LLG 2007 Annual Meeting Minutes

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
• Arnold, Matt
• Barton, Dave
• Cowan, John
• Daniel, Craig
• Johansen, Arnt Richard
• Kominek, Jay F
• LeChevalier, Nora
• LeChevalier, Robert
• Llambias, Jorge
• Powell, Robin Lee
• Reed, Theodore
• Rosta, And
• Shoulson, Mark
• 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

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.

Treasurer's Report

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.

Secretary's Report

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

Committee Reports

Accepted by acclamation.

BPFK

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.

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.

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:

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."

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: 2006 annual meeting
• Following meeting: 2008 annual meeting

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Note: The bylaws note an amendment to article 3, section 4 that was passed at this meeting, but which are not included in these minutes.