We’re very happy to announce a slew of exciting things happening on Saturday that you definitely don’t want to miss. They all involve internet celebrities AND/OR dancing! What more could you ask for?

***Dance with Matt Harding***

Matt, of “Where the Hell is Matt” fame, is shooting one of his famous dancing videos at ROFLCon this year at 1:30PM on Saturday during the lunch break. If you are interested in learning a short dance and becoming internet famous, there will be a group leaving from where the pizza is 5 minutes before, or you can just make your own way over here.

***ChatRoulette Bingo, Round Two, FIGHT!***

Dr. Beth Coleman and her CMS.100 class have created a ChatRoulette Bingo game for ROFLcon participants and fans of emoticon-based games everywhere. The first sound on Friday was EPIC.

There will be a repeat session on Saturday from 1 – 2 PM during lunch in the Bartos lobby of E15. Beth reports that initial playtests saw “lots of laughs, participation, and full frontal nudity…” What’s not to love??

***TopatoCo Signing Schedule***

Thanks to the amazing comic artist wrangling skills of TopatoCo VP Holly Post, a wide assortment of webcomic masters will be available to autograph things, shake hands, and kiss babies throughout Saturday at the TopatoCo merch table outside 26-100.

11-12 Ryan North, Dinosaur Comics
12-1 Zach Weiner, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
1-2 Wes & Tony, Amazing Superpowers
2-3 Emily & Joey, A Softer World
3-4 Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content

***ROFLafterparty at Machine’s No Tomorrow***

I was going to write something clever, but I can’t top this poster:

ROFLCON AFTERPARTY AT MACHINE!!!111!!one!!!1!1!!one!
1254 Boylston Street., Boston, MA
21+, $5 cover ($10 after midnight)

(Many thx to Mike McKay and the No Tomorrow team for getting up close and personal with the Goatse hands to make this poster, and for having us!)

#0 – Actually get to MIT! But once you’ve arrived, check in to Foursquare at ROFLcon II.

#1 – Upload your pictures to Flickr. Tag your pics with “roflcon.” Join and send your photos to the ROFLcon Flickr group so that they’ll appear in the stream on the homepage. License your pictures with a Creative Commons license, so we can feature them in our blog posts!

#2 – Make sure to follow @roflcon on Twitter to stay current with conference updates. Use the #roflcon hashtag, or search for #roflcon to see what other attendees are blabbing about.

#3 – Have questions during any of the panels? Use our nifty backchannel feature! If you want to feel shiny, visit http://roflcon.backchan.nl with your mobile phone to use the mobile-optimized Backchan.nl

#4 – Watch the homepage for liveblogs of all those panels you missed.

#5 – Or, if you don’t feel like reading, watch on of the live video streams from each panel room!

#6 – If you get lost on MIT’s campus, be sure to check out this handy-dandy notebook webpage.

#7 – Perhaps you fancy some food? Check out this Google Maps page!

#8 – Feel like you need some drinks instead? Browse this alternate map!

#9 – And, of course, you want some WiFi, right? If you find yourself in the Media Lab, use media lab 802.11. For all the other rooms, use MIT GUEST.

#10 – And, as always, check out the online version of the schedule here.

Dr. Beth Coleman and her CMS.100 class have created a ChatRoulette Bingo game for ROFLcon participants and fans of emoticon-based games everywhere. The first session will take place from 11 to 1 AM on Friday in room 633 of E14, right next to where reg is going down. There will be a repeat session on Saturday from 1 – 2 PM during lunch in the Bartos lobby of E15. Beth reports that initial playtests saw “lots of laughs, participation, and full frontal nudity…” What’s not to love??

Additionally, many of our guests will also be selling their swag. These include the people behind Chad Vader, Wondermark, Chainsaw Suit, Keyboard Cat (they’re bringing the sweater!!), Stuff White People Like, Regretsy, FU Penguin, and I Can Has Cheezburger. Meanwhile, MemeFactory will be asking you to participate in some “meme iteration” exercises for their performance. So far what we know is that it involves dancing, photography, and worksheets. A+++.

So, the cat’s out of the bag at this point, but just wanted to officially give the big shout out here that ROFLCon II will be streaming all of its panels live for free, thanks to our good friends over at Mozilla Drumbeat and the Open Video Alliance.

