From lojbab@lojban.org Sat Aug 28 14:24:38 2010 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-members); Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:24:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eastrmmtao105.cox.net ([68.230.240.47]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1OpSt8-0000ty-8p for llg-members@lojban.org; Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:24:38 -0700 Received: from eastrmimpo02.cox.net ([68.1.16.120]) by eastrmmtao105.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.00.01.00 201-2244-105-20090324) with ESMTP id <20100828212428.VUEY14030.eastrmmtao105.cox.net@eastrmimpo02.cox.net> for ; Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:24:28 -0400 Received: from [192.168.0.101] ([70.179.118.163]) by eastrmimpo02.cox.net with bizsmtp id zxQT1e00J3Xcbvq02xQTuY; Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:24:27 -0400 X-VR-Score: -20.00 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.1 cv=ykQl+xWZ6T1XciH3eDu9cScPa6czmieizO/VVI+ns/M= c=1 sm=1 a=NDiEV-La5qMA:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=7ls7RdmwX4RvLZNVULbZcg==:17 a=vggBfdFIAAAA:8 a=8YJikuA2AAAA:8 a=CL88aaY2J72sM4Y1R8sA:9 a=sLqGO6Pn0FUJrGzg4woA:7 a=dB9XBBjIqR2FfWG4zBgNh8-t9woA:4 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=EhZVUOeOntkA:10 a=hkODgbchuuYA:10 a=LnvPVCkYJwIZ-w5u:21 a=-46-x437HQUiZVVm:21 a=7ls7RdmwX4RvLZNVULbZcg==:117 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Authentication-Results: cox.net; none Message-ID: <4C797E8C.1050406@lojban.org> Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:24:28 -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-members@lojban.org Subject: [llg-members] 2010 Annual Meeting - President's Report Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam_score: 0.8 X-Spam_score_int: 8 X-Spam_bar: / X-Spam_report: Spam detection software, running on the system "chain.digitalkingdom.org", has identified this incoming email as possible spam. The original message has been attached to this so you can view it (if it isn't spam) or label similar future email. If you have any questions, see the administrator of that system for details. Content preview: President's Report I had hoped to do something much more thorough than this, and more well -informed, but my personal life is again managing to keep me from focusing on Lojban. I was recently diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, and for the last few weeks have been in a medically supervised program to try to get things "under control". This has required a regimen of intermittent scheduled meals and exercise all day long, and the necessity to stop whatever I am doing every couple of hours has been a real challenge to my ability to focus on anything (and the stress-induced insomnia isn't helping either). But I need to do it, and to do it NOW, X-archive-position: 919 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-members@lojban.org X-list: llg-members President's Report I had hoped to do something much more thorough than this, and more well -informed, but my personal life is again managing to keep me from focusing on Lojban. I was recently diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, and for the last few weeks have been in a medically supervised program to try to get things "under control". This has required a regimen of intermittent scheduled meals and exercise all day long, and the necessity to stop whatever I am doing every couple of hours has been a real challenge to my ability to focus on anything (and the stress-induced insomnia isn't helping either). But I need to do it, and to do it NOW, so I'll still be around to do Lojban in 10 years or even 20. --- I was neither expecting nor planning to resume active leadership of LLG, in part because I continue to have a lot of such personal distractions, and for me Lojban work seems to be something I need to be able to focus on for hours at a time in order to get done any of the things that I am really interested in. But last April, Matt Arnold resigned as President and Director. I will not speak for him as to his reasons, but Matt had repeatedly expressed disinterest in the legal and business aspects of the project which are the main reasons for those offices. I continue to admire Matt's creativity and his ability to motivate and organize people to get things done, and I REALLY appreciate that he has taken over book-order fulfillment, a job that I had done too long and never very well, and elevated our service to the professional level that it needed to be at in order for us to make use of Amazon.com for marketing. Hat's off to Matt, and may he continue a long while in leadership of the community in the form and style that he wants, and is good at. --- His resignation left us in a bind, with only 3 directors left, and 3 officer positions - President, VP, and Secretary (as well as my legal role as the Virginia resident representative required by our incorporation here). We decided that Robin and Arnt would keep their offices, and I would take up the presidency, at least until after this annual meeting. I'm willing to continue as president, but we need to recognize my demonstrated limitations in actually doing the job. As President, I wanted to again be an ACTIVE leader, in touch with what was going along, helping to encourage people to work on projects that need more support, and maybe doing a little more myself. It hasn't happened, and I had to rely on other people to identify what has been going on in the last year, which Timo arranged to be assembled on the following page: http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Meeting+Topics+2010 --- I don't see a lot of point in going through the list in this report, especially since I know no more about most of those efforts than what is already on the page. (Two that I do know something about are Arika Okrent's book, which I served as a major source for, and the efforts at maintaining a history of the language and culture, a role I have naturally led as "Archivist" for many years. But I haven't been actively monitoring the online world where most of the community now "lives".) So take a look, and maybe find one or two efforts that interest you, and get involved personally (if you aren't already). You are the formal membership of LLG, and if you aren't involved, it is harder to keep others motivated because of the apparent lack of formal support. Indeed, it might be a useful idea for people to formally attach their names to items on that page as "cognizant formal members", and otherwise to make sure that there is at least one specific point of contact listed for each item so that new people who are interested have someone they can talk to if they want to get involved. To a certain extent this could supplant the presently moribund "Official Projects Page" (which badly needs bringing up to date). --- We desperately need some new people to serve on the Board of Directors. Ideally, these should be people who have demonstrated an interest in the formal organization, and who are willing to fulfill the responsibilities listed in the Bylaws. Ideally, they will be people who are making some effort to keep informed of what is going on, and especially taking more of the load of Robin who has shouldered much of the operational burden of the organization for several years now. Perhaps one of the people who serves as backup on managing the lojban.org site should be considered. And at least one person should be relatively "new blood", someone who has joined the project in the last 10 years or so. (Yes, I am looking at you, Timo. %^) Your efforts on the topics page and the minutes are precisely the sorts of things that we need Directors doing. My personal thanks.) Only if we get a few more members, will we gain the flexibility we need for others to lead the community when Robin or I hit our personal limits. We have three; I'd like to see us with six directors. --- The highest priority, in my mind, remains completing the byfy work. A few months ago, Robin expressed his frustration with what wasn't happening. I made some suggestions, and for a few days people got moving. And then everyone stopped, though every once in a while someone gets back to it. We need members to set an example here. The more you do, the more that others will do, and the less likely will come the day when Robin decides to burn himself out finishing what everyone else won't help him with. Regardless of how well you know the language, you are probably capable of looking through the corpus for individual words and picking out examples. Others may feel competent to write definitions, given some examples to work from. Even an hour every week, with our membership of 20-odd people, would get a lot of work done. (I need to set more of an example myself. The limited amount that I've done is to collect numerous examples of the variety of usages of the word "pu". A couple of hours and I should be able to produce a good set of definitions for that range of usages. It's only one word, but we need to get moving, even if it is one word at a time.) --- Once the byfy work is done, publishing some sort of dictionary becomes practical. And then, we can finally start ***actively*** promoting the language, rather than simply relying on word-of-mouth. Our bank account has been slowly growing, and our finances are thus stable. We are close to where we need to be, except for the ability to say that the language is "done". So let's get it done! --- I'll quit here. Robin always chews me out for being long-winded, and I've done it again %^)