It has finally happened: a convention for emoji lovers. Last Friday “a multiple day celebration of all-things emoji” took place in San Francisco where people gathered to consume tacos (because taco emoji) and reminisce about the time the peach emoji looked like a rear end but is now, sadly, more peach-like.

However, it wasn’t all silliness because the Unicode Emoji subcommittee was there to take new suggestions and 15-year-old Rayouf Alhumedhi, the girl who proposed the hijab emoji, was there to take about why this was important for the 500 million people globally who wear headscarves.

Other highlights included emoticon researcher Tyler Schnoeblen who talked about the linguistics of emoji and Latoya Peterson with a talk on cultural context and critical race theory. And then there was the stall selling vibrating eggplant (aubergines to you and me) toys but that's the world of emoji for you.

http://2016.emojicon.co/