History: LLG 2007 Annual Meeting Minutes

Source of version: 8 (current)

! Minutes of the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Members of The Logical Language Group, Inc. The 2007 Annual Meeting of the Members of The Logical Language Group, Inc. was called to order on Sat, 6 Oct 2007 19:50:59 UTC -0700. It was conducted on the llg-members mailing list. !! Carry Forward: Bits That Should Be Paid Attention To For The Next Meeting * A request was made to actually perform a roll call; the suggested method is to just limit the roll call time to 5 days or so and call anyone who doesn't respond in that time "not present". * It is worth mentioning that xorlo was added to the zasni gafyfantymanri last year. * It is worth mentioning that we started talking about trying to make a presence on amazon.com because people were selling the CLL for $LOTS. No conclusion or action occured; we might want to pick this one back up. !!! No Longer Members * Gary Burgess (resigned during the meeting) !!! Non-Participatory Members * Desquilbet, Jerome * Dyke, Gregory * Hodges, John B. * Le Du, Yann * Nicholas, Nick * O'Sullivan, Paul Francis * Speer, Rob * Turner, Robin !! Roll Call Roll call was waived, as all members were believed to have valid e-mail addresses on the list. A list of members who actually participated (commented or voted) is as follows: * Gary Burgess (resigned during the meeting) * Abbat, Pierre * [http://www.nemorathwald.com/|Arnold, Matt] * Barton, Dave * [http://mercury.ccil.org/~cowan/|Cowan, John] * Daniel, Craig * [http://arj.nvg.org/|Johansen, Arnt Richard] * [http://www.miranda.org/~jkominek/|Kominek, Jay F] * LeChevalier, Nora * LeChevalier, Robert * Llambias, Jorge * [http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/|Powell, Robin Lee] * Reed, Theodore * Rosta, And * [http://web.meson.org/|Shoulson, Mark] * [http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/people/vilva/|Vilva, Veijo] * Weeks, Stephen * Whitlock, Tommy !! Reading of Minutes Deferred by providing a link for people to read at their leisure. http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2006+Annual+Meeting+Minutes&bl !! Officer's Reports Accepted by acclamation. !!! President's Report ~pp~ Executive summary: with the exception of the BPFK's lack of progress, things are going better than ever in Lojbanistan. - Logfest 2006 took place at Philcon in Philadelphia from November 17-19, and was an outstanding success. The turnout was the largest ever since Logfest was moved out of the LeChevaliers' house. - Sometime around December 1st, Lojban was the subject of the webcomic XKCD (http://xkcd.com/191/), which resulted in a lot of people in our target audience to learn of our existence. - Very recently, Robin modified the editing system of Jbovlaste so that all registered users can edit any data. This has resulted in a surge of activity, and we hope this level of activity will continue. - There has been some progress on the Attitudinals checkpoint of BPFK, but we are currently stuck on account of one or more controversies regarding the semantics of some irrealis attitudinals. - The IRC channel #lojban on freenode is thriving, with 47 nicks present at the moment. (For those of you not familiar with IRC, or only familiar with IRC as it was ten years ago, this does not mean that they are active talkers. It is common to have one's IRC client connected 24/7, and only checking up on it occasionally.) Per the suggestion of Theodore Reed, off-topic banter in English among the regulars has been split off into #jbopre, in an attempt to not scare off the newbies. (And to hide the fact that Lojban's vocabulary isn't up to talking about anything. ::^) ) - jbobac, the lojbanic audiobord, has been established at http://jbobac.lojban.org/ by Timo Paulssen. While this may look like a frivolous enterprise at first glance, we have now obtained a free repository of various Lojban speech samples. As Robin pointed out, almost without noticing it, we are now able to provide Lojban learners with the one teaching resource they want the most. - Matt's LojbanQuest game design has been partially implemented with the help of Robin and others. The combat system is now being playtested. Playing the game is fun, instructional, and provides a pool of example sentences for BPFK, which helps with what most BPFK commissioners say is the most difficult part of their job. ~/pp~ !!! Treasurer's Report ~pp~ As of the end of August, the bank account balanced at $5,467.11, and the PayPal account balanced at $209.26. Having said that, I've agreed to cut Bob a cheque for all but $100 of his remaining balance: after that clears, the bank balance will be (approximately) $3,400. All book orders that I'm aware of have been filled. Bob has improved in both turn around time and responsiveness in the last 6 months. Bob has asked for a bit of an account of CLL orders over the last few years, so here we go: 2007, so far: 20 2006: 30 2005: 27 2004: 16 After that my records don't work anymore; the 2004 number is in fact a bit suspect, but only a bit. I'm actually surprised by the 2007 number; I thought it was higher. This is also my report to the board for 2Q2006. Main account balance at this time (more or less) last year: $2,264.80 Main account balance: $3,823.31 Main account balance according to QuickBooks: $3,721.60 Still not sure where the extra money came from, but dealing with Wachovia is so difficult I no longer much care. PayPal account balances; current balance is $46.79 That means we have a total of: $3870.10 In addition, the Treasurer has not missed or been late for a single quarterly report this year, a fact of which he is quite proud. ~/pp~ !!! Secretary's Report ~pp~ I was (very) late with the minutes for last year; sorry about