World’s 1st emoji convention in SFO

The San Francisco event, organised by a group called Emojination, is the first of its kind. Part silly fan event, part serious nerdery, Emojicon brought together people and organisations involved with all aspects of emoji from internet linguists to designers to members of the Unicode Consortium, the organisation that oversees ‘official’ emoji creation. 

The event kicked off on Friday with a party at an emoji-filled working space turned party venue. The space was filled with emoji balloons, overstuffed beanbags and smiling poop emoji cupcakes just about everywhere. Some attendees dressed as emoji characters. On Saturday, the more ‘serious’ side of the emoji programming kicked off with a talk from Unicode co-founder Mark Davis. 

Davis started his presentation with the Game of Thrones opening sequence depicted in emoji to show how deep the digital characters have proliferated popular culture. He revealed that the next round of new emojis will come out in June 2017.