Tim Hwang looks like a super cool guy. And not just because Joi Ito took his portrait. Nope. Most important? He founded ROFLCon, the internet culture/celebrity conference. (Which my amazing friend Kate covered for CBC radio’s Spark. Yay!)

Maybe he’s cool because of his work at Harvard’s Berkman Center, where he does research with Yochai Benkler as part of the cooperation group.

Or maybe because he helps out on the Internet & Democracy project.

Or maybe because he knows so much about online community and the history of internet culture. Ethan wrote a nice post on Tim’s explanation of Internet memes. (Some of it is gross. But you may, nevertheless, find yourself compelled to look at it. You’ve been warned.)

I wrote previously about the rocking good job that the Participation Camp organizers did. Distant participants felt like they were right in the room. I couldn’t “attend” the second day, so I missed Tim’s talk — Gaming Open Government Data. But now here it is for you and me. It’s pretty damned cool. Games and citizen engagement. Some great ideas in here. Maybe this is why he’s super cool. Hard to decide…

Via Karl.