ROFLCon Ranked #2 Most Pathetic Convention

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.

Happy Birthday, ROFLCon!

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!

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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!

CurrentTV’s Segment on Jay Maynard, the Tron Guy

During ROFLCon, you may have seen Tron Guy walking around with his own dedicated camera crew. This wasn’t any mistake — CurrentTV was shooting a segment with the amazing Jean Nagy exclusively on Jay and his experiences at the conference. It’s recently posted, and It. Is. Amazing. Check it out:

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]