ROFLCon at SXSW

Photo by Doc Searls

The next ROFLCon won’t be until 2012. But you need a hit of ROFLs RIGHT NOW! What will you do?

If you happen to be at SXSWi next week, you’re in luck: Tim, Diana, and Christina will be presenting on the history and future of ROFLCon. Come hear us swap hilarious never before heard behind-the-scene stories, share insights that we’ve gathered along the way, and ponder what’s next. Oh, and there’s plenty of time for Q&A, of course! To give you a sneak peek of what we’ll be talking about, we’ve each written blogposts about different angles that our panel will cover:

* Diana, on ROFLCon’s humble origins
* Christina, on the challenges of representing multiple internets
* Tim, on what lies ahead

So! Whether you are a close ROFLfriend or just curious about what this ROFLCon business is all about, we hope to meet you at:

Tim Hwang, Christina Xu, and Diana Kimball on
Internets, How Do They Work? Lessons from ROFLCon
at SXSW Interactive

Tuesday, March 15 at 9:30am
Hilton Salon F/G
500 East 4th St.
Austin, TX

(Informal meetup/reunion lovefest to follow!)

Friday Morning: ChatRoulette Bingo, Swag, etc.

You may have noticed that in the schedule, there is a large chunk of time–10 AM to 1 PM–allotted for registration. You may think this is a vacuum in the otherwise incredibly busy schedule. YOU’D BE WRONG.

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+++.

Dinosaur Comics, Dr. McNinja, Achewood = TITANS OF SMALL TOWN

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.

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