At the first-ever Emojicon, smiling poop was everywhere
SAN FRANCISCO -- Emoji are having a moment.
The yellow smileys and prayer hands and grinning poop symbols may have worked their way into popular culture years ago, but the glyphs seem to have reached a new level of fandom and it was out in full force at Emojicon, a two-day conference dedicated entirely to all things emoji.
The San Francisco event, organized by a group called Emojination, is the first of its kind. Part silly fan event, part serious nerdery, Emojicon brought together people and organizations involved with all aspects of emoji from internet linguists to designers to members of the Unicode Consortium, the organization that oversees "official" emoji creation.
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The event kicked off Friday with a party at an emoji-filled coworking space turned party venue. The space was filled with 😍 and 🙏 balloons, overstuffed 😜 beanbags and 💩 just about everywhere. Some attendees dressed as emoji characters.
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The only refreshments served -- mini burgers and pizza and cupcakes -- were food and drink with an official emoji counterpart. (The bar served 🍺 and 🍷 .)
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There were also contributions from corporate sponsors like Taco Bell, who rolled in its emoji-themed taco truck, and Panda Express, whose reps were serving orange chicken and noodles (which have close-enough emoji forms) and handing out chorks, the chopstick/fork combo utensil that is definitely not an emoji but hey, even emoji conferences have to pay the bills, right?
There were also emoji-themed activities like a photo booth, emoji caricatures and a balloon artists exclusively dedicated to 💩 balloons.
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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 TV opening sequence depicted in emoji to show how deep the digital characters have proliferated popular culture.
Contrary to popular belief, emoji is not the only thing the Unicode Consortium does, Davis said. The organization oversees roughy 120,000 characters and emoji make up a relatively small fraction of those at around 1,800.
Every year the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee takes on proposals to add characters to the growing collection. Emojicon organizer Jennifer 8. Lee was behind the campaign to bring a dumpling emoji to keyboards everywhere. Last year skin tones were introduced and more recently gendered characters arrived -- think lady detectives and police officers. Davis said submitted proposals mostly fall under food-related or fantasy creatures.
The next round of new emoji will come out in June 2017.
He hinted at a "chopsticks" emoji making its debut next year and showed a proposal for a cricket (the insect, not the sport) icon.
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At an open proposal session, conference attendees shared their ideas on what's missing from their keyboards.
Mark Bramhill, in town from Texas, has already officially submitted his suggestion of a person meditating. "It could represent the idea of Zen and mental well-being," he said. He told Mashable it "feels obvious" to have a character sitting in the lotus position.
He's meeting in person with the subcommittee Monday to formally pitch his suggestion.
Maksymilian Dabkowski was a big proponent of adding a pretzel to the collection of food characters. Aside from being a bready snack, "a pretzel can mean confusion," he said during his pitch. "And it can represent abstract ideas."
Outside the conference rooms, emojifans, like James Che, who came wearing a poop 💩emoji hat, browsed emoji movie posters, art, balloons and Chia Pets. There was even an Emojibator, an eggplant 🍆 -shaped vibrator.
Emojibator CEO Jaime Jandler showed Mashable a prototype for the next version of the vibrator -- a chili pepper 🌶 -- since the spicy pepper is already known as a aphrodisiac and has a naturally curved shape.
Talks about emoji in linguistics, business, race and art continued throughout the day with plenty of more playful programming mixed in with emoji theater games and karaoke.
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Balloon and face paint artist Robin Brennen confirmed the poop emoji is far and away the most popular request.
She shared her thoughts with Mashable on why: "Everyone loves poop because it's disgusting in a very cute way." She then offered to paint the image on a woman's forehead. The woman declined, but seemed content as she walked away with her poop-shaped balloon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