You’ll be able to access it here.

And, for all you geeky, geeky Free Culture nerds out there — yes it’s true: glad to announce too that we’ll be officially streaming in HTML5 and open video (Theora, specifically). We’ll also be releasing all the raw video from the conference out on the Internet Archive under CC like we did back in 2008. So, booyah to that.

As per our dire predictions, this evening ROFLCon II has officially sold out all tickets for the event. Unfortunately, there will be no waiting list for this year — we’re already straining at the limits of what we’ve got on capacity, and want to avoid causing the floor to give way or something crazy like that.

That being said, you won’t be left completely out in the cold, thanks to our fine friends at Mozilla Drumbeat. Stay tuned for details!

And it’s looking pretty sweet — check it out…

After some logistical wrangling, really great news today to confirm that Super Art Fight, a terrific traveling show of competitive comics-drawing showdowns/street fights, will be conducting a three-round megastar session at ROFLCon II!

At the masterminding and MCing helm are organizers Rosscott Nover (who produces The System) and Marty Day. They’ll also be joined by lovely and talented guest commentator Kris Straub of chainsawsuit.

We’re particularly excited about this session of ROFLCon II since it’ll be a way to see some of our cavalcade of webcomic artists in action. In particular, we’re excited to announce (tentatively) that our bouts will include:

* JOHNNY WANDER VS SATURDAY MORNING BREAKFAST CEREAL

* SECRET ASIAN MAN VS SUPER ART FIGHT COMPETITOR JAMIE NOGUCHI

Super Art Fight CHAMPION Jamie Baldwin and Chris Impink will also be participating in a tag team.That’s all, stay tuned for more details!

As I mentioned a few days ago, things have been heating up here at ROFLCon headquarters as we rumble into April, and it looks like (happily) that we’re going to sell out the event.

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up today that we’ve officially run down to our final seventy-five tickets for the conference. Given how things have been going, we expect that registration will be closing sometime in the next week and a half or so. We’ll close as soon as we sell these remaining tickets.

So, make your time — if you want to come to ROFLCon II, it’s definitely worth swinging by and registering as soon as possible!

So, a while back, we blogged up here about potential interest in discounted hotels for the conference — people kind of went buck-wild e-mailing us, and between the reservations we had been making for guests, these ran out pretty rapidly. So that set us on a mission for another place to stash folks for the conference.

To that end, I’m glad to report that we’ve secured a much larger block of rooms at the nearby Hyatt Regency Cambridge, which is only a few minutes walk from where everything will be going down for the weekend!

They’re going for $149 a night, with the added bonus of free wifi that we negotiated for the weekend! (you’re welcome).

You can reserve the rooms online or call them at 888-421-1442, so, have at it!

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.

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 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…

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]

Just got word from ROFL-MC (and Reddit honcho) Alexis Ohanian that his outfit Breadpig has officially launched the auction for the ROFLDNA project!

If you were at ROFLThing-NYC, you might remember Alexis shadily going around and getting a bunch of our speakers/guests to swab their cheeks for DNA. These swabs were sent to the good people over at DNA11, who promptly combined them and created the gorgeous DNA Mini Portrait that you see above. It contains the genetic material of the following web folks:

• A.J. “HatPerson” Mazur of Lil’ Jon-Lazy Town Remix “Cooking By the Book”
• Jay “TRON guy” Maynard who needs no introduction
• Ian Spector of Chuck Norris Facts AND Mr. T Facts
• moot of 4chan
• Irina Slutsky of GeekEntertainment TV
• Jason Scott, owner of Sockington & master of TextFiles
• Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere
• Damian Hess, AKA MC Frontalot of nerdcore hip-hop fame
• Vincent Connare, creator of Comic Sans
• Jamie Wilkinson of the FFFFF.AT Lab and Rocketboom

The hope, of course, is that one day we’ll be able to use the Mini Portrait to resurrect the entire internet in some grim bombed out cyberpunk future. But until then, you can own this totally sweet wall ornament and conversation piece. Keep it safe for future generations!

The auction ends this Thursday, so act fast if you want to get in. Best of all, the entire proceeds from the auction will be donated to the good people over @ Science Commons. Rock.

Wow, it’s been awhile, Internet, what have you been up to? Sorry we’ve been taking so long to update on this here blog.