that. I seem to recall that Bob has had a couple of contact events over the year, but this is the only one I can currently remember: After 20 years, I have had the first serious request for access to the archives. Linguist Arika Okrent, who attended Logfest last year, is writing a book on artificial languages. One chapter will apparently deal with Loglan and Lojban, and she has requested access to our archived materials, especially for stuff on JCB and his expressed ideas. She's coming next Tuesday, and hopefully I will have cleaned up the accumulation enough that it will seem more like an archive than an accumulation, and that I can supply her with what she needs. I still think that's very cool, and would like to hear how it works out. Also, Bob asked me to share some statistical information about the mailing lists and other Lojbanic activity, so here we go; copied verbatim. On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 11:01:27PM -0400, Bob LeChevalier wrote: > A thread on alt.languages.artificial has Don Harlow posting > statistics on membership and postings on various conlang mailing > lists. > > Can you reasonably easily give me for each of our two main lists > Lojban List and Lojban beginners list > a) number of list members 457 for the main list 413 for the beginner's list (both are probably a couple off due to admin accounts and such) > b) number of postings so far in 2007 417 for the main list 1590 for the beginner's list I make no particular representation of absolute accuracy for those either. > c) as a bonus because I think it is significant (some of the lists > he mentions probably have lots of members who are subscribed but > filtering and not actually reading and participating in the list), > number of different posters (distinct email addresses used for > posting is sufficient) 62 for the main list 67 for the beginner's list 104 unique between the two (which is higher than I'd have suspected). Again, this is all so far in 2007. > If you can easily determine how many of the subscribers there are > to the two lists combined, that might also be useful, since our > true mailing list population is the union of the two lists. Trivial. 685 unique subscriber addresses between the two lists. > Since I haven't been paying attention but believe it has been > discussed, what are the major current activities on line for live > spoken Lojban, and can you give me URLs and approximate frequency > of something actually taking place? http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojbanic+Forums&bl IRC: Continuous The MOO: Quite rare these days, I'm sorry to say; as much my fault as any. The website itself: Someone besides me edits a page every couple of days, maybe. jbovlaste: Varies wildly. The BFPK: Almost none. Voice Chat: http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Story+Time+With+Uncle+Robin&bl happened a number of times, with good results; I've now moved on to running http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tarci%20jamna%20dracyselkei which has only run once so far Nothing else comes immediately to mind. -Robin ~/pp~ !! Committee Reports Accepted by acclamation. !!! BPFK ~pp~ Nothing of significance has occured over the last year that I'm aware of. The fact that something on the order of 4 people ever contribute is relevant here. ~/pp~ !! Election of New Members None. !! Removal of Old Members * Gary Burgess resigned during the meeting !! Election of the Board * Robin Lee Powell * Robert LeChevalier * Matt Arnold * Arnt Richard Johansen * John Cowan !! Old Business None. !! New Business !!! The xorlo Discussion Robin Lee Powell moved that the membership recognize xorlo. Specifically, I move that the membership assert that xorlo is more correct than the CLL at this time, that whatever the BPFK come up with xorlo will be part of it, and that new Lojbanists should be taught it as soon as possible. There was a great deal of discussion. The following proposal eventually passed: <pre> 1) The following procedures are added to the extant BPFK procedures: "Any proposal which at least half of the BPFK membership has voted on in a tentative vote with none voting against, may be submitted by the BPFKJ to the general membership as a possible piece of the zasni gafyfantymanri ("interim baseline", herein after referred to as the ZG). Such a proposal requires a two-thirds majority of those voting to vote in favor of it at the general membership meeting in order to pass. Voting something into the ZG has the following effects: 1. The proposal will be considered correct Lojban until such a time the complete new baseline is established and approved by the membership. Usage according to the CLL standard will not be considered incorrect, but usage according to the ZG will be preferred. 2. The BPFK will recognize that such a vote indicates a desire by the membership for the proposal in question to be included, in modified form if necessary, when the new baseline is finished. Such a desire will not be considered binding in any way. 3. The membership is encouraged to use the ZG standard in all pedagogical contexts, and in all Lojban conversation. The ZG will last only until the entire new baseline is written by the BPFK and approved by the membership." </pre> In addition, xorlo was added to the zasni gafyfantymanri !!! Book Sales Discussion There was discussion of both Amazon in specific and CLL sales in general. No conclusion was reached as far as I can tell. * Previous meeting: ((LLG 2006 Annual Meeting Minutes|2006 annual meeting)) * Following meeting: ((LLG Meeting Summary 2008|2008 annual meeting)) ---- Note: The ((LLG Bylaws (2007)|bylaws)) note an amendment to article 3, section 4 that was passed at this meeting, but which are not included in these minutes.