Podcasts about roflcon

Finding the pulse of what's now and what's next is a vital part of any VC's life. You need to see what is both practical as a business, but also what is coming up that might be worth investing time and energy to help grow. Our guest today Diana Kimball Berlin, Partner at Matrix, has only been an investor for a short stint, but she has a long track record of both product management as well as creating and curating internet culture. She founded ROFLCon, an early conference devoted to internet culture and has held product positions at some incredible companies like Microsoft, Soundcloud, and Quip.This was a great conversation where we discussed Diana's career, Matrix's mission and ethos as an early-stage investment fund, how they navigate the ever-evolving boundaries between sectors in the startup world, and her strategy for portfolio construction and how she navigates re-investment decisions.About Diana Kimball Berlin:Diana Berlin is an early-stage investor at Matrix with a focus on optimizing work tools, innovative apps, and scaling emotional labour. She was also a host on the "Should We" podcast.Before investing, Diana had roles at Microsoft, SoundCloud, and Quip (acquired by Salesforce). And while studying at Harvard, Diana co-founded ROFLCon one of the first internet culture conferences.She received a BA and MBA from Harvard.In this episode we discuss:(01:34) Diana's path into tech and investing(04:35) How her degree in history helped shape her career(06:33) Lessons from Soundcloud and Quip(08:10) Differences in the Berlin Startup Scene and San Francisco's(11:08) Diana experience co-hosting the Should We Podcast(13:52) Why she chose to transition to investing at Matrix(19:35) How deal attribution is structured at Matrix(22:07) Breaking down the factors of why she chose to invest in Accord, a Toronto/SF startup(24:46) How Diana's product background has informed her investing career(27:16) Areas she is actively investing in(32:51) How Diana stays up on trends(33:59) On not being able to see every deal in the marketplace(37:06) Using metrics to help define success as an introverted investor(40:54) Advice she is giving to her founders to survive this tough market(43:13) How she works with first-time founders(45:15) Decision making around reinvestment(47:36) Diana's passion for LegoFast Favorites*

Kate and Yoko are joined by ethnographer and people organizer Christina Xu. We talk about Christina’s relationship with the internet, and how she creates channels for enabling other people to do their most ambitious work . Also, Kate’s officiating her second wedding and conducted a survey about marriage (by the way, she’s got a boyfriend now. Y’all slept on that).

Our first episode of season 2 is about memes and the law, which sounds both boring and scary and is neither. First, we chatted with Vox Media’s Sara Reinis, who told us an unsettling story about her first viral tweet. In short: Her life was turned a little upside down because she made a meme using a photo of some birds, and did not realize the birds were someone’s family. Fair enough, Sara, but maybe all of our listeners will learn from your mistakes! Then we talked to Drew Scanlon, best known as the “white guy blinking meme.” He told us all about how his life has changed since his eyelids became the most famous ones on the whole internet. Honestly, it doesn’t sound that bad! But I would probably have less patience with my friends and acquaintances than Drew does. He says it doesn’t even bother him when they introduce him to people as “the blinking guy.” Finally, we talked to Tim Hwang about all the legal issues buzzing around these stories. He’s a lawyer, as well as the founder of the meme convention ROFLCon, and the director of Harvard and MIT’s Ethics and Governance of AI initiative. You can listen and read the transcript below, or find us anywhere else you find podcasts, including on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music, and our RSS feed. And get caught up on season 1 if you’re late to the party. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For this episode I sat down for a chat with Tim Hwang. Tim has been labeled by Forbes magazine as the ’Busiest Man on the Internet’. First, he started ROFLcon, which stands for Rolling On the Floor Laughing Conference. It was a conference that studied internet culture through memes. After ROFLcon, he founded The Awesome Foundation For Arts And Sciences. The foundation’s sole aim is to promote awesomeness in the universe. It has donated over 2,5 million dollars to various projects through grants. The foundation operates through autonomous chapters that independently fund the grants and make decisions on recipients. He then started a law firm called Robot, Robot and Hwang to study how lawyers could be automated. Currently he advises Google on the impacts of artificial intelligence on public policy. Tim has done a lot considering he just turned 30. At the end of the interview I asked him what his next project is going to be and his answer was not exactly the kind of answer you normally get.

