Comparative Media Studies @ MIT Sponsors ROFLCon!

As a community event, the ROFLTeam has always depended on the kindness of the various friends/strangers/internet weirdos that we come in contact with.

So, we’re thrilled to officially announce this year that we’re teamed up with MIT Comparative Media Studies to produce this year’s ROFLCon!

If you’re not familiar with them, the MIT CMS program serves to forward the (awesome) academic study of media. This has resulted in a wave of amazing research, projects, content and conferences that touch on a bunch of nerdy topics near and dear to the ROFLSphere. (one of our personal favorites: this 2009 graduate thesis about the social dynamics of Dwarf Fortress).

CMS has generously helped us to snag the space at MIT for the conference, and over the years has contributed a bunch of our intrepid moderators and speakers at the event. We honestly couldn’t have pulled it off this year without them. Welcome aboard, folks!

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society Sponsors ROFLCon!

I’m hugely excited today to announce that ROFLCon III has been officially sponsored by top internet smartypants headquarters the Berkman Center for Internet and Society!

In addition to providing a rich source of many of our most badass moderators and presenters throughout the years, like Ethan Zuckerman (and more to be announced!), the Berkman Center backed us all the way along our early fumblings getting things together in 2008.

So, needless to say, we’re excited to have them aboard for this third installment in our trilogy of ROFLs as we get into our pimply awkward adolescence as a conference.

If you’re not familiar with Berkman, you may be interested in the massive library of research that they’ve generated on all aspects of web and policy. They’re also involved, fantastically enough, in the upcoming launch of Lady Gaga’s nonprofit.

In any case, excited to have them aboard once again!

Unruly Media Sponsors

We’ve been blessed to have a wave of fresh new partners in the production of ROFLs in the past few weeks: Next Media Animation, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and so on.

Today is no exception – we’ve been chatting with and getting to know the fabulous Holly Clarke and the good people the the UK-based Unruly Media, and excited to announce today that they are coming on board as a sponsor for ROFLCon III! We’re particularly excited about this because the sponsorship requires us to bring a sort of absurd piece of party equipment to the MIT campus. Suffice it to say for now that it will be awesome.

Unruly is also in the involved business of keeping track of all your memes in the form of their “global platform for social video advertising” (!!!) Viral Video Chart, which we’ve been sort of obsessively clicking through for the past hour or so. They’ve also nicely curated the videos of some of our guests, if you need a refresher before coming out to Cambridge. Welcome aboard, folks!

Cheezburger Network Sponsors ROFLCon III

Happy Monday, everyone! We’ve got a seriously great line-up of announcements queued up and coming out this week, so you’ll be sure to want to keep an eye out on this here ROFLBlog.

In any case, we’re excited to kick off this week by announcing that the Seattle-based Cheezburger Network — proprietors of a vast and mighty kingdom of Internet products like Fail Blog, the Daily What, Know Your Meme, and (of course) the all original I Can Haz Cheezburger itself — is coming on board as a sponsor for ROFLCon III!

We’re particularly excited because they’ve generously offered to throw the Friday night party for all the attendees at the conference. This probably means the entire ROFLStaff will be in the corner, drinking heavily and stuffing our collective faces with so many tiny cheeseburger sliders.

We couldn’t be happier — more details to come.