So, we alluded to this a little while back, but glad to do a big announcement today and make it all official and stuff after keeping it secret for so long. The official conference shirt is a go.

What you are seeing in the above image is correct: ROFLCon has teamed up with R. Stevens from Diesel Sweeties to create this magnum opus of pixel art genius. This shirt, which will then be printed as an official limited-run series with our friends over at The Mountain, will have the all-authentic tags and mystical powers of the original.

Needless to say, we’re thrilled we were able to get this all together, and hope you are as well.

We’re still working out the details, but if you want one, sign up now on this here form. Supplies will be limited for the conference and we’ll be using the form to do first-come-first-served, so jump on!

Really, really excellent news rolling out of this here ROFLCon joint that we’re glad to announce that the awesome folks over at the Onion AV Club are coming on board as media sponsors for ROFLCon II in April! Being silly geeky fans of the site, we’re all hearts a’flutter on this one.

Stay tuned on this one — in addition to teaming up with them, we’re in the process of working out trying to bring out some of the writers from the team (and random commenter micro-celebrities) for the conference as well, so, we’ll keep you posted as that situation develops.

Also, if you’re a huge pop culture nerd and want to lose the rest of your evening reading backposts, ROFLCon recommends such fine vintages as Nathan Rabin’s My Year of Flops and all the other beautiful things they have to offer (see: that time they ate a cheeseburger in a can).

A series of media and other fantastic sponsorships like whoah this week. Glad to kick that process off with some solid old friends: Boston’s venerable (and by that we mean since 1999) badasses and certainly the city’s number-one-awesomest weekly, The Weekly Dig, is officially teaming up and sponsoring us for ROFLCon II!

Veterans of the ROFLCon experience may remember The Dig from back in 2008 when they ROFLed up and reissued their April issue as the W33kly D1g. We’re glad to announce that they’re suiting up to do that again in a few months and promising to go even further with it than any magazine has done before. We’re not sure what that means, but we’re sure it’s likely to be amazing.

So to that we say to David Day and the team over at The Dig, we say, godspeed. We’ll keep you all posted here on the details as it comes together!

While (some of) the sharper among you may have recognized that we gave this away earlier in the week by announcing that David Malki and Tweet Me Harder would be making a featured appearance in Boston during ROFLCon weekend, we’re glad to officially confirm today that esteemed Monsieur Kris Straub (and Twitter) will be attending in April!

It’s, of course, of little use to try to list all of Straub’s multi-faceted projects of awesomeness here. You may know his genius from such amazing things as chainsawsuit, Starslip, Blamimation, and so on… And if you weren’t previous unaware: shame on you people.

In any case, we’re truly thrilled to be having him. More announcements tomorrow!

Dear friends, this announcement comes a bit late, mostly because we’ve been up mondo-late trying to work out logistics and keeping this ROFLShip smoothly sailing into April. As a result, only getting around to updating the blog: so you people get a two-fer today! Stay tuned for the other special announcement later today.

In continuation of our promised weeklong series of some seriously awesome webcomic guest announcements, I’m thrilled to announce this morning that Jeph Jacques of the absolutely great long-running webcomic juggernaut Questionable Content, will be present and attending at ROFLCon II!

And, of course, let me just say here that if you haven’t checked out the backarchives of the lovely though-on-hold indietits, you really should.

Guest list updated, as per usual! Seriously dudes, there is going to be so much Easthampton out here.

Wow, helluva weekend, huh? The ROFLTeam met up and scheduled out the next two months and were like FUUUUUUUU-.

In any case, sweet news to start off this week in ROFLCon that friend and gentleman-scholar David Malki !, of the fabulously fantastic webcomic Wondermark (and the aptly named Tweet Me Harder podcast, which will be making an appearance at the conference) will be flying out and hanging out at the event in April!

Heads up looking into this week: looks like it’s shaping up to probably be a webcomic folks guest announcement week thanks to the unerringly awesome work of ROFLTeammate George Rohac (with a few oddballs thrown in to spice it on up). Watch this space!

We’re honored and thrilled today to announce that we’ve officially confirmed that one Aleksey Vayner will be attending the conference in April!

You might remember Aleksey from his leaked video in 2006, “Impossible Is Nothing,” which, beyond spiraling into internet fame on its very own, also spawned a seemingly limitless universe of cultural references and remakes, both online and all over the pop culture consciousness.

He’ll be at the conference, discussing what he’s been up to since those fateful months, the issues around privacy online and crisis management, and recounting and reflecting on the experience of being swept up in the middle of the memetic storm.

Welcome Aleksey! Don’t know about you folks, but we’re psyched.

