Coming Soon • July 2020 • Location TBA

Digital communication is the fastest and most convenient way to connect with the important people in our lives. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 It becomes enriched by adding a key ingredient: emotional context typically conveyed by vocal tone and facial expression. To communicate emotionally across our digital systems, we need visual representation, or symbols. 😹😻

Emoji have become one of the most widely used digital symbol sets, offering people around the world a universal way to add emotion and subtlety to their digital conversations. 🌍The emoji gatekeeper is Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit which runs a rigorous approval process led by its Emoji Subcommittee. As emoji use has become globally ubiquitous, managing the emoji has taken on increasing importance. We seek to better understand representation, use and the systems of creation for visual communication. 👳🏽🎅

Emojination is a grassroots community developed to democratize emoji approval. 🌾By creating a network of supportive collaborators and offering them a voice on the Emoji Subcommittee, our community has won approval for nearly 100 emoji in just three annual updates.

🏆Emojicon is our flagship gathering, when the Emojination community and the public come together to discuss and celebrate all things emoji. 🗽
 

Emojicon BK 2018 will be a day of conversations featuring multidisciplinary thinkers and experts from around the world. Discussions will explore representation, the future of emoji and visual communication, and the intersection of politics, globalization, and digital communication. 🙌🏿

The Interactive Art Exhibit features contemporary artists and game-makers that serves to stretch the imagination on how we use emoji. Create, play, selfie, dance!

Following the day’s events, is our signature Emoji Party, an emoji-filled evening of performances, dancing, and our signature spelling bee. 💃🏾🎭
 

10:00 a.m. DOORS OPEN

10:30 a.m. WELCOME FROM THE FOUNDERS OF EMOJINATION

10:45 a.m. EMOJILANG

Experts will discuss the perpetual question of whether emoji is a language from multiple disciplines, including linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science.

• Language vs Emoji — Paul Hunt

• Emoji as Digital Gesture — Gretchen McColluch

• Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to Understand Emoji — Sanjaya Wijeratne

• Emoji Semiotics — Justin Bai

• Where’s the Bubble Tea? Mining Missing Emoji from a Social App — Ranjitha Kumar

11:30 p.m. EMOJIPRAXIS

We’ll explore how technologists, designers, and politicians are implementing emoji in their communications in new and innovative ways.

• The Art of Emoji in Business — Mario Davis

• Emoji as Public Awareness — Will Woodworth

• From Cyborg to Technopagan — Chris Dancy

• The Making of the Interracial Couple Emoji — Jennifer 8 Lee

• Emoji and Mental Health — Drew Train

12:30 p.m. LUNCH BREAK

2 p.m. EMOJIPOL

Visual communication packs a powerful punch, and this is especially true in the application of emoji to politics. We’ll discuss current geopolitical issues from around the world, including how emoji is being used to express opinions about guns and how we rebuild our cities.

• Let’s Talk About the Gun Emoji — Mark Davis, Desmond Patton, Jane Solomon

• Neuromoji: How Emoji are Changing Our Brains — Keith Broni

• Emoji & the Law — Eric Goldman

• International Brew: The History of the Mate Emoji — Florencia Coelho & Team

2:30 p.m. EMOJICRAFT

We’ll learn about the technology that powers emoji across the digital landscape, and host a live AMA with members of the Emoji Subcommittee for any audience member to ask questions or pitch an emoji.

• Emoji Subcommittee AMA — Jennifer 8 Lee, Paul Hunt

• Behind the Tech — Amy Papaelias

3:30 p.m. EMOJIMATTER

Tangible participation: these interactive sessions will explore Hanmoji Calligraphy and lead audience members through a process of reimagining the emoji creation process.

• Hanmoji Calligraphy — An Xiao Mina, Jason Li

Although it started as a purely digital phenomenon, emoji has long since moved into the physical world. We’ll see how artists, designers, and theorists are reinterpreting emoji for use in physical spaces, and discuss what it means when an icon set designed for virtual conversations crosses over into the corporeal world.

• Reimagining the Emoji Creation Process — Jen Wolf, Jeanne Brooks

What if we could have a do-over? When the Unicode proposal process was designed, we hadn’t imagined the impact and influence of emoji. Today the process is onerous and inefficient in serving its highest potential. How might we reimagine the emoji creation process? We’ll lead the community through a flash design process.

4:45 p.m. WRAP UP

5 - 7 p.m. SPEAKER AND PRESS RECEPTION AND DINNER, hosted by Adobe [Invitation Required]

6 - 12 p.m. EMOJI PARTY

Join us for the popular Emoji Party! Featuring exclusively emoji food items, emoji games, and performances. Come dressed as your favorite emoji and enter the Emoji Costume Contest!

• 6 - 7 p.m. EMOJI SPELLING BEE

Brought to you by Dictionary.com.

• 7:30 - 8 p.m. EMOJILAND, the musical ENSEMBLE

• 9 p.m. YUNG JAKE

A special Emojicon performance by Yung Jake + DANCE PARTY with the Umbrella Boys !