Subject: Re: [lojban] Marketing lojban

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 10:50:59 -0500

At 05:06 PM 03/21/2001 -0800, seidensticker wrote:
>With lojban well into its 5-year stable period,

Correction before you go too far... The language is baselined, except for 
the dictionary lexicon, but the "five year period" has not started yet, and 
will not start until at least the dictionary, and possibly also the 
textbook have been issued.

>I would think that there
>would need to be an effort to get the word out. The discussions here are
>often interesting and I'm sure they're educational to the participants, but
>I haven't seen anything about ways to market or advertise lojban's
>existence.

I welcome such, but observe that as yet we have limited means with which to 
advertise, beyond word of mouth, and limited ability to deal with response 
to advertisements.

In the latter case, even with mere word of mouth, every couple of months I 
get snail mail from someone asking about Lojban, sometimes with a few 
dollars enclosed but no specific order (or an order for the 7-year-old 
nearly-obsolete level 0 package). When I can't get book orders out 
promptly, such snail mail just goes into a "wish I had time to deal with 
this, but I don't". I don't really know what to send such a person, since 
I don't know but have to presume that they have seen the website in order 
to get my address, and we have no products other than what is on the website.

Advertising would just lead to more response than we could deal with. JCB 
apparently got thousands of responses to his Scientific American article in 
June 1960, and thousands more when he advertised Loglan 1 in that magazine 
in the mid 70s. Most of those people got a brief blurb or nothing at all, 
and were lost because there was insufficient material with which to follow 
up on that initial burst of enquiry. Maybe around 300 subscribed to the 
"periodical" he started (edited by pycyn), which collapsed within a year or 
so to several dozen (and just enough old names added to continue to use 
bulk mail), which is pretty much where things stayed until the split that 
eventually led to Lojban.

LLG also had a snail mailing list of around 125 paid subscribers to Ju'i 
Lobypli, and maybe another 20-30 paid subscribers to le lojbo karni 
newsletter, both of which we intend to eventually continue (and honor 
subscriptions), but I could not sustain those publications between 
parenting and preparing books and supporting Lojban List, and nothing has 
come out since 1993-4.

We need to have more stuff - LOTS more stuff - and it cannot be so 
dependent on my meager abilities, before any massive increase in interest 
can be sustained. (Unless the increase were so massive that it would 
support a paid worker, and I'm not even dreaming of that level of success 
yet - we presently are barely covering operating expenses with book profits 
and the occasional donation, but our income remains at only a few thousand 
dollars a year).

>Is lojban supposed to be just a labor of love or a hobby, or is there a
>consensus that we'd like to see lots more participants to really give the
>language a trial run?

We'd like the latter, but getting from here to there is a trail that is 
unblazed. With Cowan and myself, who have historically done the bulk of 
the work to produce marketable "product", both tied up with parenting, we 
need more. xod's efforts to set up a webring and a Lojban-only online 
'zine are good starts, but more is needed.

>Neither answer is wrong, but if it's the latter, I'm
>curious to hear what the plans are.

Plans? It is hard to make plans when we have neither human nor fiscal 
resources. We proceed from day to day, with rather nebulous ideas of where 
we want to go next.

My wife Nora and Nick Nicholas, with occasional input from me and others, 
have been working on a new "level 0" book, and introduction to Lojban for 
people who have never heard of it, which could be produced and mailed much 
more cheaply than the present Xeroxed materials. It will probably include 
some version of Robin Turner's lessons.

John Cowan made an effort at a new LK issue, but it will need update, and I 
have to get the snail mail list updated (which is next in priority after 
the book orders and organization finances that have both lagged in the last 
few months) before we can actually send it.

We have had an incipient arrangement to try to turn over order fulfillment 
to a couple of Lojbanists who could possibly do a better job than I have, 
but we need to have things better organized and defined for anyone to 
successfully take over the mess that I have "managed" over the years.

>If its premature to issue press releases

We actually have released one, and we also advertised once in Discover 
magazine, and "officially" participated at one World Science Fiction 
convention. All of these were major moneylosers because we generated 
minimal income from each, less than enough to cover the expense of the 
advertisement, much less to sustain anything.

>or otherwise try to spread the word,

People are doing this. Look at the ever increasing numbers of Lojban Web 
pages - three years ago there was Veijo's helsinki site and not much else.

>what steps are being taken to get the language ready?

There is a volunteer page on the LLG web site. Other than what you see 
reported on Lojban List, almost nothing on that page is being taken up by 
volunteers. We tend to have a lot of people willing to develop software, 
though little real consensus on what software is needed or even 
useful. Written material in and about Lojban is sparse, other than 
conversations in the context of the list almost no original text, and 
translations have tended to be short pieces - nothing nearly of the scope 
of the Klingon translation of Hamlet, though we arguably have a much more 
complete language definition than the Klingonists do.

People have not been too helpful on the dictionary effort, which is one of 
the highest priorities, possibly because too few have a good idea what is 
needed, or because the workpile is so immense that one's individual 
contribution seems like it would be minimal rather than decisive. We're 
dealing with a couple manyears of work needed when people have scattered 
hours here and there rather than any dedicated block of time to commit.

While I made an improvement to the main website a year ago, it probably 
needs at least one more level of improvement in order to be really useful, 
and we need more stuff being updated on it on a more regular basis. That 
is also on my to-do list when all backlogged books are sent out.

Meanwhile, some efforts at publicizing are ongoing, short of directly 
advertising. Evguenie Sklyanin continues building a Russian Lojban web 
site and a proper translation of the gismu list (translations and web sites 
into more languages would be a big plus, with Spanish and Esperanto and 
German and Chinese being good target languages with a probable market - 
Hindi would also be good, but we don't know how to reach that market).

And that is probably the biggest problem we have - long term continuity of 
time on the part of people in order to sustain the projects that need to be 
done to completion.

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