Rock.

We are all systems go.

See you tonight!

Good news! Happy to announce today that as of over the weekend, the TITANS OF SMALL TOWN gallery show has officially added Emily and Joey from web favorites A Softer World to the roster!

They’ll be putting together some awesome large-format prints of their work up on display @ 303Grand for the opening, and will be joining Ryan and Chris for the Q&A (and potentially jumping in on the collaborative piece that will be going down afterwards).

The two words that spring to mind are: totally kickass.

Good news! This serious lookin’ dude we’ve got here is Benjamin Palmer, co-founder and CEO-honcho of The Barbarian Group. You might remember Benjamin from the original ROFLCon back in April, and we’re glad to announce today that we’ve brought him back to MC the Q&A session for the night!

He’ll also be exhibiting. Parts of his series, AWESOME_SCENES, will also be framed and on display that night (personal favorite).

Also, since we realized that in our excitement to announce Titans of Small-Town that we actually forgot to update the rest of the ROFLCon site. Our schedule, sidebar and registration pages have been updated accordingly. We’ll be opening doors at 6:30 PM on April 11th.

IT’S GO TIME.

Let’s do this.

Registration Opens @ 11:30 AM EST at Santos Party House (96 Lafayette Street).

Be there.

Like most people who hang out too much on the Internet, there’s a couple of memes that we follow here on the ROFLCon team that we’re pretty sure no one else has heard of or thinks is funny/cool. We however, find them hysterical.

Dave Secretary is one of these individuals.

Dave Secretary writes about his childhood in all caps with no punctuation, and it is a beautiful beautiful thing. He’s also responsible for Everything Is Irritating and Comics I Have To Explain. We’re pretty sure he’s our official candidate the as-yet unsung Bard of the Internet. Anyways, we invited him, and glad to report that we’ve heard word he’ll be probably showing up for part of the conference and the afterparty (and that “this is seriously going to rule. i almost fell out of a speeding bus earlier today.”)

So if you’re out there, and you happen to love Dave Secretary, you should come out and meet him.

Chea! Continuing in the barrage of information that we’ve been lovingly filling you RSS feed with of late, AnnounceCon 2.0 is well underway and we’re way excited to be announcing Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam from Internets Celebrities as featured attendees! Their bud, Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine and HipHopMusic(.com) will also be in attendance.

These cewebrities have created several well received video essays that were featured on iFC and are the self proclaimed ” Woodward and Bernstein for the YouTube generation.” These two are definitely some dudes that you want to hang out with. Watch out because their super stellar director, Casimir will be hanging around as well, maybe they want to film us?

So, if you’re a user of Twitter at all (hah!), you’re probably aware of the phenomenon of The Shorty Awards, the first ever awards granted to those who have been showing particuar artistry at expressing themselves in 140 characters or less.

Several of speakers are contenders for top-dog spot at the Shorty Awards this year (namely, the all-caps feline empire that is SOCKINGTON), so we figured it was only appropriate that the Shorty Awards themselves make an appearance.

That’s right, Greg Galant, one of the masterminds behind the Shorties, will be attending ROFLThing!

Oh man guys! This is probably the most exciting news that I’ve had since I found out that peanut butter indeed actually came in a slice form and skimmed 45 seconds off of my lunch packing time as a child.

Muxtape, the super awesome music playlist-sharing site that was taken down awhile back, is making an epic return: “relaunching soon, in the service of bands.”  The new guys up top, Justin Ouellette and Luke Crawford will be hanging out and handing out some swag. Be sure to show them some love.

UPDATE: No way: Muxtape for Bands is sponsoring Saturday night’s Afterparty for the Internets!!  You’ll see them on the dancefloor, joining us for some Serious Bu$iness.

Alright, alright, alright – so you’re like “holy bejeezus this is a ton of posts”

And we’re like, okay, here, have another one.

People from Funny or Die (home of Will Ferrell’s “Landlord” movie) are showing up. Find them!

