You know, I was actually going to blog more extensively about this, but I realized it kind of explains itself.

The most recent project from the endlessly awesome Dino Ignacio, creator of Bert Is Evil.

As per last time — we’re doing a series of blog feature stories on the new projects that’ve been popping up lately for some of the ROFLPartners that we’ve worked with in the past.

This is out of control.

Just caught the word from the team over at I Can Haz Cheezburger that after much consideration, they’ve decided to go ahead with throwing an honest to goodness LOLCat gallery show in San Francisco October 23rd. We hear it’ll be some swanky digs, with hors d’oeuvres, mixed media exhibits, and the whole thing. They’re looking for legit art commentators and the general gallery community to come out to experience the general image macro joy, so it should be an awesome group of people.

You can read more about the submission details here at ICHC. Pieces are due this Friday, so get a’crackin!

Can’t lie — the Team had some jitters going into it and after — but it looks like the Twitterati have spoken: ROFLThing rocked. Our speakers were kickass all the way through, DJ JD was crispy on the wheels of steel, and our open bar ended up making the entire place a total fire hazard. In other words: it was great.

Mostly we’d just like to say thanks, San Francisco. You love the Information Superhighway. And so do we.

I’ve been trying to see if we can’t wrangle the video (speaking of video — here’s Adam Jackson’s recap) from the event — in the very least, there’s been some blog coverage and some photos (here and Flickr tag), which should give you a sense of the ridiculousness that went down a week ago. You can also get Ben Huh’s slides on microhumor here.

Glad to report that we’re already onto the next thing — I’ve been putting out feelers about our next ROFLThing event in NYC, and trying to set some other events rolling. Stay tuned to this blog for all the breaking information on that and drop a comment if you have any suggestions on who’d be cool to get.

(image, Ted “Dogster” Rheingold’s plates — courtesy Andrew Mager’s ZDNet Coverage)

So if you didn’t make it out last night to Barbarian Group’s Achewood pre-party, you missed out — was a totally awesome time. Chris Onstad and Barbarian’s very own Rick Webb were in top form.

In any case, while over there, the ROFLThing team ran into Adam Jackson, steadfast lifecaster and the guy behind the blog DailyTechTalk. He’s generously offered to webcast the entire event tonight for all of you folks that we’ve been hearing from who are out of town or are just too lazy to get out of their house and come party with us.

In short, who has two thumbs and is totally awesome? THAT GUY (above).

You can catch all the hotness starting to roll around 5 PST over at Adam’s Justin.tv channel.

Glad to report that we’ve received news that local favorite micropresidential candidate John McTaint 2008 will be attending San Francisco ROFLThing this Friday! The Team wasn’t able to make it to his candidacy party over at the House of Shields last week, but we hear it was pretty epic.

We hear he’ll be milling around with his staff — kissing babies, shaking hands, and everything else you’re supposed to be doing as a politician when you’re not promising American families a barrel of crude oil. Be sure to swing by and say hi!

Back in San Francisco and going nuts this week getting the final details all tied up and ready to go for ROFLThing events in less than a week. Get excited for unmitigated badassery.

If you’re attending the VIP Achewood Pre-Party for ROFLThing this coming Thursday night (which you definitely should), Chris has let us know that he’ll bring some of his gorgeously designed merch without the usual shipping fees if you e-mail a wish list of things to orders@achewood.com with the subject line “ROFLCon Order.”

They’ll send a payment request via PayPal over to you and then, magically, on Thursday night, they’ll show up with your things bagged For Your Convenience. Word on the street is that they’ll be no other merch available, so grab it while you can.

If you haven’t gotten on the list for the party yet, but want to — drop a line to tim AT roflcon DOT org. Hurry now while supplies last, we’re expecting to run out of slots in the next few days.

image courtesy Onion AV Club

Kickass.

Alright kids, finally firming up the details with our hosts @ Mighty on what’s happening to the schedule at around 10 o’clock after all the speakers have done their thang and our hosted open bar budget gets ground into so many tiny nubs by hordes of thirsty internet inhabitants. They’ve been handling this part of the show and it looks like the SF-area collective True Skool will be throwing a dance party with an all-star DJ lineup!

