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. 

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.

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

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?

There’s a somewhat pervasive belief that the super tech-savvy, Web 2.0, internet aficinado, 21st century hipster types tend to congregate on the coasts of the country rather than concentrating at all in the middle. We, however, don’t believe this is true. For that reason, we’re hoping to throw a fiesta of some kind in the third largest city in the country, Chicago, the home of the best damn pizza in the country and two of the best baseball teams in the league.

We’re enlisting the fine soldiers of the middle for help and advice, whether you’re a company who might consider sponsorship, an internet celebrity who missed out on the Boston extravaganza this April and wants to jump on the fun train now, or just a fan of the tubes. So, troops: what kinds of things would you like to see come to a theater near you? Any thoughts on where you might like to see something happen? Do you just want to help in some way? Hit me up at carrie AT roflcon dot org with your ideas, thoughts, and love.

as a side note: I realize I may annoy the south Chi-town crowd by posting a picture of Wrigley Field rather than the Cell. In honor of year 100 for the Cubbies, I felt I had to. Sorry.

(photo by remisser, CC BY SA)

Some of you who attended the final session of ROFLCon may remember the trolling (thanks Zotnix!) we got in our comment thread (not unexpected — what kind of internet culture conference would we be without it?) and the IRL flame war (like, punches) that ensued.

This “real” comment thread with the Anons may interest you.

[Videos of the referenced Anon panel here]

Right now there’s only a few sneak peeks of the ROFLStaff during a meeting, but we hope that by the end of the weekend it’ll be chock full of gorgeous, wonderful pictures that we can all show to our children (that we will not be producing during the conference, thanks to the ROFLCondoms).

Speaking of reproduction, however, we would really appreciate it if you would consider licensing your pictures under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license. The reasoning behind this is that since ROFLCon is really about internet culture, we want to respect the practices that have enabled the culture to thrive: namely, sharing and remixing. By licensing your pictures under CC-BY-SA, you’re declaring that it is legal for anyone to download your picture and make other cool things with them as long as whatever they make is also available for sharing and remixing. Isn’t that what the internet is all about?

(Nota bene: I, like most other members of the ROFLCon team, am a member of Harvard College Free Culture.)

The entire team’s been rushing around getting the final bric-a-brac in a row for the conference like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, so this announcement is coming in a little late, but heads up from Alexis that Randall Munore of Xkcd fame is this weeks guest spotlight at our last weekly online Q&A with the internet superstars. (You can still check out past questions with Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content, and Cheez from I Can Haz Cheezburger).

Submit questions, leave snarky comments, and vote up/down stuff at our custom Reddit here.

Man, one week left — it’s go time.

So, regular readers of this blog might remember that time where Cambridge totally suxed big time with regards to cheap and affordable housing. We recently got an e-mail from Joel, who recommended that people might want to check out the Hostelling International Boston, which offers some mondo cheap beds for people still looking for somewhere simple and spartan to stay while at ROFLCon. Apparently they’re really into group reservations, so feel free to comment on the post if you want to try to set something up with your fellow attendees.

Locationwise, it’s a short walk from the Hynes Convention Center stop on the Boston subway system. From there, you can hop a train for a quick ~15 min ride to the Kendall Square stop, which drops you a short and easy walk where the conference will be.

Edit from Christina: a much easier solution is to go to Massachusetts Ave., the street that the Hynes Convention stop is on anyway, and take the #1 bus that comes by every 10 minutes or so (your stop is Mass Ave. & Newbury St.) (go to the side of the street farther from the hostel and look for the bus stops sprinkled every two blocks or so) until you reach 77 Massachusetts Ave–this lovely building which is one stop or so past the river, which you can reach the conference from. This will save you a lot of pain and suffering and be a lot faster, I promise!

This just in from Alexis. As part of our ongoing Q&A series in partnership with the folks at Reddit — this week Jeph Jacques, creator of webcomics superstar Questionable Content, goes under our tasty crowdsourced microscope!

Submit questions and vote up/down other people’s questions at our custom Reddit page here.

Many of you have been asking about hotels, and a bunch of people on the ROFLCon team been frantically trying to work out some sort of arrangement before the conference goes down, but I’ve come to the conclusion that, frankly, Cambridge really kind of sux.

