After the panel there I spent some more time hawking shwag, followed by some cleaning. Exciting stuff I know. I did get a chance to apologize to Randall for being a complete creep the previous night. He said he would let Ryan North, who was also there, know, and that was that. I feel much about the whole thing now. We, the ROFLCon team and volunteers did polish a whole cold pizza left from lunch while cleaning. I am normally very opposed to cold pizza, citing prevalence of microwaves in avoiding the normally breakfast food. I can say, with confidence, that a cold slice of pizza has never tasted so good to me. During cleanup we also had some fun, captured in this video that I uploaded from the MIT Media lab while waiting for the shuttle bus to the VIP after party.
The VIP after part was awesome. Definitely the best part of the whole thing for me. It was held in the office space of Barbarian Group, a web advertising company and included an open bar. Everyone I talked to there was either:
- A Barbarian Employee
- A ROFLCon team member or volunteer
- Famous on the Internet
The first group I joined after acquiring a rum and coke were some people, including team members and the Mozilla guy talking to moot about what kind of opportunities he can parlay his current skill set into. This way he doesn’t end up 37 and breaking even on 4chan, a fear he discussed in the panel on “Internet Cult Leaders.”
After grabbing some of the tasty food I came across Diana Kimble and Rachel Popkin who were being told that they had “Won the Internet” with the con by Joe Peacock of Mentally Incontinent. This seemed to be the general consensus, at least among the memes. I also saw Tron Guy telling Diana roughly the same thing earlier in the day. More on how people felt about the con later on.
I sat down at the party with Cheez of icanhascheezburger. Finally a meme I’m familiar with! As many of you know I dislike the predominant name for what he has created and fostered, LOLCats, compared with Cat Macros. Given the chance I decided to get his first hand opinion on why one name is more popular. He feels that “Cat Macros” is more technical than “LOLCats,” citing that the term macro is not widely understood outside tech circles. He also discussed the familiarity even normal people have with the term LOL, and how including that term in the name draws in a wider audience because it makes them more accessible. Given the obvious technical superiority of the Cat Macro’s name I had not considered these arguments. And in the end it was totally sweet to get some kind of resolution of this undercurrent straight from Cheez. I think you won’t be hearing much about this anymore.
Between that VIP after party and the late night after party, while I was again waiting for the shuttle bus, I walked off with some people searching for warmth and coffee in a Starbucks. There was one just a few storefronts away, but someone’s iphone said that it was closing in 10 minutes. Apparently that was unacceptable so we trekked four blocks to the next closest one. Of course that someone turned out to be Justine Ezarik of iJustine and the 300 page iphone bill. On the way there I ended up talking to Joe Mathlete of Marmaduke Explained. Inside none of us could get this cute blond meme to tell us what she’s famous for. Of course, with a picture and a list on the internet nothing stays secret for long, she turned out to be Brookers. On the bus to Great Scott I talked to some more cool people, whom’s names I forget. One of them was a web developer for 4chan, another a marketer for Super Deluxe, and her significant other who “makes things”.
