going to be in new york on january 24th? you should be

Mark your calendar for the first ROFLThing of 2009: January 24th, 2009. New York will never be the same.

Not only will it be as epic an event as the first ever ROFLCon of last April, it's also going to be hosted by me. I'm still trying to decide on a costume, but I have a feeling this is an event you wont want to miss.

It's the same ROFLtastic team who brought you all those other flavors of ROFL, only this one is going to be in the New York city, which means LOLcats doing lines off strippers and TronGuy brawling with Naked Cowboy (TronGuy wins, easily).

They generously announced it on the ROFLBlog, but you should probably see my moderation of the LOLcats panel that sealed the deal.

And then watch this clip from the original ROFLCon in Cambridge:

sxsw isn't going to be as yc-tastic as i hoped, but ars technica and roflcon are sure to please

After the second round of panel announcements, it looks pretty clear that my Y Combinator panel isn't going to happen. Making it a broader look at startup fundraising strategies would have probably helped. I really hoped I'd get to make that orange kool-aid, too.

Nonetheless, we're still heading to SXSW next year and I'd like to promote two panels that did make the cut.

Ken Fisher of Ars Technica is hosting a panel on building and maintaining strong online communities. I know he's got some strong panelists, too ;)

Tim Hwang of ROFLCon will also be discussing the state of the Internet Memescape. The panel title includes the years 2008-2010. One can only suspect that Tim has some sort of time-travel machine, which lets him see the Internet of 2010. Fascinating.

two sxsw interactive panels that need your vote

I've been a proud ROFLCon cheerleader for a while now, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I'm endorsing Behind the ROFLs: Next-Gen Conference Organizing While Broke. But don't just vote on it, if you're in Austin next March, be sure to catch this panel. It'll be as insightful as it is ROFL-ful.

There's no way I'm missing that panel -- unless it's poorly timed to coincide with mine... (in which case I may still attempt some form of time travel)

You see, I'm moderating a panel called Inside Y Combinator - The YC Startups Speak. It doesn't have the same titular title as Behind the ROFLs, but it should be a good panel. If it's selected, I'll pull questions from InsideYC.reddit to ask the assortment of YC founders. This may appear to be an efficient way to solicit the questions the audience really wants answered, but it's really just so I have to do less preparation.

Along with your vote, I'd love some feedback either here or on Hacker News.

ROFLCon video: the LOLcats panel I moderated

Respectably French did something uncharacteristically French (sorry, Antoine) and got this online ahead of schedule. I also mentioned it on the breadpig blog, but wanted you all to see it, too. The Guardian even wrote about it.

I had a fantastic group of panelists, who made my job very easy. Even if you're not a student of LOLspeak, I think you owe it to yourself to watch this for your own cultural edification.

And notice the slick (and shameless) LOLmagnetz promotion I sneak in there...

breadpig project: one roflaptop per child

Here's the latest breadpig project, getting my XO laptop (unusable with my ogreish hands) signed by the meme-makers of the Internet at ROFLCon and auctioning it on eBay for OLPC. There's even a trailer to prove it...

Or if you don't need proof, just go right to the eBay listing and bid or at the very least, email/IM it to all of your friends and family

Oh, and here's a photo of the XO laptop in Randall Munroe's embrace.

That's one lucky laptop...

a clip from roflcon - starring xkcd!

I got the chance to moderate and speak on a panel at ROFLCon this past weekend in Cambridge, MA. In the midst of relentlessly plugging reddit, getting superstar geek signatures for my ROFLaptop and handing out LOLmagnetz, I came face to face with Internet legends (can I call them legends? To hell with it, I am). Pics of me with Tron Guy to come...

One of the highlights for me came on my panel, INCUBATING THE MINDVIRUS: MEME INFRASTRUCTURES, hosted by the moderator-extraordinaire, Anil Dash. And yes, he was rocking his infamous NYTimes-photographed Goatse shirt.

He asked the panel for some significant moments when you realized your meme (in my case, the whole reddit-thing) really took off. I didn't have a good answer for us, but there were two fantastic memes I saw at their humble beginnings on reddit -- one was even in attendance...

(Thanks to Doomeru of Resigned Gamer for the video)

And if that weren't enough, here's an excerpt from a recent IM convo we had:

5:06:03 PM xkcd-dude: I hope you aren't hurt
5:06:13 PM xkcd-dude: but I've added a line to my hosts file
5:06:28 PM xkcd-dude: so reddit resolves to localhost
5:06:36 PM xkcd-dude: where this page is served: http://xkcd.com/no/

Hurt? Randall, I'm in love.

here I am looking longingly into the eyes of Randall Munroe
pic from Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

In case you're curious, the other meme I hinted at is Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame, but I'm cooking up a separate blog entry just for him.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. Our ROFLhosts did a masterful job and I'm counting on them to repeat next year. Consider me signed up. If you didn't make it this year, the videos should be floating around. I've got nearly all the footage from the LOLspeak panel I moderated -- just need to find the right techno soundtrack to loop in the background.

i can has reddit?

Why the angry BBQ? It appears to be the perfect foil to the happy chair from only days earlier. Both of these pictures came from a slice of Internet genius called I Can Has Cheezburger? (not a question, that's just the name of the site).

We're proud supporters of LOL-stuff (in fact, it's one of our UI translations) and we're happy to be partnering with ROFLCon to provide some interesting discussion for the upcoming interview with Cheez...

Excerpted from blog.reddit:

We're working with ROFLCon to produce the "Q" for a Q&A session with I Can Has Cheezburger? founder, "Cheez."

If you've been around since one of the early startup schools, you'll remember an interview with Caterina Fake of Flickr that featured all the top-scoring questions from an askCaterina reddit.

Well, we're doing it again with the founder of a meme that's been showing up a lot on reddit. If you enjoy a good LOL every now and then, you ought to submit a question (using "self" post) and vote on the rest. Even if you're not going to ROFLCon this April, the videos and transcripts will certainly be going online shortly thereafter.

We're aiming to do a new one of these every week, so keep an eye out for our next geek celeb ask.reddit -- Barbara Walters can't touch this.