We’re super glad glad glad today to announce that Robert Cockerham, the man behind the long-standing and much revered Cockeyed.com, will be attending ROFLCon II!

You might remember Rob from his series How Much Is Inside?, in which he has been meticulously documenting (for over a decade now), how much stuff is inside various things by actually measuring/pouring/spreading it out. This includes, ridiculously, the amount of gold in Goldschlager, the white-frosty-filling in a package of Oreos, and wrapping a whole car in aluminum foil.

It’s surprisingly engrossing and well worth the read, if you haven’t had the experience yet. More recently, Rob has seriously trolled a seriously shady Cash4Gold scheme, and revealed the hilariously disappointing real-world comparison between McDonalds and Burger King. So in other words, he’s tip-top ROFLCon material, and we’re pumped to have him.

Thanks to the titanic efforts of a few awesome attendees, ROFLCon is glad to finally round out this week by delivering on a long-standing promise: Charlie Schmidt, the former owner of Keyboard Cat and fantastic general all-around-artist-guy, will be attending ROFLCon!

Also, in a moment of internet history — we’re glad to reveal word from Charlie’s representative Ben Lashes, who tells us that the baby blue shirt-jacket of “Fatso,” seen in the video, will actually also be coming along with Charlie for the conference. It’s seriously going to be like original debut of the Shroud of Turin, only, you know — like, internet-y.

More to come next week! Have a good weekend, folks!

In the dark, moisty moisty jungle of internet subculture, few cabals have been more rumored about, speculated upon, or obsessively hated against as the power-users of Digg.

We’ve been hard at work for the past few months here at HQ, and superbly pumped to report today that we’ll be having a selected group of them at ROFLCon. We’re glad to announce today that we’ve assembled a three-person panel at the conference this year to rep these elusive folks. Specifically:

* Andrew Sorcini (MrBabyMan)

* Muhammad Saleem (MSaleem)

* JD Rucker (oboy)

Avoiding the usual lame-o discussions around poweruserhood (anyone who asks how to become a power user will be forcibly ejected from the room), the Diggerati will be taking ROFLCon to switch gears and focus on the history of the backroom culture of power users, politics/machinations with site management, and the future of Digg (and social news) generally. Should be good times.

So, ROFLCon HQ has been receiving some interest from various attendees in seeing whether or not there’s going to be an official conference hotel for the weekend.

Right now, we’re planning on reserving rooms for our various featured guests at the fabulous MIT Marriott, which, in addition to being plenty comfortable, is basically just a single block away from all the festivities of the weekend. Figure it’d be extra excellent to have everyone attending ROFLCon up in one place.

Using our massive buying power, we’ve been trying to work out and negotiate a discounted rate for these rooms. Glad to report that I just heard back over the weekend, and it looks like it will be approximately $150 a night for a double room. But, we wanted to check if there’s people who’ll be interested in this before we sign off on it.

Anyone out there interested? If you’d pick up one of these rooms if available, drop a comment to this post or drop a line to tim AT roflcon DOT org. 

In the midst of all these (increasingly ridiculous) guest announcements, we’d be seriously remiss if we didn’t take a moment to thank all the folks who are bringing some hard-earned dollars and kickass expertise to bear on gathering the whole world wide wubs here to Boston in a few months. It’s no small thing, and we’re proud to be teamed up with them.

Specifically, today, we’re very glad to announce that the nonprofitting, web-browser-creating, awesome-producing folks over at Mozilla, will be jumping on board as conference sponsors for ROFLCon II. We’re hugely indebted to them for actually sending the Firefox back in 2008 (leading to this bit of wonderfulness), and loving that we’re teaming up with them once more to put this together.

They’ll be there, repping some of their latest work with Drumbeat, and helping our team stream/capture everything that happens that weekend (which we’ll be releasing afterwards in glorious CC BY, as per usual) from the conference for posterity. It’s going to rock.

As always, if you’re interested in hopping on board as a sponsor yourself, be sure to drop a line to tim AT roflcon DOT org.

The internet has long been a space for the surreal mixing and remixing of Garfield strips (we haven’t forgotten you, Lasagna Cat) but, we’re truly happy to announce today that we’re bringing one of the serious all-originals, all the way from Ireland, to be part of ROFLCon II (you’re welcome).

That’s right: we’re stupendously excited to confirm on this here ROFLblog today that Dan Walsh, the creator of the oddly existential Garfield Minus Garfield, will be attending in April! Don’t know about you — but we’re celebrating.

Looks like the wave of invites and other confirmations is rolling down the pipe once more, so keep an eye on this blog, should be a pretty spicy week of posts.

