Oh Shit, It’s The Internet: ROFLCon Registration Opens!

LADIES. GENTLEMEN.

As promised, it is with great pride today that I officially open up registration for ROFLCon II! We’re offering attendance for the complete two-day extravaganza of internet culture, web celebrities, scholars, and commentators with a general public pass of $65, with a discounted student rate of $45 also offered. Payable in credit, Paypal, or gold doubloons. The registration page is here.

In an effort to avoid running out of standing room and accidentally turning MIT into an overcooked meme-irradiated warzone, it’s important to note that tickets will be limited (and that prices will rise as we get closer to the conference), so it’ll be worth snagging them at this (somewhat-early) bird level if you’re sure you’re coming ASAP.

And, yes, we’re serious about the $500 “mystery pass.” Serious applicants should drop a line to tim AT roflcon.org.

ROFLCon II Dates Officially Set

Was planning to get to announce this last week, but got caught up in some last minute finagling with MIT. But we’ve finally got it hammered out.

In any case, happy to announce today that we’ve officially decided that ROFLCon II will be on April 30th and May 1st, 2010.

Got it? Awesome. Planning to open up registration sometime in January, and we’ll announce on the blog when it goes up. If you’ve already hit up tim AT roflcon DOT org, we’ve already got you covered (even if I haven’t responded), and, if you haven’t, definitely do drop a line if you want to be notified by e-mail when it opens up.

Thanks! We’ve got more guest announcements this week too, so more to come.

The Berkman Center: Representin’ @ ROFLCon II

The ROFLFolks have got lots of love for Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The people are badass, the projects are webtacular, and their crew is reppin’ up as one of the keynote talks we’re most excited about this year.

So, after sitting down to talk last week to the Powers That Be, I’m happy to announce today that, following our friends over at the Comparative Media Studies Department at MIT, the Berkman Center has officially agreed to come on board with us as a sponsor for ROFLCon II! We’re thrilled to have them, and couldn’t have found a better partner to bring this thing together with.

Hope Halloween was good for everyone — we’ve got announcements all lined up for this week, as well as several recent ancedotes to relate about how we’re trying to get visas for Mahir Cagri to enter the country. Life is ridiculous. Stay tuned…

On ROFLCon II

ROFLCon 2008. Remember that? Those were good times.

Sure, we’ve done some events here and there since. ROFLCon-SF in Summer 2008 was tons of fun, and ROFLCon-NYC in January 2009 was graced (awesomely) by Vincent “Comic Sans” Connare (and Alexis Ohanian shadily swabbing internet celebs for DNA). We even had a chance to mix it up with the amazingly swanky Titans of Small Town show in between.

But really, in the end, we got to talking, and all of these events have been pale versions of the original insanity of April 2008. Because, no doubt, while you can certainly get your OMG YAY INTERNET THANG ON in a day, there’s just all these limits to doing weenie one-day event in bars around America. They’re too small, they’re too short, and the wifi is weak like a wet paper bag.

Ultimately, we realized that we couldn’t do enough of the cool, substantive, fun stuff that we would like for ROFLCon in that kind of format.

We also kind of agreed that we liked it old school. ROFLCon was a massive, 900+ person, 2-day slog in Boston with more internet culture notables invited than you could shake a stick at and some real thinking about web culture, where it’s been, and where it’s going (and, of course, the quiet joys of seeing shit like this). Lord knows a helluva lot has happened on the ol’ Information Superhighway since Spring 2008, and we’d want to bring ALL of it back to hometown Boston.

So, after long last, we’ve made a fateful decision and set a course. Sitting in front of your computer? Mark your calendars and set phasers for awesome.

ROFLCON II — April 2010.

We’re back. And we’re bringing the entire internet with us.

[Update: we've been getting tons of questions today -- if you want to be kept posted about registration, details, etc as it comes together -- drop an e-mail to tim@roflcon.org]