Originally, we were thinking about just cutting a deal with the hotel that we’re putting guests into so that all you attendees could nail some semidecent housing at a good price. Unfortunately, it’s been kind of a perfect storm: it’s not only MIT Parents Weekend, but Harvard’s Pre-Frosh Weekend as well (so crazy parent quotient is up up up). So, the best we can do is ~$200+ a night (sadface) at the Kendall Marriot. If you are interested (bully for you), drop us a line at tim@roflcon.org.

If not, options:

1) Post that you want/are willing to house people here. Hope that the magic of crowdsourcing gets you through.

2) Couchsurfing.com: A kind of awesome project where you find people who’re willing to house you for free for good company/conversation. Membership is kind of involved though.

3) Cheap Hotels: Not too familiar with the Kendall Square area in terms of cheap hotels (post if you’ve got any ideas), but if you’re willing to commute a bit, there’s a Holiday Inn Express nearby, and a series of semicheap bed-and-breakfast type places over in Harvard Square.

Beyond being a cultural vortex enough to potentially rend the fabric of space-time, ROFLCon, like any other conference, is going to be it’s very own little feat of hospitality management for all you attendees out there and all our guests. But like most of the other things we’ve been working on, we figured it’d be pretty sweet to crowdsource this into something of an awesome opportunity.

We’ve had a couple of celebs that are interested in having someone with them during the conference to assist them with various logistical stuff (merchandising, videotaping, etc). So if you’re interested in networking your way in the internet celeb halls of power or just getting an up close and personal experience with some of them, this is definitely the thing for you. I think it’s pretty much worth it for the story alone.

So getting under way: anyone want to be the personal assistant to the Average Homeboy Denny Blaze at ROFLCon?

No really, we’re for serious. Act now while you can. Send e-mail to roflcon@gmail.com expressing your interest and any relevant experience. We’ll get in touch for an interview (and, of course, you’ll have to get Denny’s thumbs-up too).

These amazing ROFLCon wallpapers are courtesy of Dino from Bert is Evil. He has agreed to let us share them as Creative Commons (CC-BY). Thanks, Dino!

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We think a stream of attendee produced media/commentary uploaded dynamically up to this site as the event is going down would be totally awesome. So today, I’m happy to put out an open call for ROFLCon attendees who might be interested in contributing to a collective blog during the event. The team would get special access to the event, with opportunities to interview and interact with all the kickass celebs/scholars coming.

So if you’re not a member of an official/established press organization, but if you do liveblog/video/photograph stuff in your spare time and might be interested in doing it at ROFLCon, let us know!

Beyond the straight-up discussion with the celebs and scholars about memehood and the infrastructures that have played a role in the development of online culture, it’s been brought up by a few that it’d be really awesome to have a few more “convention”-type events going on at the same time. Ideas range from an animation screening room, a conference-wide signing period, and unmoderated talks with some of the guests.

But we want to get a sense of what you guys want to see. So, we’re putting out an open call for suggestions for conference events and volunteers to help facilitate these various activities. Let us know what you think by comment or by our ever-reliable gmail account at roflcon AT gmail.com!

A few weeks back, we announced with great fanfare that we had secured the Gutman Conference Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for ROFLCon. For awhile, we thought this capacity (~250) would be more than sufficient, but with the registration and the press flowing in with no signs of stopping, this thing just keeps getting bigger and bigger. If we let it keep going, it’s going to look like pictured above, only with color and, uh, more geekiness.

While at present we’ve got some breathing room and we’re doing our best on the ROFLCon Team to secure a larger venue around Harvard/MIT, I just wanted to put out the warning that we may have to cap admission, so if you want to get in, get in now.

And, if you know of anywhere worth checking out, drop us a line at roflcon@gmail.com and we will shower you with schwag, delicious candy, and some exclusive VIP admission.

(image courtesy the New Zealand Elections Commission)

Well then perfect, you’re just the person we’ve been looking for.

The ROFLCon Team’s been hashing out the details on our slick line of schwag that we’re planning to roll out for the event, this’ll include t-shirts, stickers, and a bunch of other cool little surprise items. We’ve got a few designers that we’re talking with, but we’re thinking that it’d be awesome to get a bunch of different people in on it to rassle up something really cool for each item and give their own spin to look of this event.

