Thanks to the wonders of modern science, no longer will countless internet kittens be without ice cream. More importantly, neither will you.

No kid. For one weekend only, local Boston ice cream institution Toscanini’s will be proudly offering THE INTERNET as a flavor, in honor of the impending reality vortex that is ROFLCon II. From what I hear, it will be a vanilla ice cream base with Nerds mixed in (DELICIOUS).

And, best of all, Tosci’s is literally just across the street from our boozy base for the weekend at the Asgard, over on 899 Main Street. So, if you’re around, dear attendees, absolutely worth checking it out.

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.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in the immortal words of Martin Lawrence, “shit just got real.”

Excited to announce today that Monday and Tuesday will officially be ANNOUNCECON 2008 for ROFLThing-NYC. Basically, we’ve been realizing that we’ve got too many featured speakers/attendees to post at our current one-a-day rate, and we’ve had some really exciting, badass confirmations from people in the last 48 hours that behoove us to unleash a torrent of awesomeness immediately.

So! New mystery guests to be announced at 10 AM, noon, and 3 PM EST on Monday and again on Tuesday, along with our guest DJs for the party.

Eyes to the skies, kid.

It’s a long shot — but thanks to the recommendation of Sean Savage and the help of some awesome San Francisco ROFLThing attendees, local favorite “12 Galaxies” protester Frank Chu has been personally invited to the party on August 29th. As one of San Fran’s most prominent microcelebrities, we figured it was only right to extend the offer.

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not he’ll turn up, but, fingers crossed…

Writers have Pulitzers, musicians have Grammys, the Boston Celtics have the NBA Championship, and scientists (& Al Gore!) have the Nobel Prize. Today, the ROFLCon staff was surprised with accolades of similar magnitude in our own field—that of running really freakin’ geeky conventions.

It’s no annual event and there’s no red carpet, but that can’t stop us from basking in the glory of being named the #2 Most Pathetic Geek Convention by Cracked.com.

In and of itself, this ranking would be no big deal. After all, most geek conventions are slightly puzzling to behold and take some concept or another “to a whole new, frightening level.” What makes this honor truly epic is the other conventions we’re sharing it with. Guys, we beat out Klingon Feast, a furry convention, and the Ohio Valley Filk Festival (which, incidentally, is happening in my hometown. And I thought there were no nerds here!), and we did so with reasonably good overall conference hygiene. If that doesn’t mean we just leveled up as a ‘Con, I don’t know what does.

Photo courtesy Doc Searls

We’ve been joking for a month about celebrating the one-month anniversary of ROFLCon.  In internet years (similar to dog years, except even more extreme), ROFLCon’s already an aging spinster!  But we still kind of like her.  In honor of this most special occasion, we wanted to pull together all the guest and team reflections on the conference that we could find.  We’ve been calling them “postmortems,” but that’s kind of mean, right?  I mean, she may be a spinster, but “dead” is such a strong word.

Without further ado, here are all the guest & team reflections I could find and fit into one post.  If you feel yours is missing, go ahead and add it in the comments!

* * *

TEAM

Behold! Tim Hwang’s reflections,

Diana Kimball’s (that’s me!),

Christina Xu’s,

Rachel Popkin’s,

Carrie Andersen’s,

and Natalie Bau’s.

* * *

Meme Reflections & Reactions

Adam Lindsay (of LOLCode)

Alexis Ohanian (of Reddit and Breadpig) here and here

Alice Marwick (Saturday keynote speaker)

Andrew Baron (of RocketBoom)

LOLSecretz

Benjamin Palmer (of the Barbarian Group)

Professor Christopher Kelty (moderated Internet Cult Leaders panel)

David Weinberger

Dino Ignacio (of Bert is Evil)

Jason Scott

Jay Maynard (Tron Guy) here and here

Jeffrey Rowland (of Overcompensating) possibly here and here

Joe Mathlete (of Marmaduke Explained)

Joe Peacock (of Mentally Incontinent) here and here

iJustine

Kevin Driscoll (Soulja Boy Studies)

Kyle MacDonald (of One Red Paperclip)

Matt Harding (of Where the Hell is Matt?)

xkcd, maybe (check out the rollover text!)

Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics)

Scott Beale (of Laughing Squid) here, here, and here

Stephen Granade (of LOLTrek): bingo here, video here

Xiaochang Li (CMS)

* * *

…Stay tuned for more goodies tomorrow, on Day 2 of ROFLCon’s one-month birthday!

(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]

He knew about the design, but when I asked him if he had ever signed a pair, he said no. At this point, I’m not really sure what to do with them. I could: Auction them for charity. Ensconce them in a time-release pod that opens in the year 2199. Wear them to death. So many possibilities here. Thanks Jay!

We’ll let you know as the details unfold.

First on the list is Dr. McNinja creator Chris Hastings. Check it!

And be sure to keep an eye on our press page before, during, and after the conference. It’ll get updated continuously with articles, blog entries, and whatever else we can cram onto it that’s vaguely relevant.

Hugs to those folks who have been supportive of us enough to write about us! We <3 you.

So if any of you (like many of us on the ROFLTeam) are fans of South Park – an incredibly traditional and classic television show – we hope you watched last week’s episode, “Canada on Strike.” There was a pretty epic fight among several of our favorite internet celebrities, including Tay Zonday, Tron Guy, and Sneezing Panda. We like to think that ROFLCon’s existence nudged this plotline into place. In any case, we really hope our conference turns out a little better than what eventually happens. Like, we don’t want a bloodbath.

Watch the full episode here!

Hey kids, so me (Tim Hwang) and Diana Kimball (the sine qua non of transportation and guest hospitality for ROFLCon staff) recently got interviewed on Martin Sargent’s Revision3 show Internet Superstar, figured we’d shout it out and post it here.

Notes:

1) The ROFLCondoms, totally not a joke. Wait till you see the design.

2) Goatse, if you’re out there. E-mail us.

3) Turns out first generation iSights are REALLY blurry.

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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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.

If you’re thinking this is totally sweet, you’re probably right.

I <3 the Internet.

Just heard back from our tech guy Matt and I’m happy to report that as soon as we hear the nod from Berkman tomorrow morning, it’s go time on registration. That spells P-A-R-T-Y.

Update (by Dean): Looks like Mozilla is catching some heat for the statistics that crawl along the bottom of the video.

One of the pretty bodacious things about this conference that the ROFLTeam has been noticing is the extent to which people are just randomly emerging from the woodwork to be part of and help out with putting together this conference. Whether its hunting down the internet celebs (thanks art), or dropping a line with some wayward academic, Mother Internet always seems to be ready to lend a helping hand.

In that vein, Wexley School for Girls (which, in fact is not a single-sex educational institution but a superslick marketing firm based in Seattle) just dropped us a line a week or two ago, and we’ve been working with them on sponsorship and assembling the panels. Needless to say, the ROFLTeam’s has got kind of a huge crush on them. So today, we’re happy to announce that we’re joining forces and that we’ll be bringing them on board as conference consultants/partners.

Just like that. Can you think of anything more Benkler-esque? I love the internetz.

So as the ever-threatening Anonymous and the crazyyyy kids over at Encyclopedia Dramatica (Jesus you kids are angry, do you need a hug?) have pointed out, there are so many memes that we haven’t covered. And, undoubtedly, there are so many memes yet to be sought out on our obscenely gigantic directory of internet memeage.

But we love them all. And we want them to be there.

That’s why we’re today announcing that the ROFLCon Conference schedule will include one massive party. With. Every. Single. Meme. That. Cares. To. Come.

SO…if you’re the originator of some meme that wants to come…

OR…if you’re an internet celeb who doesn’t want to be on a panel and just wants to meet your peers…

E-mail ROFLCon@gmail.com to RSVP for the party (and we’ll give you free admission to come to the conference, too!)

We’re also hammering out a preliminary conference schedule. Should be out fairly soon as soon as we figure out how to slice the panels (if you have any brilliant ideas, please let us know by posting on the forums!)

And yes, Snakes on a Blawg, this means you too. <3