Sifting Through ROFLCon
(Hundreds of people barrel rolling. Photo courtesy Brennan Moore, CC BY SA)
So by now most of the press has come out for ROFLCon, the blogosphere has weighed in (Diana will have a more complete set of responses from our guests by tonight — I’ll link it then), Anonymous has complained, and we’re starting the process of getting the complete video of the conference up online at Archive.org. Things are tying up.
With all this hubblaboo, I’m kind of reluctant to talk about ROFLCon at the risk of sounding redundant, grandiose, or needlessly self-indulgent circa Livejournal. But Diana is telling me that I should at least say a little something. So I’ll keep it short — four points. Thank god to Tumblr for keeping me without a convenient page break as a safety valve.
First, of course, are the thanks. ROFLCon went bigger ($), cooler (?), and more smoothly (!) that I ever thought it would. Watching the team grow from Christina making fun of me to a cloud of organized red shirted badasses was a little like the joy of having your totally innocuous ship-in-a-bottle building hobby rage out of control and ravage the countryside. So, what I’m trying to say is, huge thanks to all the volunteers, guests, profs, and sponsors (all too numerous to name here) who took the bet on us — we couldn’t have done it without you.
Second, speaking as a part-time attendee to the conference, I’m excited about the possibilities of the group — guests and spectators alike — we had gathered there. One of the big questions leading up to the event was whether or not you could actually walk the tightrope between a celebration and a more straight-laced discussion about internet culture once people away from their usual alone time with their computer and together in person. And, plus, whether or not it would be just okay, or really exciting. Thankfully, the answer appears to be yes (an excited yes), so long as it’s done right. I heard ROFLCon described throughout the weekend as a “new kind of convention community.” Only time will tell, but it seemed like we’ve hit a strange in-between space that hasn’t quite been explored yet in terms of IRL event. I kept hearing from people that they felt they “belonged” there. Behind that, I think there’s a real sense that manifesting the internet in real people and real encounters adds emotional weight, builds social capital and affirms solidarity in a way that changes how people thing about their place online. I think it’s a continuing question to see how this’ll evolve as more chances for “our kind” of people to meet happen in the future.
Third, the fact that everybody at the conference was tech-enabled enough to take advantage of all the web tools we had floating around was kick ass full stop. Full disclosure: we flubbed up on the Birds of a Feather dinners. We were just so freakin’ busy that we never got a chance to organize or solicit for suggestions or make reservations. So, imagine our total surprise when we apologized and got a curious “I thought we were supposed to do that over Twitter” from the audience. I guess I didn’t quite realize how powerful these infrastructures were when the group actively used and engaged them (coming from your everyday experience, where Twitter gets a blank “huh?”). As the Wired folks pointed out that along with backcha.nl, these techs created a whole secondary layer to the conference that made it unpredictable for even us as organizers. This changes the balance of power in event planning in cool ways, and I think it’s going to shape conference experiences more generally for organizers willing to take advantage of the opportunities. Been preparing some thoughts recently on it — will post here when its all done.
Four, in terms of the future. I’m happy to say simply: yes. Internally, the team seems unanimous in saying that we don’t want to do just the same thing again but bigger — that’d be boring. Instead, we want to go somewhere new and cooler with the ROFLCon idea. More details about some of our small schemes for this summer will be posted on the ROFLCon blog either tonight or tomorrow. And beyond that than that, who knows?
Whew, that was long. I’ll be elaborating on these last three in the next few weeks, but at least that’s what’s on my mind now. (shorter i promise guyz)
