Conference Discounted Hotels, Anyone?

So, ROFLCon HQ has been receiving some interest from various attendees in seeing whether or not there’s going to be an official conference hotel for the weekend.

Right now, we’re planning on reserving rooms for our various featured guests at the fabulous MIT Marriott, which, in addition to being plenty comfortable, is basically just a single block away from all the festivities of the weekend. Figure it’d be extra excellent to have everyone attending ROFLCon up in one place.

Using our massive buying power, we’ve been trying to work out and negotiate a discounted rate for these rooms. Glad to report that I just heard back over the weekend, and it looks like it will be approximately $150 a night for a double room. But, we wanted to check if there’s people who’ll be interested in this before we sign off on it.

Anyone out there interested? If you’d pick up one of these rooms if available, drop a comment to this post or drop a line to tim AT roflcon DOT org. 

Details/Possibilities on the Mighty Post-Party

Alright kids, finally firming up the details with our hosts @ Mighty on what’s happening to the schedule at around 10 o’clock after all the speakers have done their thang and our hosted open bar budget gets ground into so many tiny nubs by hordes of thirsty internet inhabitants. They’ve been handling this part of the show and it looks like the SF-area collective True Skool will be throwing a dance party with an all-star DJ lineup!

The good news is, this means there’ll be a good show to follow up the general awesomeness of ROFLThing. But, the sad news is, since the Mighty/True Skool crew are running this part of the gig, they’ll be kicking everyone out at 10 and reprocessing everyone who wants to get in for $5.

Happy to take suggestions/announce here on the blog if someone wants to do a post-ROFLThing bar or restaurant takeover somewhere. Drop me a line at tim AT roflcon DOT org.

Want to see ROFLCon at SXSW?

Some of you lucky readers out there may be getting excited about SF ROFLThing right now, but I know the rest of you are wondering: where else can we get our ROFLfix?

Well.

Quite a few members of the ROFLCon crew are planning to attend SXSW Interactive 2009, and we’d love to see you there! In fact, we’ve applied for a speaking spot on a topic we hope you’ll find interesting. The talk is called Behind the ROFLs: Next-Gen Conference Organizing While Broke, and in it we promise to share all of our secrets, tips, and lulz about how (and why) we put ROFLCon together without failing out of school (yet) or selling our souls to large corporations (yet). If this sounds appealing to you, please click here and vote positively for us! It’ll make us feel really special.

In fact, since SXSW’s panel picker is so incredibly crowded, here’s a quick guide to what our friends are up to at SXSW. If you were a guest at ROFLCon and you’re not on this list, email us and we’ll put you on!

• Tim Hwang (ROFLeader): The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008-10
• Tim Hwang (ROFLeader): Obsolete? A World After Email (Ed. note: This from the man who Twittered like 18 times about Gmail being down–should be good!)
• Alex Leavitt (ROFLfriend): Blackboards or Backchannels: the Techno-Induced Classroom of Tomorrow
• Alexis Ohanian (Reddit): Inside Y Combinator: The YC Startups Speak

I Personally Believe…Miss South Carolina at ROFLThing?

They all laughed when we said we’d be getting Miss South Carolina to MC at August’s upcoming SF-ROFLThing. But really, how else were we going to equal the sheer awesome of having Leeroy Jenkins hosting back in April?

We’ve done some sleuthing around the web. And I’m excited to report that we’ve heard back. No kidding. You heard it here first.

Nothing is definite yet — but we’re talking with her representation right now try to negotiate out the terms of getting her to appear, and one limitation is that we may have to do some extra fundraising to get her out to San Fran with plane tickets, etc. We only want to do it if people would be down for meeting her in person though and potentially paying some small reg fee (~$10) or so to cover it (depending on how our sponsorships turn out. if you’re interested in sponsoring this or another part of ROFLThing, check out the details here).

Thoughts?