The good news is, this means there’ll be a good show to follow up the general awesomeness of ROFLThing. But, the sad news is, since the Mighty/True Skool crew are running this part of the gig, they’ll be kicking everyone out at 10 and reprocessing everyone who wants to get in for $5.

Happy to take suggestions/announce here on the blog if someone wants to do a post-ROFLThing bar or restaurant takeover somewhere. Drop me a line at tim AT roflcon DOT org.

Zoh mah gawd guyz.

So, a few weeks back, we confirmed that Ben Huh, the CEO of the growing image macro empire that is I Can Haz Cheezburger, would be speaking about the current state of business of microhumor and cat pictures at the San Francisco ROFLThing.

Had no idea, but it turns out that Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami, co-founders of ICHC, are also Bay Area folks. In any case, good news coming out today that they’ll be coming to rock with Ben and us on the 29th. Woo woo!

picture courtesy Wired, Jim Merithew 

We’re in the final throes of tying up the deets for SF-ROFLThing, and I’ve been looking around for the past week or so for a suitable DJ to spin a kickass internet meme themed mix during our open bar on August 29th. Lucky for us local talent Josh Williams volunteered his skills to the task. You might know Josh as H8Ball of the San Francisco based event superteam Space Cowboys. He’s rocked the Black Rock Hoe Downs at Burning Man, The Breakfast of Champions party on New Year’s Day, and a bushel of other events.

In any case, we’ve been trading some e-mails, and I’m glad to announce today that he’ll be coming on board to man the Wheels of Steel for the ROFLThing! A+++ would buy again.

For some of what to expect, check out some of his mixes here. Or feel free to be all clever and stuff and follow him on the gawd dang twitter: @joshdamon. Definitely drop him a line if you have any song suggestions!

It’s a long shot — but thanks to the recommendation of Sean Savage and the help of some awesome San Francisco ROFLThing attendees, local favorite “12 Galaxies” protester Frank Chu has been personally invited to the party on August 29th. As one of San Fran’s most prominent microcelebrities, we figured it was only right to extend the offer.

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not he’ll turn up, but, fingers crossed…

This is a week or so late already, but ROFLThing was recently shouted out on Neat-O-Rama!

Sweet.

Ho, ho sweet cuppin’ cakes!

After a visit to the swankest offices it has ever been my pleasure to check out and a walk-n’-talk with their awesome team, I’m happy to announce today that we’ve partnered up with Mekanism, a San Francisco area content creation/marketing/syndication/social media/everything powerhouse, and they’re coming on board to support ROFLThing! The company is the the mastermind behind some awesome web culture projects (you may remember the Spore Vote), and the team is thrilled to have ‘em working with us.

They’ve signed on board for a bunch of our events — so look forward to seeing them as we spread the ROFLs around the country. We’re in the home stretch now, so stay tuned for more news as it breaks all this upcoming week at ROFLThing HQ…

Good news that we’ve been in touch with Yiying Lu, who was the design mastermind behind the now iconic Twitter Fail Whale. Turns out she’ll unfortunately be unable to join Sean O’Steen and the Fail Whale Club crew over at our August 29th event in San Francisco. However, excited to announce that in a move of incredible generosity and awesomeness, she’s agreed to put together some designs for our schedule for the event. Which (be still your geeky hearts) will be printed out on old school 5.25” floppy sleeves. We’ll post ‘em as they get put together over the next week or so.

You can see more of Yiying’s gorgeous (non-Fail Whale related) work at her site here.

Well.

Quite a few members of the ROFLCon crew are planning to attend SXSW Interactive 2009, and we’d love to see you there! In fact, we’ve applied for a speaking spot on a topic we hope you’ll find interesting. The talk is called Behind the ROFLs: Next-Gen Conference Organizing While Broke, and in it we promise to share all of our secrets, tips, and lulz about how (and why) we put ROFLCon together without failing out of school (yet) or selling our souls to large corporations (yet). If this sounds appealing to you, please click here and vote positively for us! It’ll make us feel really special.