Sometimes, just sometimes – intellectual property can be cool.

Glad to reveal that A.J. “HatPerson” Mazur, scholar/gentleman/and the co-creator of the Lil’ Jon-Lazy Town Remix “Cooking By the Book” mini-YouTube meme will be showing up to chill throughout the day at ROFLThing-NYC!

If you’re unfamilliar with the story, LazyTown Entertainment dropped some heavy takedown action and DMCAed Mazur’s ass over not liking the video, which led to a tidal wave of user uploaded copies to Youtube. Mazur filed a counternotice on fair use grounds — and, glad to report that after a review, the video is officially back in action online.

Free Culture what what.

It’s not too late to get tickets to ROFLThing, we’re giving to charity — check this out. 

Just got the wonderful news here at ROFLThing HQ in a shack in New Jersey that Kenyatta, Ellie, and Jamie (also presenting and DJing) of Rocketboom’s labcoat-wearing, meme-exploring action-packed-team internet culture SWAT team over at Know Your Meme will be showing up! If you’re not familiar with Know Your Meme, you should be – check it out here.

Rocking. Simply, rocking.

Now we just need to get Boxxy, and we’ll be all good to go.

It’s not too late to get tickets to ROFLThing, we’re giving to charity — check this out. 

So, after a long, drawn-out battle and discussion with the owners over the last week or so, Moomia’s has officially dinged us down hard and all our alternative suggestions to work it out: the afterparty will be 21+. We’re stuck too because there’s no other venues open at this point.

This sucks so hard and we feel like asshats. Particularly because the 18+ crowd is internets too.

But – if you want parties and shenanigans and are in town early, ROFLThing’s got something cooked up for you.

On, uh, the New York City subway system. With people.

Friday night. 10:30 PM. Union Square, near the statue of Ol’ George Washington.

We’ll be there. You should be too.

It’s not too late to get tickets to ROFLThing, we’re giving to charity — check this out. 

So for any of you kids hat sat around and used to,  I don’t know, spend all day in front of your computer, troll message boards and play the occasional MMO on your sweet setup, this is your man.

That’s right guys, the guy that most everyone would call the founding father of Nerdcore, MC Frontalot, has decided to come and hang out at  ROFLThing-NYC – to our collective delight.  He shot his way to fame in our hearts for not only laying down the freshest beats, but after a show he helped out one of our staffers after they got towed. We’re super stoked to have him hanging out with us mere internet mortals.

Man, that MC Frontalot is such a cool dude!

It’s not too late to get tickets to ROFLThing, we’re giving to charity — check this out. 

Oh man, so we are WAY behind.

With only 72 hours left to go, we’ve still got oodles of featured guests, sponsors, and other fun stuff we’ve been meaning to announce.

Sorry, we are lame. Putting this -thing together has been crazier than we expected.

So for the next 72 hours, we are going to PICK UP THE FREAKING PACE ON THIS HERE BLOG

Expect updates accordingly.

<3, tim and rachel

Remember that time we closed registration to ROFLThing NYC really suddenly? It was a sad time for us too, and we’ve lost just as much sleep over it as you have: your wailing and gnashing of teeth have tormented our dreams. We’re sorry, we really are.

So sorry that we’ve decided to give you one last chance to get involved in this awesomeness. We’ve decided to bring you guys some Change You Can Believe In. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to LOL free! But you must act NOW.

We are auctioning off the last five tickets to ROFLThing, the ones we had been saving for our parents in case they ever chose to undisown us after creating the mess of ROFLCon the First*. The auction will only be open for 24 hours, so GET YOUR HUSTLE ON. Proceeds from each ticket will benefit a different charity or nonprofit that we <3, so you’ll actually be supporting a good cause in addition to repenting for your earlier procrastifail on obtaining tickets. Win-win!

