ROFLCon: Unknown Quantities

Memes, originally uploaded by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.

I'm still wandering around rainy streets here, thinking about the conference that blew through. I keep saying that I wish I could have experienced ROFLCon asynchronously. There were too many places to be at once, and instead of being in all of them, I mostly stood in hallways clutching tattered pieces of paper (stained blue by jeans pockets) and my cellphone, in heart-racing fists.

While the conference was happening, I couldn't imagine it ever happening again. It was too surreal to even imagine replicating. At the same time, though, it was so captivating that it was hard to imagine such a strange portal vanishing forever. Only after it was all over—only then did I really start thinking about what made it work, and whether it could be made to work again.

At the Barbarian afterparty, I got a chance to talk to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid. It was all the afterglow, of course, and so people were being generally very positive. But I was still impressed by the strength of people's belief that it could and should be done again. Scott mentioned the fact that the first time, people weren't sure whether it was "okay" or not to attend, follow, believe in ROFLCon; the whole thing was one huge unknown quantity. Now, though, "people needed to know that it was okay, and now that they know it's okay, you'll get an incredibly strong response the second time around." (Paraphrased.)

Scott was right, of course. But when he said that, something struck me. Sure: now that it's a known quantity, it would be much easier to get people to believe in a future for ROFLCon. But what if part of what made ROFLCon work was the fact that the audience didn't need to be given permission to come? They didn't need to know it was "okay." They knew that even if it wasn't okay, it would at least be an adventure.

That sense of adventure permeated the conference, I think. I wouldn't ever want to lose that. I'm glad, grateful, stunned that it was "okay" this time around, of course. But maybe ROFLCon just doesn't have a choice. Maybe it will always have to remain an unknown quantity, in order to be anything at all.

Thoughts on this matter infinitely welcome, as I probably will not stop thinking about it, ever—diana dot kimball at gmail dot com.

(Thanks also to Scott for the very neat picture, which perfectly captures the jankity-crank aesthetic of ROFLCon 2008.)

ROFLCon: In the Beginning

Rockstars, originally uploaded by davefishernc.

On Friday morning, at 10am, this happened. It is still hard to believe what happened next. Thank you, everybody, for everything. When belief sets in, you'll hear more.

In the meantime, there is this.

It is not self-explanatory at all. In fact, it's not even explanatory.

Incidentally: that explains everything.

(Thanks for the photo, Dave!)

ROFLCon: It's On.

In a few hours, I'll be waking up, putting on a red shirt, and walking out the door to ROFLCon. This is the conference I've been scheming about all year long, in the company of an outrageously talented and lovable team, chock full of new best friends. All of a sudden, it's time.

If you're wondering whether this blog will come back, and be something that happens more than once a month, the answer is: yes! The truly weird thing about putting together a Conference of the Internet is that it makes it much harder to spend actual time on the internet. Time other than that spent on email, of course—a pursuit which has opened its jaws wide enough to swallow half of every day, lately! It's worth every minute of it, though. But, yes. There are so many things that have drifted past without being pinned down on inked screens. I haven't even divulged my latest historical venture! A short history of home repair magazines and romance. Really.

So. Tomorrow will be exciting. See you there, everybody. Thank you for making this real.

(You can follow some of the action on my brand-new Twitter account! dianakimball.)

In Real Life

This weekend, it seized me—the urge to use "irl" in speech. Out loud. This urge, I mainly suppressed. But suppression was hard when it was all so truly real! Like the moment when Swifty described Jamaica Plain as "the place where Pantone goes to throw up." Or the time when my tiny yarn octopus, on a red dollhouse chair, met Frederica for the first time. Frederica is pink. She's an octopus, too.

More importantly, I got to meet nickd for the second time and Erin for the first—yes, in real life—and it was very surreal, and also incredible. Not 12 hours ago we were sitting in this very common room, surrounded by cupcake crumbs, drinking tea, fresh from the comic book shop. Erin and nickd, as I explained relentlessly throughout the entire weekend, are my "internet friends." That's such a shabby way to describe such wonderful people, though, you know? Or maybe it's not.

The thing is, I've known nickd since I was 15 or 16. I remember when he visited Ann Arbor to see Phil, when I was still in high school, and he brought bumper stickers for his blog. The words and images exchanged back then are like books to me, now—full of timeless ideas that I keep coming back to, and I'm sure they're responsible for everything from my latent love for Little Nemo's Adventures in Slumberland to the fact that I'm writing here, this very moment.

And Erin has boots, and her boots have speech bubbles. I could have known her forever.

We were walking away from my dorm this brisk afternoon—past the poetry shop, toward the gates—and I said something about how seeing my internet friends in real life emphatically affirmed everything I believe in. The two of them, with cameras slung around their necks, and stopping in comic book shops and scraping through baskets of pinbacked buttons, put into three dimensions the quietude of adventure. It wasn't nostalgia. It's just that this life I lead in two dimensions—beautiful pictures, kind and thoughtful words, a shared history of typing and trading—is so much bolder in three.

Slowly, it was staggering. I am sad to see them leave.