Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: New Members, Board of Directors, other LogFest results

From: Bob LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 18:33:34 -0400

At 10:41 AM 7/24/02 -0600, you wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 24, 2002 at 12:26:37PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier wrote:
> > At 09:03 PM 7/23/02 -0700, Robin P wrote:
> > >On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 08:27:55PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier wrote:
> > >Allow me to respectfully suggest that as you don't appear on IRC or
> >
> > We've tried once or twice, but apparently not when people are there.
>
>I've seen you pop on once. That was quite awhile ago, before things really
>got rolling. (Though they were better then than now.) Try showing up during
>east coast business hours. xod seems to always be on then, and I'm at least
>watching constantly while I'm at work. (8-4 mountain time)

Nora works east coast business hours, and there are strong rules against 
her using her machine or work time for personal activities. The times we 
can get on tend to be later in the evening, but I've never pushed for times 
convenient for us, because even then we would not be regulars.

> > Actually, Nora reads the Wiki every week or so (and sometimes more often)
> > to try to figure out what is going on there. But she is not comfortable
> > with contributing, probably mostly from unfamiliarity with the tools.
>
>There is a SandBox page on the Wiki, which anyone can do with as they please
>so as to learn how to use the Wiki interface.

I learned that way. I think Nora wants to spend her Lojban time reading 
what others are up to.

>She can experiment on the SandBox until such time as she feels comfortable
>fiddling with other parts of the Wiki. Or she could edit her page:
>
>http://nuzban.wiw.org/wiki/index.php?Nora%20LeChevalier
>
>Which she can do with as she pleases. Should she, or anyone else feel
>uncomfortable using the Wiki, they may email me about any policy,
>etiquette or mechanics questions they may have. I promise to be quite
>discreet about it.

I'm not sure she knew that she had a page %^)

> > But the jobs I'm stuck with are the long haul jobs that take a little time
> > every so often over the long term (and to delegate it to someone else I
> > need to know that person will stick with it to do it over the long term as
> > needed, as you have done far better than I have with the web site), and 
> the
> > REALLY big jobs like the dictionary.
>
>And if they don't stick to it, what then? The world ends? Hardly.

This is the USA. We get sued, and probably yours truly gets to pay the lawyer.

I should note here that indeed you ARE missing some information because of 
the unposted minutes, though I don't think that the minutes really would 
capture the "what went wrong"; there is a hint in the new minutes 
though. Two years ago, a couple of new guys, Ethan Freman and Jake 
Berglund, showed up at LogFest and basically offered to do exactly what 
you've proposed be done informally, with lots more bells and whistles to 
boot. They were going to do print-on-demand and order fulfillment for us, 
handle credit cards, host the mailing list and web site, and do it all for 
free as a tax-writeoff on the business that they were building (imeme.net, 
which still seems to be in existence), with the only requirement being that 
they could drive up here every few weeks for Lojban lessons. The bulk of 
the membership was ecstatic, and we came away from LogFest with a formal 
"approval in principal". They had stuff on their website, but since they 
had never been seen in the Lojban community, I was a little more wary as to 
whether they would really be a part of it. They sounded like they knew 
their business, and I asked them to write up a formal proposal of exactly 
what they were going to do, what they would charge for Lojban materials, 
what would be their responsibilities and what would be ours (mine). Both 
of them were given LLG memberships largely on the strength of this enormous 
commitment and of course having shown up at LogFest.

A month later they gave us a proposal that was more air than what they had 
said at the meeting, had no specific dollar amounts, did not mention what 
they were getting out of it (the tax writeoff). On asking, it became clear 
that their condition for print on demand was that we HTMLize all of our 
products, and they would not be more specific until we could supply stuff 
in the form that they wanted it in. The Board informally decided that 
there was no basis on which to proceed, though if we ever got things in a 
form they could work with we might talk to them again. But imeme's 
reaction to our failure to continue to be gung ho was to disappear. Jake 
resigned his membership last year, but Ethan never even did that 
much. We've never heard further from them, and their apparent interest in 
learning Lojban disappeared instantly; I'm not entirely sure they ever were 
really interested, and not just looking for a tax shelter. And if that is 
what they were after, we would have been stuck, probably would have lost 
our IRS status, and opened us up to all manner of liabilities. For one 
thing, the IRS requires us to account for all donations, with receipts if 
they are large enough. If our revenues ever get large enough (I think $10K 
a year, which we might have done the first year CLL came out if that year 
hadn't been split over two fiscal years) we have to file tax forms and have 
records kept in accordance with business accounting standards. I don't 
feel like being a mini-Enron.

BTW, Robin showed up last year, and was almost as much an unknown quantity 
in terms of ability to do what he said he wanted to do, though at least he 
had been present on the list. In the midst of a LogFest that turned into a 
personal disaster as my plumbing sprung a leak that looked and smelled like 
a major sewer failure (it wasn't) right at the same time a computer virus 
that my daughter had triggered a couple weeks before killed my system (just 
as we had finished downloading WinCVS), such that it could not 
reboot. Robin did an all-night rescue of my system (and all the LLG files 
of course) showing that he could and did deliver in a crunch, so we took a 
chance and he is managing the Website, and I couldn't be happier even if I 
can't find anything any more, because the community seems to be 
happier. After imeme, the go-slow approach on transitioning the web site 
seemed more than a little wise, but I'm a little bothered that he thinks I 
don't delegate. In a sense I delegated *everything* to him that night he 
saved my system, because I was reduced to a fog of trauma stress and wasn't 
particularly capable of anything other than responding to others. (I 
remember almost nothing of LogFest last year as a result, but I don't think 
I presented a particularly coherent or positive impression at the meeting).

>You find
>someone else, and mark that person as a bit less reliable on your little
>internal respect-o-meter. And then the world moves on.

For language and technical work, I could get a good little list of reliable 
people, especially for tasks that can be done in a weekend, though even 
there many people get something done that establishes their credibility and 
then they disappear for a couple of years. For business work, everybody 
including myself has proven unreliable, unless you consider managing the 
Web page to be business and not technical.

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org