In fact, since SXSW’s panel picker is so incredibly crowded, here’s a quick guide to what our friends are up to at SXSW. If you were a guest at ROFLCon and you’re not on this list, email us and we’ll put you on!

• Tim Hwang (ROFLeader): The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008-10
• Tim Hwang (ROFLeader): Obsolete? A World After Email (Ed. note: This from the man who Twittered like 18 times about Gmail being down–should be good!)
• Alex Leavitt (ROFLfriend): Blackboards or Backchannels: the Techno-Induced Classroom of Tomorrow
• Alexis Ohanian (Reddit): Inside Y Combinator: The YC Startups Speak

Doctor Popular, San Francisco-based Yo-Yo Genius and Nerdcore Rapper, was showing me these ridiculously slick “LOL-llets” that he’s been putting together the other day. Two cool bits of news:

1) He’ll be showing up to lurk around the crowd at San Francisco ROFLThing on Aug 29th!

2) He will be bringing some of this hot handmade wallet action and other various cool doodads with him! If you can’t wait to get your grubby little paws on them, they’re also available on Etsy.

That is all. Been working out the deets on the Onstad party, stay tuned…

In the proud tradition of Jason Scott’s unbelievably kickass “Before the LOL” talk back in April, we’ve been looking for something geek/internet culture historical to round out the final slot of the rapidly upcoming San Francisco ROFLThing, and today I’m happy to announce that we’ve confirmed Stanford Prof Fred Turner to speak on August 29th!

Fred wrote a history of the early-early hippie San Francisco tech scene “From Counterculture to Cyberculture” and his talk, “Buckminster Fuller and the Technocratic Counterculture,” will be about Fuller’s dreams of comprehensive design and how they influence the trajectory of internet/technology culture today. The ROFLCon team saw him speak back last year — and it was pretty epic. Should be rockin’

You can listen to a talk that he did at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society a little while back here.

Aficionados of the Web 1.0 internet culture universe will remember an epic little site from way back when in 1998 called Eric Conveys An Emotion. The premise was simple, but brilliant: people would e-mail Eric (pictured above doing “Faked Surprise”) emotions, which he’d then take a picture of himself expressing. It managed, inexplicably, to be endlessly amusing (and time-consuming for the procrastination-minded). Must’ve spent a good chunk of my tender young life browsing through the site.

Anyways, happy to announce that as part of our usual open call to all internet celebs: he’s officially confirmed that he’s coming to chill out at our August 29th San Francisco ROFLThing. The only phrase for this is — sassy fabulous (obviously).

At ROFLCon HQ — we’re big fans of Chris Onstad’s consistently brilliant, absurd, visually amazing webcomic Achewood. It’s been consistently owning the charts in recent years, becoming #1 on Time’s Best Graphic Novels of 2007 (despite not even being a graphic novel) and picking up an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic (among others). Needless to say, we’ve been wanting for the past year or so to bring him out for one of our events.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that our mind-blowingly awesome friends over at The Barbarian Group (of Subservient Chicken fame) will be throwing a Achewood pre-party for ROFLThing on the night before the event (Aug 28th)! Chris Onstad will be there to give a talk about his work and other interesting things. And Achewood themed drinks will be available.

agh this is going to be like the sweetest thing ever.

Spots WILL be really limited though (<80 spots) since its happening at Barbarian Group offices, so we’re giving them out on a first-come-first-served basis. So if you’ve already gotten a ticket for Friday — drop me a line ASAP at tim AT roflcon DOT org to reserve a space.

Hey all you crazy Web 2.0 kids!

Was at the Adaptive Path party yesterday when I totally realized that I hadn’t gotten with the whole “cross-posting your event” thing, which makes us at San Francisco ROFLThing HQ pretty lamepants (not least of which because Andy Baio will be speaking).

So if you want to RSVP with glee, we’re now on Upcoming, Facebook and Pownce. Enjoy!