The Final Week 2008: BIG STUFF HAPPENING / Volunteers?

After a brief holiday lull, things are shaping up to be a pretty Big Ass Ridiculous Week for ROFLThing-NYC. We’ll be debuting our shirt/swag for the event (including the reintroduction of an old favorite from our original conference in April), steaming forward to opening registration by the end of the week, and announcing a few more featured attendees and sponsors (as well as our final mystery empty panel slot).

Most importantly though, we’re actively looking for volunteers to help out day-of the conference. If you’re interested, drop a comment on this here post and we’ll be sure to get back to you. Benefits include free swag, free registration, and access to a little get-together that we’re doing for our guests the night before the event.

Also, since prereg demand is looking so high for tickets, we’ve decided to let the people on our early reserve list know about ticket launch in advance of the official launch on our website. There’s a chance we’re going to sell out fast even with that round — and we will only be adding names to this list today and tomorrow – so if you want to get in on it, be sure to drop us at line at tim AT roflcon DOT org in the next 48 hours.

Watch Out: Backchan.nl Deploying At ROFLThing-NYC

I’m geeking out about this, but just spoke to MIT Media Lab member and all around badass Drew Harry earlier this week, and glad to report that ROFLThing-NYC is going bringing all that hot Backchan.nl action back to our event.

If you missed out when we used it in April, Backchan.nl is a nifty little tool that lets everyone in the audience dynamically drop questions and vote up or down stuff while the presentation is going on. It was used varyingly to cause fun trouble at the original conference (see above: dammit, Randall), and we’re pumped to have it back. If you’re really into reading about it in more depth, there’s also a really sweet paper (pdf warning) written by the good folks at the Media Lab about it.

Drew’s also looking into potentially putting together some similarly cool stuff for the afterparty, we’ll announce them as we get the deets work out.

Santos Party House Is Where It Is Going Down

Rocking. Two announcements today! Nothing like a day of banner accomplishments.

On January 24th, all the events for ROFLCon-NYC (talks and the ensuing party) will be at Santos Party House on 100 Lafayette Street in Manhattan. Be there.

It also has a disco ball. We cannot promise that we will not use this during the party. Liberally.

Friday Night: Central Square Bar Invasion!

We will be invading the following bars tonight in Central Sq (which is a stop on the Red Line train):

• Middlesex (loungy bar, apps, mid-size)
• Miracle of Science (semi-swanky bar, food, smallish)
• Asgard (irish bar, food, big space)
• Middle East and Zuzu (same venue as concert)
• Hi-Fi Pizza (ALL AGES! cheap food, cheap beer)
• Enormous Room (loungy bar, not enormous)
• The Field (irish bar, food, mid-size)
• Tavern in the Square (swank sporty bar, mid-size)