History: Presenting Lojban

• You want to get some people into a room to listen to you talk about Lojban, how do you do it?
  • You could try to talk to people that you know deal with formal languages (like computer science professors or linguists) and will be able to bring in other people (like their students). --björn
  • Dunno, I've been trying for some time now, my score is zero, but I'm going into advertising (Lojban, not professional) in about 6 months
    • How were you planning on advertising? I'm currently running text ad campaigns on two websites (find me on Lojban IRC if you'd like to know which two). The keyword targeted one pulls 1%, the one on a tech website is pulling about 1.8% (CTR). --jay
      • Nooo! Just adds on campus

• You've got some people in a room, and they want to listen to you talk about Lojban, what do you say?
  • Get a couple of nice weird examples
    • suggestions beyond pulling some stuff off of What Does It Mean??

• You have an opportunity to talk to people about Lojban who weren't expecting to hear about Lojban, but are all staying to listen to the next person talk. What do you say to make them want to hear more?

I once started teaching Lojban to two friends using that intro brochure from a few years ago. Unfortunately they didn't have the attention span needed to get past 2 months. Well, you can't sell Lojban on its usefulness, so the only thing people might be interested in are the Sapir-Whorf effects unless they are conlang nerds. --xod

I tried giving examples of cool language features, like na'i and fancy uses of connectives. And space tenses.
This had no visible effect! mi'e jezrax
what happens when you shock the subject with 120VAC or so, and then describe attitudinals?

Yup...don't expect to impress girls at a party by explaining how nifty "najo" is.

you need to go to linguistics cocktail parties. (disclaimer: i've been trying to find a computer science cocktail party for years without luck. YMMV.) --jay

Fine...you don't impress cute girls at a party...

We need to start a rumor that Lojban makes you smarter.
That shouldn't be hard on the Internet...
We need to make Lojban cool. People who are trendsetters
throwing Lojban words into their casual conversation. Bands
with Lojban names. Mentions by top science fiction authors
(you know who you are). Find a way to work references to Lojban
into every other subject you natter about in discussion groups.
Make people feel out-of-it if they need to have Lojban explained
to them. Make it the subject of your art.

• Naah, the last immediate thing we need is for Lojban to be "cool", Elvish is considered cool, especially since the movie came out, and now the mailing list is cluttered with semantical nonsense that must make JRRT turn in his grave. Cool can come when there is plenty of material available

It would be interesting if intellectuals dropped lojban phrases the way they used to with Latin or French, with the understanding that all educated people would understand them. This is more justified if the imported phrase describes a concept hard to phrase in English (like 'angst' or 'schadenfreude'), or that would be overly wordy in English ('eg. vice versa', 'post hoc'). But for that to occur, you literalists would have to drop the requirement that any new lujvo or phrasing be easily translatable into English; what you've dubbed "understandable".

I love what you've said about using lojban in conversation to get people interested. I have just begin learning lojban and I am really intrigued by it. I'm a writer, so I'm most excited to see how lojban can be used to create art. I'm enthralled by lojban haikus. I'm excited to discover how lojban can be used to write poetry and other literature. -pit