From glittery reaction gifs modded by grandparents to rage faces on Reddit, stickers (gifs and other layered images) and emotive “biaoqing” have taken over messaging culture in China and beyond. Stickers are tied to filter culture, too — whether originating in real life as purikura photo sticker booths in Japan or digitally as Snapchat filters. Why are these forms of social communication so popular? Because sometimes you just want to say “I feel totally Nicki Minaj side-eye dot-GIF about this”, and no one can give a side-eye as good as Nicki Minaj can. But it's not just about isolated expressions, celebrity stickers like Kimoji, or personalized bitmoji; stickers are shaping and codifying the way people talk to each other online in new and multi-layered ways. It's even connected to mobile livestreaming, a phenomenon that's taking off in China right now, in the most mundane (food eating streams) to subversive (seductive banana eating streams) ways. And how are all these memes tied to monetization and payments? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, ROFLCon co-founder and human-centered researcher/writer Christina Xu and Connie Chan in conversation with Sonal Chokshi take us on a wild tour of cultural messaging memes and messaging tech in China and beyond.

This month on Open Apple, Mike and Ken speak with Martin Haye, 8-bit programmer extraordinare. We love us some conventions, be they KansasFest, the Vintage Computer Festival, @party, ROFLCon, or WordCamp. We wonder why video games have abandoned humor and if Kickstarter can bring it back. Steve Wozniak is advising the Steve Jobs film — […]

Take a look at the headlines of any major newspaper or news magazine. Check out the non-fiction bestsellers at Amazon. The net is on everyone’s minds. Or more specifically, the way the net is on our minds is on our minds. Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows paints a bleak picture of what the net is doing to our plastic brains, cheapening our relationships, and ruining our attention spans. Clay Shirky’s recent release Cognitive Surplus on the other hand celebrates the web’s power to enable quick, smart, crowdsourced action and creativity. Hundreds of other authors and thinkers have responded with their own variations and theories on what the internet is doing to us, and what we are doing on the net. With all of this thinking on the net, we thought it was time to do some thinking on the thinking on the net. And luckily we have two great thinker thinkers in house. Our very own David Weinberger has suggested jokingly that there should be a Myers-Briggs test for net fanaticism, while memetracker and ROFLCon founder Tim Hwang has grouped net thinkers into schools. Today, they explain how different thinkers think on the net, and importantly, why the heck everyone’s so interested. What kind of net thinker are you? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

Two weeks ago, the Berkman Center co-sponsored the third – and, we learned, final! – ROFLCon. For the n00bz, ROFLCon is a conference named after the acronym for “rolling on the floor, laughing” and devoted to celebrating internet culture. Friend of the Show Tim Hwang co-founded the event in 2008 when he and Christina Xu invited Tron Guy to Cambridge. Both ROFLCon and internet culture have evolved since then, so we sent producer Frances Harlow on location to ask attendees, “What are memes, and do they really matter?”

Laura Mayer - "the Internet: IRL (part one)" Tim Hwang - "ROFLcon" April Winchell - "Regretsy" Aaron Peckham - "How To Speak IRL" Ben Huh - "I Can Has Cheezburger Empire?" moot - "(not) Being That Guy" Laura Mayer - "the Internet: IRL (part two)" Brad O'farrell - "Being That (Keyboard Cat) Guy" Charlie Schmidt - "A Cat, A Camera, A Keyboard, and No Job" Ethan Zuckerman - "Sharing The lulz" https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/35653

Laura Mayer - "the Internet: IRL (part one)" Tim Hwang - "ROFLcon" April Winchell - "Regretsy" Aaron Peckham - "How To Speak IRL" Ben Huh - "I Can Has Cheezburger Empire?" moot - "(not) Being That Guy" Laura Mayer - "the Internet: IRL (part two)" Brad O'farrell - "Being That (Keyboard Cat) Guy" Charlie Schmidt - "A Cat, A Camera, A Keyboard, and No Job" Ethan Zuckerman - "Sharing The lulz" http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/35653

Meet Kris and David at TMH Live at ROFLCon on Saturday, May 1, or attend the TMH Meetup at the Asgard on April 30! Also introducing: HEY WORLD HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS, the very first TMH book!!