So, if you’re interested in potentially doing some designs for ROFLCon, stick a comment below with some of your stuff or send an e-mail over to roflcon@gmail.com.

Whoah, sorry about the delay folks. We were all over the place over New Years. 2008? Abwah?

At any rate, we’re back on track and hard at work to bring you general VIP memehood this April. One of things that we’re doing over January is to clean up and finalize our conference schedule and panels.  One guest that’s been repeatedly noted as missing from our list is the amazingly baller Ze Frank. We’ve e-mailed him, but haven’t gotten in touch. I’m assuming our invite’s probably being showered under a flurry of fan mail and spam in his inbox. Anyone out there have a connect that might be able to get the word out to him? Comment here and we’ll be in touch.

We’d love to have him either to moderate/take part in the Citizen’s Media panel. Apparently he’s a prof at various schools around NYC, and we’d love to get his thoughts on the factors leading to memehood and how that gets parleyed into actual material benefits for the creators.

We hear your cry. And suffice it to say, it’s a pretty good question.

We here on the ROFLCon Team have been working through the vacation to put this thing together, and we’ve hammered out a preliminary conference schedule that we’ll be molding over the next few weeks into a completed, shiny plan of action for our two day event. For descriptions of the memes themselves, see the links on our confirmed guests page.

Check it out, after the jump. We’re taking comments/questions/criticisms from everyone at this point, so feel free to let us know what you think, particularly about the panel prompt questions.

This schedule is subject to change. (And addition: there’s a number of big namer guests that don’t know about their schedule yet — for privacy’s sake, I’ve left them off, some of these holes are obvious, feel free to guess who they are)

Friday, April 25th (“State of the Internet”)
Noonish — Registration Opens
2-6 — Conference Activities (opening keynote to be scheduled)

1) CASE STUDY: LOLCATS: How and why do memes evolve the way they do? To what extent has internet culture established its own language in the past decade?

Panelists: LOLCat Bible, LOLSecretz, LOLTrek, LOLCode, Judith Donath

Moderator: Alexis Ohanian (Reddit/LOLDeconstructed)
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2) THE INTERNET AS CITIZEN’S MEDIA: Massive, unintentional fame seems far more possible online. What makes a successful meme in terms of popularity? What makes a meme successful/unsuccessful at leveraging that fame into mass wealth and power?

Panelists: Jay Maynard (Tron), Kyle MacDonald (One Red Paperclip), Matt Harding (Where the Hell Is Matt?)

Moderator: Martin Sargent, Web Drifter

——————————

3) THE INTERNET AS A COUNTER SPHERE: Online culture gets itself inevitably entangled in the popular culture (and occasionally, the legal structure) of the outside world. How can internet culture be derailed by/how can it triumph against forces in the non-online world?

Joe Mathlete, Ian Spector, Bert Is Evil, Jeff Diehl (10 Zen Monkeys)

Moderator: Christopher Kelty

—————————–

7-8 — Dinner
9-10 — MUSIC SHOW OF THE MEMES: They play, you listen, people rock out.

Leslie Hall (Gem Sweater), Martin Leung (Video Game Pianist), David Lloyd (OCRemix), Group X

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Saturday, April 26th (“Future of the Internet”)

11-6 — Conference Activities (includes opening, breaks, and lunch to be scheduled)

1) MEME INFRASTRUCTURE: What makes an online space conducive to the production of memes? What is the future of online culture? What technologies might play a role?

Panelists: Drew Curtis (Fark.com), Moot (4chan), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit.com), StupidFilter

Moderator: Anil Dash

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2) THE BUSINESSES: What kind of businesses can be constructively built with internet culture? Does it require a different approach? What is the future of meme-based business?

Benjamin Palmer, Anil Dash, Evan White, Rocketboom

Moderator: JD Connor

———————————-

3) THE ARTISTS: In many ways, webcomics and animators are the internet’s foremost meme creators. What do you think is the future of internet culture for creators? How does art online interact with art offline?

Panelists: Brad Neely, Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics), The Brothers Chaps (Homestar Runner), RoosterTeeth (Red vs. Blue), Randall Munroe (Xkcd), Cyanide and Happiness

Moderator: ??

————————————–

6-8 — Closing Stuff/Dinner
8-? — Party of the Internet 2008 — Every internet meme, ever. In one room. Partying out. Promise: they will be cranking that soulja boy.