Subject: Re: [lojban] Marketing lojban

From: Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:35:09 -0700 (MST)

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> 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.

> 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.

Setup an email alias along the lines of [email-masked], sucker
anybody you can into being put onto the list of people who receive email
sent to that address. Then let _those_ people deal with the random
information inquiries. Sure you'd have to sort of quiz them to make sure
they'd all read the FAQ and they were familiar with the web page to find
all the easy answers, but thats a one-time investment.

> 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.

Elaborate on 'LOTS more stuff'? (Or is the rest of the email the
elaboration?)

> 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.

That doesn't seem terribly good. :/ While, sure, you might not have much
in the way of human or fiscal resources, you've got all kinds of people on
the list, many of whom are just drooling waiting for a concrete idea for
something they can do to help. Surely you need direction for when you do
get a burst of human and fiscal resources.

> 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.

Web pages don't do a whole lot to spread the word. They're passive, after
all, and if a web page is written purely in Lojban, a search engine isn't
likely to turn it up as a hit to any request not already in Lojban.

> There is a volunteer page on the LLG web site.

Where? I see a very short list of things in the FAQ, which can be
summarized (gracelessly) as:
* Learn Lojban
* Write things in Lojban, simple at first then harder
* Send that stuff to the mailing list
* Send us money

All well and good, but only the money part will help anyone else, really.

Where is the better list at?

> 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.

On the part of the web page I'm looking at, it says "Volunteers are sought
to aid in preparing these lists for use as dictionary files. Contact
[us]." I want to help, but I've try to make it a point to never volunteer
for something without knowing what it is. Maybe if you expanded on what is
involved in preparation?

> 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.

If you maybe gave it a once over so it was organized a bit less like a
pretty FTP site, and then added something regularly (however simple,
mention the latest philosophical discussion on the mailing list) the web
page would feel a lot more alive and people would be more motivated to
look at it. (Oh, and date stuff better, and get rid of copies of things
which are out of date so people aren't worried they're downloading a
worthless copy of the gismu list or something.)

I suspect it sounds like I'm being very pushy. I don't mean to be, I'm
just getting a lot of stuff off my chest that I've been thinking about
since I became interested in Lojban.

To mitigate that pushiness and put my free time where my mouth is, I'd
love to assist with anything I've mentioned.

Two more things while I'm typing.

In one of my previous (first?) mailings to the list I mentioned that I
thought somebody should run a news site (sort of like Balvi, except
oriented more towards daily news and short pieces). I took my own advice
and I've got a news site mostly setup (99.99% Lojban). Now I'm interested
in some people who would 1) like to check my Lojban (I'm not an expert
Lojbanist, and in fact I'm quite nervous about the quality. It is
admittedly a much larger undertaking than a novice should be attempting,
but I felt it important anyways) and 2) write short pieces to be posted to
the site. That should be fairly easy enough. Just go to some web sites that
release company press releases verbatim and write original text with the
releases as your source. Not as great as having field reporters and such,
but it should do for starters and its legal.
(The site also has an editorial section for brief opinion pieces on news
related topics.)

Second (and last, I'm almost done. :) is that at one point I started
reformatting the draft textbook in LaTeX so I could print it out and have
something pleasent to look at it. Its a metric buttload of work, so I
stopped because it wasn't worth my time for just myself. (I was also
correcting errors and bringing it up to date) Would it be worthwhile to
finish, or is it too out of date? Is there some LLI-internal version
thats up to date? I'm I even legally allowed to modify it? (The copyright
and licensing of materials on the Lojban site is questionable due to the
'latest version' clause of the Lojban General License.)

- Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
It's not just 8-bit clean,
It's 8-bit spotless!