Emoji-mania is in full force, and we certainly aren’t mad about it. We now live in a world with emoji-only restaurant menus, and very important emoji debates; and we even judge celebs on how good their own line of emoji are. So, it makes perfect sense that we would now have a convention completely devoted to all things emoji.
It’s called Emojicon, and it will be held for the first time November 4 through 6 in San Francisco (where else?). Jeanne Brooks, Jennifer 8. Lee, and Yiying Lu are the creative minds behind the emoji extravaganza. Lee wrote the proposal for the dumpling emoji, while Lu designed it. Lu also created the Logo of Emojicon, the Dumpling, Takeout Box, Chopsticks and the Fortune Cookie Emojis, as well as Twitter's famous "fail whale," the image that used to pop up when the site was down and then became the service mark of Twitter outages; and Brooks is an ecosystems architect who's helmed other conferences in the past.
At the event, the hottest names in the emoji world will be present, including members of the Unicode Consortium and the founder of Emojipedia. While there, participants can attend panels and workshops, explore emoji art exhibits, join in on an emoji hackathon, watch an emoji film festival, and of course, party — with a menu of foods that also exist as emoji, naturally.
One important goal of the conference is discussing emoji policy. In the past, Jennifer 8. Lee has spoken about the lack of diversity in the emoji business, especially among Unicode Consortium subcommittee members (most of whom are white and male). This is not surprising when you consider the state of diversity in the tech world as a whole.
We're excited to see what conversations and changes come out of the conference this fall. If you love emoji as much as we do, you should buy your tickets online now and start planning your emoji-themed outfits.
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