*click click* I think I can now add event photographer to my resume!

ROFLthing was an internet culture conference dedicated  to discussing what makes memes work, why they work, and where its all going.

I missed the first speaker, Andy Baio, due to Bay Bridge Labor Day traffic, but luckily I didn’t miss Ben Huh of LOLcats and http://icanhascheezburger.com/. Ben gave a witty talk on “Microhumor and The State of the LOL” punctuated with LOLcats-but of course!  I got to meet Ben after and found him to be very nice, intelligent, approachable, and even helpful!

Next up was Sean O’Steen - founder of the Twitter Fail Whale Fan Club, http://failwhale.com/.  Sean’s talk was titled, “Love and the Cetacean Nation”, and he shared his journey from buying the url on his wife’s birthday to the first Fail Whale Party, and the possibility of a Fail Whale Pale Ale!  His talk was puctuated with fun fan art of the Fail Whale, including a man who actually had the Fail Whale tattooed on his leg!

The closing speaker was Assistant Stanford Professor Fred Turner,  http://www.stanford.edu/group/fredturner/cgi-bin/drupal/, who gave a fascinating speech on “Buckminster Fuller and the Technocratic Counterculture”.  Now THIS is the kind of cool professor I want!  Full of energy and enthusiasm, even attends Burning Man in his professor clothes!

After the speeches concluded, the open bar opened up and the socializing/networking began!  Unfortunately, I was on my own and driving, so I stuck to ice water with lemon.  Yes, I still tipped the bartender!  I saw my friend, Marianne Masculino - Happiness Engineer with Automattic, http://automattic.com/ - who introduced me to Kari Unebasami and Eric Nakagawa Co-founders of http://icanhascheezburger.com/ with Ben Huh.  They were such nice people, they actually came over from Hawaii for the event.  I love Marianne’s title - Happiness Engineer!  Marianne is a sweetheart and she and I seem to be attending a lot of the same events lately.

I also met a guy named Shalaco who has a zombie pin-up calendar in the works, loved his curley mustache! I talked with Robert Yau and Edwin Duterte.  Robert is the Founder of http://mydogspace.com, http://mycatspace.com.  I must sign my cats up!  Edwin is the President/Founder of OneKeyAway, http://onekeyaway.com, a new dating site!

I met Tim Hwang, Producer of ROFLCon - http://roflcon.org/ - who was one of the event organizers.  Ben Huh actually was kind enough to take a picture for me of Tim and I.  I also met Irina Slutsky, reporter with GETV, Geek Entertainment TV, http://www.geekentertainment.tv/tag/irinaslutsky/.   Irina was one of the other event organizers.  Irina was just a doll.  I MUST hang out with her sometime!

While I was walking around with my camera I was asked by Irina and Paul Armstrong, Manager of Consumer Corp. Communications with MySpace.com, http://myspace.com, to take a few pictures for them since their photographer was absent, and to send the pics on to Paul.  I was happy to oblige!  I ended up taking several pics for them including a few with Lore Sjöberg, Scott Beale of Laughing Squid, http://laughingsquid.com/. (Note - This is my event photographer credit for my resume!)

In an effort to start a new meme, McTaint, http://johnmctaint.com/, a McCain parody, was walking around “tainting” everyone with his stickers.  Yes, I was “tainted”!

I ended the evening chatting with Shalaco, Chris-who currently is between projects, and Dave with http://www.sixapart.com/.  Dave has no kids, but showed me a pic of his really cool cat-Oliver-a leopard or bengal cat. I have a cat named Oliver too, as some of you may remember from my post, Meow Mix - Oliver’s Audition, http://lauralovesart.com/entertainment/meow-mix-olivers-audition/.  (Now I want a bengal cat too-but shhh! don’t tell my cats!)

For more pictures from the event please see my flickr photostream at: http://flickr.com/photos/lauralovesart/sets/72157607028312721/

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