From lojbab@lojban.org Thu Jun 21 14:03:34 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-board); Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:03:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eastrmmtao102.cox.net ([68.230.240.8]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1I1To9-00027c-JP for llg-board@lojban.org; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:03:27 -0700 Received: from eastrmimpo01.cox.net ([68.1.16.119]) by eastrmmtao102.cox.net (InterMail vM.7.08.02.01 201-2186-121-102-20070209) with ESMTP id <20070621210255.DZUW5716.eastrmmtao102.cox.net@eastrmimpo01.cox.net> for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:02:55 -0400 Received: from [127.0.0.1] ([72.192.234.183]) by eastrmimpo01.cox.net with bizsmtp id EM2t1X0053y5FKc0000000; Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:02:55 -0400 Message-ID: <467AE76C.6090007@lojban.org> Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:02:36 -0400 From: Robert LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: llg-board@lojban.org Subject: [llg-board] Obligatory contact report %^) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 299 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-board-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-board-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-board@lojban.org X-list: llg-board I just spent an hour and a half on the phone with a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who is doing some sort of feature story on constructed languages, and who was obviously very interested in Lojban. This is a medium term project for her, so if an article appears it might be a month from now. I gave her lots of information, as "Founder", focusing on the "what" and "why" questions under which the project was started. I think that if she wants to talk to someone else, Robin would be good at providing stuff on the current net-based community and actual usage of the language. (It isn't clear that she does want to talk to anyone else, and I don't have a good feel for what her angle is, but if I have a clue from her line of questioning then that is where she will want to get more information). He's also in the right time zone for her. (Matt would also be good as a spokesman from an entirely different angle, but I haven't seen him posting of late, so I don't know his availability. And I have no contact info for him other than his email). Robin please make sure I have your current cell or other phone number just in case she calls again - I probably have it, but it wasn't handy and I wouldn't be sure that it is correct. In any event, I will try to have her reach you by email first if she calls again. I think it would be useful if Robin or someone could come up with some useful numbers on the current size of the community - the size of the membership of the two mailing lists (minus any overlap between them). How many people contribute to the wiki (which presumably is approximately the number of people who have ids). How many people participate in various online activities like IRC and your storytime. How many have Second Life avatars that do Lojbanic activities. And of course how many copies have been sold/downloaded of the various books. These kinds of questions are the sorts we need to have answers to when a reporter contacts us, as seems to happen about once a year. I hate giving a wild guess for something that might make the major press, as I had to today. If she contacts us again, having good estimates for these sorts of numbers would give a better impression of our competence as the international umbrella organization for Lojbanists. lojbab