROFLCon Summit alumni who will coming to the east coast for a ROFL-style party! In case you don’t know Andy used to work at Kickstarter until last year and is now working with Expert Labs. He was the first person to coin the term “Supercut,” a collection of which can be found here, and if you have not been to waxy.org then you are missing out on insightful and entertaining blogging. Most recently about a full length remix of Pulp Fiction and copyright infringement. There are plenty of fascinating reads to keep you going until May, so read up!

Back for another round of excitement we have Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media and ROFLCon alumni. Ethan has been quite busy this last year, discussing topics from SOPA to cultural developments in Nigeria. Here is his ROFLCon inspired post from last year.

Moar soon!

]]> http://roflcon.org/2012/01/05/ethan-zuckerman-at-roflcon-iii/feed/ 0 http://roflcon.org/2011/12/23/tron-3/ http://roflcon.org/2011/12/23/tron-3/#comments Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:44:37 +0000 sherlock http://roflcon.org/?p=1447

Yup, he’s back. An oldie, but a goodie, Mr. Jay Maynard will be once again making an appearance in the hallowed halls of MIT. As many of you know we have been thrilled to have Jay in the past and nothing has changed about that!

Have a Happy Holiday season, yo! More soon

So, really, just when you thought that the ROFLCon guest list couldn’t get any larger — we’re decided to bust all previous expectations open by formally announcing a final series of new and alumni guests that will be turning up for the conference! Some of these you’ll know from their quiet appearance on our schedule, but others have been as yet unannounced to this point. Check it out! We’ve got:

* Neil Cicierega, of Lemon Demon, Potter Puppet Pals, and other greatness.

* Ian Spector, owner and operator of the Chuck Norris Facts.

* AJ Mazur, creator of the (by now classic) Lazy Town-Lil Jon remix.

* Larry Oji and David Lloyd, of the behemoth video game music community OCRemix.

* And, brand new this year, is Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, general Masters of Pop Culture and the amazing minds behind the Found Footage Festival.

Okay, cool, I think that’s it. For now.

Last, but absolutely definitely not least by a long stretch, ROFLCon is happy today to be announcing the last of our of special guest artist announcements by concluding this fine Thursday afternoon to say that the following fine ladies and gentlemen will be representing themselves and their creations at ROFLCon II:

* Joey Comeau and Emily Horne, creators of the beautifully dark and wonderfully brilliant A Softer World (and alums from ROFLCon I and our gallery show Titans of Small Town)

* AND Tak Toyoshima from long-standing favorite Secret Asian Man (who the sharper among you may have already picked up on from our announcement about Super Art Fight yesterday).

Thrilled to have ‘em both — catch them hanging around through the weekend, and otherwise kicking ass.

And, as of today, we’re officially t-minus two weeks before ROFLCon gets under way — mind-blowingly excited to see you all there!

Truly, absolutely, a man who needs no introduction.

Glad to round out this afternoon by announcing that Ryan North, creator of Dinosaur Comics and Project Wonderful (and long standing ROFL-veteran) will be coming from Canada to reprise his role as Roguishly Handsome Awesome Guy at ROFLCon II!

(photo courtesy iscari0t CC BY SA)

As we wind down these announcements, seriously glad this morning to make an exciting last minute guest confirmation that Max Goldberg, the creator of essential web culture classic You’re The Man Now, Dog, will be attending ROFLCon II! Max is a ROFLalumni from our NYC event back in 2009, and we’re thrilled to have him back for another round for our huge two-day extravaganza.

Max, in addition to contributing YTMND to the world, is famously also the owner of DustinDiamond.com — which, if you weren’t previously aware, led to one of the best legal suits of the American judicial system of all time. We can’t thank him enough.

So, yeah, we’re pretty much feeling like this right now.

Ben Schulz (alias Leeroy Jenkins) will be returning to ROFLCon II.

That is all.

LET’S DO THIS.

Whew — have a good weekend much? ROFLTeam’s been on high-octane for these past few weeks, cobbling together our schedule and working out boring things like the logistics on rooms and whatnot, so expect to see some draft panels and related stuff start coming out over the next week or so.

In any case, to launch off another week of guest announcements, very pleased today to announce that we’ve confirmed that elusive Easthampton genius (and ROFLCon 2008 alumni) R Stevens of webcomic darling Diesel Sweeties, will be present and awesome at ROFLCon II! It looks like this will be the first in a wave of webcomic folks to come, so if you’ve sent us e-mails complaining that we haven’t been snagging those peeps, hold on to your proverbial hats.

Also, mysteriously, happy to say we’ve also been working with Rich on a TOTALLY STUPENDOUS BUT AS YET CLASSFIED PROJECT which should be utterly kickass. More details to come, so stay tuned…

 (image courtesy the Pixelsaurus Shirt)

And, rumbling down the guest announcements chute and into our ever expanding web famous pool of featured guests, we’d like to take today to announce that the Ben Huh, CEO and mastermind of the ever-expanding and ever-more-expansive Cheezburger Network of blogs, will be attending ROFLCon!

Seriously, between the original I Can Haz Cheezburger, as well as the much-loved Fail Blog and misty-eye inducing Once Upon a Win, dude’s like the Nick Denton of internet memes.

At this point, Ben’s a seasoned ROFL-lumni: he’s been with us through our original conference in 2008, as well as ROFLThing-SF. He’s an awesome speaker, and brilliantly articulate about his line of expertise — so we’re pumped to have him back to hear about how his story has continued to evolve.

moot, the founder of a little place you might’ve heard of on the internet called 4chan, will be at ROFLCon II.

Need we say any more?

Nope, don’t think we do.

Extremely excited to announce the big news to close us out for the pre-Thanksgiving week today, and that is that we’ve confirmed gentleman-scholar Randall Munroe of xkcd to appear at the festivities for ROFLCon II!

By this point, of course, the man needs no introduction, except to say that he’s been up to things like funding the construction of a school in Laos from book proceeds/fundraising. It’s amazing. Needless to say, we’re thrilled to have him reppin’ at the conference as we begin the process of bringing all our ROFL-alumni back for next spring.

If you haven’t seen it yet, or want to relive the magic, you might also be interested in checking out the “Internet Cult Leader” footage from ROFLCon 2008, featuring the powerhouse combo of Ryan North, Randall, and moot. It was out of control, absolutely worth checking out if you’re looking to kill an hour.

Glad to kick off this week with some old friends — we’ve got an official announcement today that Christian Lander, the creator of the endlessly brilliant “Stuff White People Like” and completely badass ROFLCon 2008 alumni, will be returning to the fold and attending ROFLCon II!

We recently got back in touch with Christian to see what had been up since a year ago. Needless to say, things have only gotten more nuts with time — his book has since went from being a mega-bestseller to an ultra-super-bestseller, he’s been busy traveling the world and, perhaps most interestingly, he’s in the process of developing a TV pilot based on his blog. We’re looking forward to bringing him back to talk about living the dream, and the “what happens next” side of memedom. It’s gonna be awesome.

image courtesy jslander, CC BY