Rest assured, though, dear readers, that the folks over here @ ROFLHeadquarters have not been sitting around idly eating Funyuns and watching back episodes of Clone High like you might expect. If you’re in New York City on April 11th, we’ve been working with our friends over at The Barbarian Group to put together TITANS OF SMALL TOWN @ 303Grand in Brooklyn — a kickass one-night webcomics gallery event featuring work (and limited run, exclusive work only available at the event)  from:

* Ryan North, Dinosaur Comics

* Chris Hastings, Dr. McNinja

* Chris Onstad, Achewood

The artists (still working out the deets with Onstad) will be on site as well to do a Q&A about the work!

Tickets now on sale for $20. Due to the size of the gallery, supplies are extremely limited and we totally expect to sell out all the slots on this, so if you’re interested, definitely worth getting in ASAP.  More details to follow in the coming days! Drop a line at tim AT roflcon DOT org, if you’ve got any questions.

IT’S GO TIME.

Let’s do this.

Registration Opens @ 11:30 AM EST at Santos Party House (96 Lafayette Street).

Be there.

Oh man, so we are WAY behind.

With only 72 hours left to go, we’ve still got oodles of featured guests, sponsors, and other fun stuff we’ve been meaning to announce.

Sorry, we are lame. Putting this -thing together has been crazier than we expected.

So for the next 72 hours, we are going to PICK UP THE FREAKING PACE ON THIS HERE BLOG

Expect updates accordingly.

<3, tim and rachel

Remember that time we closed registration to ROFLThing NYC really suddenly? It was a sad time for us too, and we’ve lost just as much sleep over it as you have: your wailing and gnashing of teeth have tormented our dreams. We’re sorry, we really are.

So sorry that we’ve decided to give you one last chance to get involved in this awesomeness. We’ve decided to bring you guys some Change You Can Believe In. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to LOL free! But you must act NOW.

We are auctioning off the last five tickets to ROFLThing, the ones we had been saving for our parents in case they ever chose to undisown us after creating the mess of ROFLCon the First*. The auction will only be open for 24 hours, so GET YOUR HUSTLE ON. Proceeds from each ticket will benefit a different charity or nonprofit that we <3, so you’ll actually be supporting a good cause in addition to repenting for your earlier procrastifail on obtaining tickets. Win-win!

Without further ado, the links to the auctions:

* ROFLTicket supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation
* ROFLTicket supporting Big Cat Rescue (in honor of our guest Sockington)
* ROFLTicket supporting the Internet Archive
* ROFLTicket supporting Global Voices
* ROFLTicket supporting New York Cares

All of these organizations need your help more than ever because of the recession. Coincidentally, you need ROFL in your life more than ever because of the recession too! Gee golly, sounds like you’d best click on them links and start bidding!

* Don’t worry guys, this isn’t actually true. Although I did have to explain Goatse to my mom, and that was really awkward…

Gah, just talked to the folks at Santos about setting up seating and capacity for this Saturday, and I’m sorry to report that regrettably we’ve maxed out our registration for ROFLThing-NYC. So pool’s closed until further notice.

If you’d like to be on the waitlist — drop us a line at rachel.m AT roflcon DOT org and we’ll get you onto the list.  Thanks!

(pic by JourneysCoffee)
That’s right. Lattes. They are caffeinated, they are delicious, and if you’re at a shishipoopoo coffee shop they sometimes come with art. Drinkable, caffeinated art. How cool is that?

“ROFLDudes,” you say. “That’s alright I suppose, but it’s not actually that cool. And how is this cutting edge? Stuff’s been around since like 1847. I expected more from the guys who brought us Brawndo and ROFLCondoms and…”

Oh MAN. Is that our logo rendered on a latte? IN CARAMEL? The answer is yes, and it’s all because a cool new Bostonian company called OnLatte has a) perfected a wondrous machine that can print images onto latte foam and b) agreed to give us a demo of said wondrous machine at ROFLThing! Over the course of ROFLThing, they’ll be making lattes to order for you guys with one of ten super-secret tubetastic images printed on them. One of them is obviously the ROFLThing logo, but the other 9 will remain a mystery until the event…

(Okay, you guys know me too well. Yes, one of them is Goatse. I love my life.)