news (long)

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

News notes:
Ju'i Lobypli and le lojbo karni both were mailed yesterday to US and Canada,
and will go to overseas people tomorrow.  I would appreciate feedback from
people a) so I know you got it, and b) so I have an update on how long the
snail mail takes to get there.  Expect up to a month to the West Coast.

I am particularly interested in knowing when JL/LK reaches those of you
overseas.  Nick Nicholas reports that a mailing I made a month ago
hasn't yet arrived.

Other news:  The LLG Board of Directors met today, and tackled a variety
of issues (we meet only once or twice a year).

1. Bob and Athelstan will be going to the Georgetown Roundtable of
Linguistics, a major professional meeting.  WE will be seeking to make
contacts in professional and academic linguistics, and to make them aware
of Lojban, and its potential applications in research (See another posting
of mine.)

2. We have adopted a fairly informal method of handling baseline change
proposals that does not require endless dragged-on meetings, like the
word review held at LogFest (which lasted 8+ hours talking about 20 words).
After publication of a proposal in JL for comment, I (or whoever is President)
will appoint an ad-hoc committee including the proposer and a couple of
people expert in the area, and anyone else who is interested.  These people
must reach a consensus to approve the change after a reasonable comment
period.  If such approval is made, the Board of Directors is informed and
will (presumably) ratify my selected committee and its review, and the change
is adopted.  The ratification can be informal if there is no Board meeting
scheduled for at least two months.

3. We adopted a budget, and approved last years' financial report, which
appears in JL, and more briefly in LK.

4. Patterned after 2., we have set up a generalized scheme of committees to
farm out work so that I don't end up doing it all (and thus get more time
to work on the textbook).  The two committees mentioned in JL were dissolved
(finance and electronic distribution), and I am creating a bunch of new
committees with smaller, more specific tasks, and DEADLINES.  Generally,
I'll appoint a committee chairperson and 1 or 2 others who I know are
interested.  The chairperson will usually, but not necessarily, be someone on
the Board, or who has a demonstrated history of regular communication with
me or other Board members.  The chairperson can add additional committee
members on an ad hoc basis, as needed to get the job done.

Specific committees I'm setting up (feel free to volunteer either to me,
or where applicable, to someone on the net serving on the committee):

LogFest activities (see 6. below) - Athelstan chairperson, contact me
     planning report by 1 May; activities planned completely by 1 week
     before LogFest (14 June)

Financial Policy - Athelstan chairperson, Guy Garnett, contact me
     assigned to determine a policy on what we send new requestors of
     information, and set up packages for same (especially targeted for
     linguists, computer scientists, people who already know about Loglan,
     etc.), and to specify a policy on how much to award as volunteer
     balance credits for people doing specific, time-consuming work
     of particular value to the organization.  Both reports by 17 April.

Esperanto brochure committee - to translate the Lojban brochure into
     Esperanto, properly typeset it and prepare a master for printing
     as well as an electronic version for the Planned Languages Server
     soc.culture.esperanto, etc. Identify other key materials for
     translation.  Desired completion before LogFest - 21 June
     Jerry Altzman, chairperson, also Mark Shoulson, Nick Nicholas, Mike
     Urban, Paul Francis O'Sullivan (a local Esperantist who did the first
     cut translation - contact care of me)

Electronic distribution has been split among a couple of committees:

Mini-Lesson - Athelstan, chairperson. draft mini-lesson by this Tuesday
     to be reviewed, with one more revision cycle before publishing in
     JL15 in May-June.  Electronic version to be available by 17 May.
     Completion of simple exercises included with this mini-lesson will
     be a prerequisite for getting more advanced lesson materials without
     payment, for those claiming poverty.  Reviewers, especially those
     not yet skilled in the language, are needed - but we want real
     comments, not just typo corrections.

Electronic materials policy (see 5 below) - Athelstan, chairperson, also
     John Cowan (net point of contact).  We are actively seeking others on
     lojban-list to work with this committee - volunteer to John.  Assigned
     to review our publications list and unpublished materials as time
     permits, identifying materials suitable for electronic distribution.
     The Planned Languages Server will be the primary Internet repository,
     and the Compuserve Foreign Language Education forum will also be an
     official repository.  The committee will determine what sort of
     copyright, copyleft, or public domain status will attribute to each
     publication to be posted, and to identify which can be posted as is,
     which need to be reformatted for electronic media, and which require too
     much reformatting to be practical for electronic distribution.  Other
     considerations may be to wait until the next update of a publication
     known to be in revision Depending on the decisions, the following
     committee will prepare suitable license notices.  Report on which
     materials to be available by 17 April.  Make easily prepared materials
     available to Planned Languages Server by 17 May.

Electronic headers/licenses - Albion Zeglin, chairperson, also John Cowan
     who will overlap with the materials committee and ensure that all
     needed varieties of headers are concocted.  To include any official
     means of authenticity verification on our materials.  Report by
     17 April. Final by 17 May.