Without further ado, the links to the auctions:

* ROFLTicket supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation
* ROFLTicket supporting Big Cat Rescue (in honor of our guest Sockington)
* ROFLTicket supporting the Internet Archive
* ROFLTicket supporting Global Voices
* ROFLTicket supporting New York Cares

All of these organizations need your help more than ever because of the recession. Coincidentally, you need ROFL in your life more than ever because of the recession too! Gee golly, sounds like you’d best click on them links and start bidding!

* Don’t worry guys, this isn’t actually true. Although I did have to explain Goatse to my mom, and that was really awkward…

Gah, been so busy getting things together that we didn’t realize we’re running out of time to announce new guests! So we’re picking up the pace — with a few others coming out of the gate later today.

In any amazing 11th hour surprise (we didn’t even know it was coming until late last week), we’re happy to announce that Jay Maynard, alias The Tron Guy, will be attending ROFLThing-NYC. You might remember Jay from his appearance at the original ROFLCon back in April with Dancing Matt, and from the original Slashdotting that boosted him to South Park and We Are The Web fame.

Score.

photo courtesy Kate Raynes-Goldie, CC BY NC SA

Gah, just talked to the folks at Santos about setting up seating and capacity for this Saturday, and I’m sorry to report that regrettably we’ve maxed out our registration for ROFLThing-NYC. So pool’s closed until further notice.

If you’d like to be on the waitlist — drop us a line at rachel.m AT roflcon DOT org and we’ll get you onto the list.  Thanks!

(pic by JourneysCoffee)
That’s right. Lattes. They are caffeinated, they are delicious, and if you’re at a shishipoopoo coffee shop they sometimes come with art. Drinkable, caffeinated art. How cool is that?

“ROFLDudes,” you say. “That’s alright I suppose, but it’s not actually that cool. And how is this cutting edge? Stuff’s been around since like 1847. I expected more from the guys who brought us Brawndo and ROFLCondoms and…”

Oh MAN. Is that our logo rendered on a latte? IN CARAMEL? The answer is yes, and it’s all because a cool new Bostonian company called OnLatte has a) perfected a wondrous machine that can print images onto latte foam and b) agreed to give us a demo of said wondrous machine at ROFLThing! Over the course of ROFLThing, they’ll be making lattes to order for you guys with one of ten super-secret tubetastic images printed on them. One of them is obviously the ROFLThing logo, but the other 9 will remain a mystery until the event…

(Okay, you guys know me too well. Yes, one of them is Goatse. I love my life.)

Hey Guys! We’re super stoked to announce the epic return of Urlesque as sponsors and attendees at ROFLThing! They hauled their asses all the way out to Cambridge for ROFLCon 2008 and showed us lots of love, and now they’re kicking off the year right by spending some more time with us!

This fantastic bunch has is referred to by Rocketboom as a number one “Memey Resource“, and they’ve frequently gifted us with the greatest collections of writing that I’ve had suck my time away on the internet. Among my personal favorites are: Top 7 Wikipedia Lists and Categories, The Best / Worst of Skymall [+ pics!] , and What is this animal and where can we get one? which nearly inspired me to take a spontaneous trip to South America (much like the Great Panda Adventure convinced me that every white kid who travelled to China in the early 90’s gets a free panda — as it turns out, that’s not true, and I was really just a deluded kid).

Thanks to what is clearly the mighty magical powers of our friends at Rosen Group, extremely glad (and majorly relieved) to announce that ROFLThing-NYC will, in our traditional style, be finishing up as announced with a crazy post-conference dance party with Jamie Dubs & Serious Business heading up the Wheels of Steel and special awesomeness added by the interactive creations of Hak5. Best of all, it’ll be going much later than the previously announced time of 10:30 to more respectable party hours (see updated schedule).

The venue? Moomia Lounge, just a block or two down the street from all the conference events at Santos Party House @ 157 Lafayette Street.

As you’ll see from their website, the place is a bit kooky — but fitting. After all, what’s a more fitting way to close out a day of web culture geekery than in an Egyptian splendor? Right? Right.