ROFLing in the Middle West – A Call to Action

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.

Comment Thread for “Comment Thread”

(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]

ROFLCon Flickr Pool!

Are you a photogeek? If so, PLEASE bring your camera to ROFLCon and take pictures! No matter what service you use to upload, please tag the pictures as “roflcon08″ or “roflcon” so that we can find them easily. And for Flickr users, there’s even a group you can join to show off how special you are.

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.)

Reddit-ROFLCon Online Q&A for Randall Munroe of Xkcd Open!

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.