The Team

Tim Hwang is the founder of ROFLCon, the Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences, and the Web Ecology Project. Formerly, he was an analyst and strategist with The Barbarian Group and was a researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. You can find him on Twitter here, or at his blog at BrosephStalin.com. He is embarrassed that it took so long to get this bio page updated, and even more ashamed that he listed himself as a “social media expert” once on this page. He is a (power) tool.

(photo courtesy Fred B)

Christina Xu grew up on the internet, which is how she ended up cofounding ROFLCon with Tim. When not booking flights for internet celebrities or scheming to insert Goatse into every piece of ROFLSchwag, she works at the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT, where she helps community groups fight the Man with technology. She also enjoys rollerblading, eating her body weight, and playing raucous global booty-shaking music on WMBR’s Global Frequency. She can’t believe Tim listed himself as a “social media expert” either. Ew.

Jamie Sherlock is an adventurer who escaped from the Internet and now spends most of her time exploring the New England and California wilderness. She wishes that she would actually use her college degree, that someone would teach her to play this damn strumstick, and that she was related to Sherlock Holmes. She is the female Weezy. Loves: (big) dogs and Star Trek

Ben Weeks has an obvious pun in his name, (its been weeks since he’s heard it!) He wants to know who you are, what you’re doing, and why you expect him to have answers to such questions. He is a reformed web geek, who, despite his reformation, has found himself back on-line. Currently he spends his time in class and playing around the digital and physical bookstacks at Lorem Labs.

Rachel Mercer is a recent Northeastern graduate and the in-house graphic design / multimedia guru. A comic book collector, movie fiend, and type-identity master, Rachel can typically be found in the comforting glow of a laptop or television, either playing a video game or trying to fabricate an IV for her RSS feeds. In the fall, Rachel will be pursuing a Master’s in Communication.

Danbee Kim is a February baby born in Michigan and raised all over the US. She has no idea what she wants to be when she grows up, so she’s currently studying the brain and the body, practicing contemporary hedonism and enjoying her slow but sure transformation into a cyborg. Danbee believes in the Internet and Batman.

Matt Blake is an undergraduate at Harvard studying Computer Science, whose fascination with computers extends back to playing civilization 1 on his old DOS box in ‘93. He knew he loved the internet when he found out he could download free computer games off it in 5th grade, and has been addicted ever since. He enjoys both technical and social aspects of the computers and the internet, and enjoys exploring both. While he had a few online crushes in middle school, he now dates exclusively offline. He can be found at mattblake.org.

George Rohac Jr is a graduate student at NYU. His thesis is focusing on the webcomics industry. He has  been a telemarketer, a chef’s assistant, a register monkey, a street interceptor, a public relations associate, a university relations intern, a researcher, an intern at The Colbert Report, and is currently Operations Director for Oni Press. He also swears, a lot – usually on twitter.

Carrie Andersen is a teacher and writer, focusing on the relationship between cultural artifacts and political movements. When not ROFL-ing, she plays the drums, competitive badminton (yes, it’s real), and watches reality TV as much as possible. Relatively few of her friends like the internet, so she is quite grateful to the ROFLTeam for existing. You can find her writing on culture here.

Rachel Lovinger is a web content strategist who digs internet culture, pop culture, subculture, and the places where they intersect. She got involved in ROFLcon because she loves introducing interesting people to each other. She has almost every issue of bOING bOING from when it was a print zine, and she last went to school at a time when she had to teach herself HTML because none of the profs knew how to do it.

Alex Leavitt is a Pokemon master. He started researching the Internet at age 12 by analyzing Neopets.com, which has led him to be a researcher in the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT. Alex also writes about popular culture (specifically of the Japanese variety) at The Department of Alchemy, and you can find him on Twitter at @alexleavitt.

Johnny Won is as a digital strategist at the advertising agency Hill Holliday. “Social media expert” is the bane of his existence. Currently, he exists to consume interestingness on the internet and delicious things. He never realized that spending an ungodly amount of time on the internet could result in a career. Which explains his Twitter.

Jesse Gold is a RISD graduate, which means he doesn’t have to drink PBR ever again. It also means he’s good at making movies, I suppose. He once made a movie about fat people. When he’s not doing boring things for money, he does fun things for free like interview ROFLcon guests and broadcast video games. Why not ask him about it on Formspring?

Kristen Sunter is a graduate student in applied physics at Harvard. She is especially grateful to the internet and all it offers when she is in the clean room fabricating nanoscale devices and needs to wait around for 20 minutes for equipment to pump down to vacuum. She was so excited after the first ROFLcon that she offered to help with ROFLcon 2010 and is now one of the volunteer coordinators.

Diana Kimball fell in love with the internet. These days, she lives in San Francisco and works in technology. In 2008, she sent many, many emails about ROFLCon. Fortunately, she received many in return.

In general, she is an enthusiast.

Oliver Day helped with security last year and will be lurking in 2010.

MOOT MOOTKINS is a part of the ROFLTeam. He is a motherfucker.

Who Designed Your Awesome Website?
ROFLSite v 1.0 was designed by Dean Jansen and Jennifer Feller. ROFLSite v 2.0 was designed by Kristen Curtis and Christina Xu.

Paul Irish contributed the cool script that allows for infinite scrolling. Also, huge huge thanks to Asheesh Laroia for donating extra hardware and bandwidth for the site.