Live from Cambridge it's ROFLCon
After a should-have-been-expected traffic delay and inevitable parking chaos I’m on the ground at ROFLCon 2008! HELLO CAMBRIDGE!
A beautiful day in Cambridge and we’ve got a room full of geeks, nerds, smartasses and a few geniuses all inside a slightly darkened room.
My best guess is there are more than 250 people here, but that’s a rough estimate – so don’t hold me to it later on.
Also happy to see a decent amount of media here, including at least one guy from BBC Radio.
A high energy crowd, but excited in a good way, like just being in the room is making them smarter, better or funnier. I get the feeling anyone could walk up to a stranger, introduce themselves and start a long conversation.
Spotted so far: The Tron Guy and a walking, furry Firefox, who is not in flames.
David Weinberger just wrapped up his keynote speech about what Fame on the Web means to all of us and what it means to mainstream media and popular culture. Weinberger is the author of “Everything is Miscellaneous.”
Weinberger took the crowd on a web tour of some of the more popular memes and videos of recent years, linking them together on how they relate to us, make us feel and make us react.
What makes Internet fame, celebrity and notoriety different and special, Weinberger says, is that it reflects us because it is us. It’s weird, funny, imperfect and sometimes moving.
“Fame is becoming ours, we’re making it our own,” he said.
As I write this a panel discussion is taking place on the strange rise to fame (and modest profit) from the likes of Ian Spector (Chuck Norris Facts), Andy Ochiltree (JibJab), Andrew Baron of (Rocketboom) and Joe Mathlete (Joe Mathlete Explains Marmaduke and Kyle Macdonald of (One Red Paperclip).
You can also follow things as they happen over at the ROFLCon site.
Keep checking in and don’t forget the Twitter feed.
Also I've got a Flickr stream of ROFLCon up.
Posted by at 01:18 PM
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