I’m pleased to announce this cloudy cloudy afternoon in Boston that ROFLCon has officially confirmed that the Bureau Chiefs of the eminent standards-establishing committee behind Fake AP Stylebook, Mark Hale and Ken Lowery, will be present and speaking at ROFLCon!

In addition to the creators, it should be noted that in addition to sending their managing editors, AP Stylebook will also be gathering an unruly horde of the Bureau’s contributors (up to 15! No, seriously), who will be attending as well. So, keep an eye out. Guest list updated (closing in on 50 guests!), as per usual.

Whew — have a good weekend much? ROFLTeam’s been on high-octane for these past few weeks, cobbling together our schedule and working out boring things like the logistics on rooms and whatnot, so expect to see some draft panels and related stuff start coming out over the next week or so.

In any case, to launch off another week of guest announcements, very pleased today to announce that we’ve confirmed that elusive Easthampton genius (and ROFLCon 2008 alumni) R Stevens of webcomic darling Diesel Sweeties, will be present and awesome at ROFLCon II! It looks like this will be the first in a wave of webcomic folks to come, so if you’ve sent us e-mails complaining that we haven’t been snagging those peeps, hold on to your proverbial hats.

Also, mysteriously, happy to say we’ve also been working with Rich on a TOTALLY STUPENDOUS BUT AS YET CLASSFIED PROJECT which should be utterly kickass. More details to come, so stay tuned…

 (image courtesy the Pixelsaurus Shirt)

Good to wake up to fantastic news today that the good folks over at MailChimp — which is honestly-effectively-pretty-much the Apple of the email list management world — have joined with our old friends at Laughing Squid, the Berkman Center, and MIT’s CMS to come aboard and sponsor ROFLCon II!

We’re more than excited and proud to have them be part of the family. As tremendous fans of sending too much e-mail (and hominid-themed things in general), it’s a good fit on many levels, and we couldn’t be happier.

Geekily, let me also mention here that MailChimp has one sexy API. Is that appropriate?

Good morning! As promised — we’re keeping the blog train a’moving ahead this week: pumped today to announce that we’ve confirmed that Tom Jennings, the creator of FIDONet, will be attending and speaking at ROFLCon II! Kevin Driscoll, who you might remember from 2008’s fantastic talk on online dance crazes, will be presiding.

Of course, as anyone familliar with Tom’s work would attest, it’d be criminal just to shout out FIDONet here on this blog post and just leave it at that. As his personal projects and essays page will attest, Tom’s been involved in a variety of awesomeness for decades — zines, trolling the gullible web, and so on. So, needless to say, we’re excited that he’ll be putting online culture, technology, politics, and everything else together at the conference.

And, if you haven’t yet happened to read his review of the bizzare little RAND Corporation publication “A Million Random Digits” (which is exactly like it sounds), you really should. 

(photo courtesy Jason “Textfiles” Scott)

We’ve got a jam packed week of announcements here for you at ROFLCon, featuring a sort-of (okay, sort-of really) ridiculous collection of scholars, sponsors, and web folks confirmations coming down the pipe.

To get us started off on a good foot this dreary Monday morning in the northeast, I’m glad to announce today that we’ve confirmed that London-based Flash animation prodigy Joel Veitch, founder of Rathergood.com the creator of such hits at We Like The Moon (which you may remember was later Quiznosified in possibly the best fast food ad campaign of all time) Gay Bar, and Chicken To Ride will be attending ROFLCon II! We’re excited to say that he’ll be speaking and paneling it up, so, definitely keep an eye out when the schedule rolls out in the coming weeks.

Hell yes.

A little while back, we put out a public call for suggestions for the guest list this year. So far, we’ve been pretty successful at snagging them (David After Dentist, Mahir “I Kiss You” Cagri, etc…) Anyways, there was one that was more requested than all others.

You asked for it, and glad to report that we did it.

Greetings and salutations and congratulations to family-run outfit The Gregory Brothers, the team behind Autotune the News! We’re officially confirming today will be attending, speaking at (and potentially even performing) at ROFLCon II!

Hugely excited — now we just need to go and confirm T-Pain, and the panel will be complete…

Like Tron Guy, ROFLCon’s been lucky to have been blessed with having some good friends helping it through thick and thin ever since we began back in 2008. This has been made doubly great because those benefactors, in turn, have been themselves seriously awesome. We’d be remiss not to bring these people back to participate in the insanity that ROFLCon II is shaping up to be.

To that end, we’re happy to announce that our very first official media sponsorship of the conference is with San Francisco (and now expanding to New York City) kickass blog and hosting empire Laughing Squid! Scott Beale and crew will be representing at the conference — and most likely filling the Flickr stream again with some seriously inspired photography. Needless to say, we’re absolutely looking forward to having them back.

Big guest announcement coming out tomorrow!