Logo - Guy Garnett, chairperson, to finalize a version of his and one
     alternate logo for use in publications, and to identify both
     Loglan/Lojban and la lojbangirz.  Report by 17 April.  Final by 17 May.

net addresses of those above who have them:
     me (and Athelstan, P.F. O'Sullivan, and Guy Garnett c/o me):
                       lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com
     John Cowan:       cowan@snark.thyrsus.com
     Albion Zeglin:    70611.3375@compuserve.com
     Jerry Altzman:    jbaltz@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu
     Mark Shoulson:    shoulson@husc9.harvard.edu
     Nick Nicholas:    nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au
     Mike Urban:       urban@rand.org

We WANT your participation.

5. We had discussions of the electronic policy committee, which never completed
     its work, to the dismay of lots of people.  So we've dissolved it and
     are setting up a new several to replace it, as described above.  Some
     decisions seem indicated: JL, and the textbook will not be suitable
     in one case because it will be our financial income source, in the
     other because of size, extensive reformatting required, and the need to
     keep a minimum US subscriber list for bulk mail purposes.  Others
     will be reviewed by the materials committee, with a bias towards making
     as much available as possible - criteria will include amount of formatting
     needed (thus probably ruling out the Synopsis for at least a while),
     and how self-explanatory it is to someone FTPing the file cold.
     Some revisions will no doubt be required and made to make more
     documents suitable and available.  Word lists and the machine grammar
     are considered public domain and will receive the highest priority
     after the brochure, and some linguist-targeted introduction to the
     language.  It is expected that over time, most of our material will
     become electronically available, but there is a lot of work to make the
     products suit the professional image that we are trying to build.

6. LogFest will change its emphsis this year, given that we now have a few
     people resonably comfortable speaking the language.  Our emphasis will
     be on getting more people to this state, and to get people who are
     waiting for a reason to start actively learning the langauge to get
     started.  Games and activities in language are therefore targeted;
     we will probably have less in the way of endless theoretical
     discussions of new words and place structures, although there will
     probably be some of that going on 'on the side' during the meeting.

     LogFest this year by the way, is 21-24 June this year at my house
     in Fairfax VA.  If you think you are interested in attending (no
     commitment needed yet), let me know ASAP for logistics planning
     purposes.  Families are generally invited.

     Some specific activities:

1. Mentored Conversation - We'll have at least 1 conversation session of an
     hour or so duration wherein the novice or minimally experienced
     Lojbanist will have a chance to speak and use the langauge in
     conversation.  Each inexperienced Lojbanist will be paired with a more
     skilled speaker as mentor.  Each person passes notes and whispers
     as necessary to her/his mentor, who serves as translator, instant
     dictionary, or whatever is needed to allow the participant to
     experience being part of a Lojban conversation.  THis may sound
     minimally productive, but has been demonstrated to greatly aid in
     motivation, and learning for new speakers.  We should have up to
     a half-dozen people suitable to be mentors, and we'll rotate new people
     to give everyone a chance to participate as conversants.

2. Free Conversation - There will be at least one conversation of an hour or
     so where people can participate as they choose.  The mentors will also
     be in this conversation, and thus the conversation flow will probably be
     more natural.

3. Group 'Translation' - An effort to translate as a group, a familiar tale
     like John Cowan's The Three Bears, NOT FROM AN ENGLISH TEXT.  The emphasis
     will be on formulating specific ideas into Lojban predicates, selecting
     words for concepts, and building Lojban sentences.  By not using an
     English text, but a familiar story instead, we can concentrate on ideas
     rather than specific words and translation problems.

4. Games -  several of these:

     - Athelstan is translating the Parker Brothers board game 'Careers',
     also invented by Jim Brown into Lojban, and we will try to play a game
     using only Lojban, in his honor.  (lots of help provided where needed)

     - pc is going to work on a translation of Wff 'n Proof, a logic game,
     into Lojban.

     - There will be a group adventure game, possibly aided
     by computer.  The group working together will issue commands to me
     acting as the computer, and I'll respond, as the computer would.
     We will try to use Colossal Cave, or one of the other well-known games
     and I'll have pre-translated the room descriptions, etc., though
     I may cheat and use the computer (in English) to determine the result of
     a particularly strange command.

     - possibly a card game, like 'Go Fish', that involves extensive but
     simple, repetitive language use

     - Sylvia Rutiser has proposed a two-step activity, preparing a
     Berlitz-like phrase book, and then conducting improvised role-playing
     skits of a visit to mythical Lojbanistan to see the various tourist
     attractions therein.

     - Last year, pc posed a challenge for people to describe a time travel
     or other situation, and he'll come up with any tenses necessary to
     cover it.  We'll try to stump pc (and maybe resolve Jeff Prothero's
     4th tense as a result).  We'll also try to devise examples of some of
     the more obscure tense elements in the language. (This activity is
     subject to pc's attendance, which may be impossible due to logistics
     this year, but he said he may be able to support the activity by
     telephone if necessary.)

5. Demonstrations of new (and old) software

6. Impromptu criticial reviews by the 'users' of our various publications
     and educational materials to identify needed improvements

7. Discussions, including AI applications and linguistics/language education
     research, or whatever people are interested in.

8. Introductory lessons for people who need them.

If you are a possible attendee and these or other ideas for activities
interest you, let me know.  We want this to be a LogFest that people who
haven't come before find worth the trip.