LogFest announcement and book progress report

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

This message is to remind Lojbanists and other interested people that
LogFest 97, our annual gathering of Lojbanists held here in the
Washington DC suburbs (Fairfax VA) in conjunction with the annual
meeting of The Logical Language Group, Inc., is scheduled for the first
weekend in August (I think that is August 2-3).

At LogFest there is generally a lot of intellectual and social
discussion on a variety of topics, thus far mostly in English, though
some in Lojban and Esperanto.  We of course are trying to promote
ever-increasing use of Lojban at these gatherings.  It is a congenial
gathering for conlangers who have some interest in Lojban as well as
serious Lojbanists trying to master the language.

The annual meeting will be held at 1030 AM on Sunday.  I am open to any
call for particular agenda items to be discussed.  There are no pending
Bylaw amendments.  We will be discussing publication of the Lojban
reference grammar and dictionary (see below).  The LLG Board of
Directors has elected to postpone discussion of a final lexicon baseline
(which was scheduled for this week) until LogFest, since no significant
work has been done on that aspect of the language documentation in
preparation for such a baseline.

Except for the annual meeting this is a pretty informal gathering.
People come from around the area and/or from out of town.  We have a
couple of guest beds and mattresses, and people sleep whenever and
wherever they find a quiet spot.  Some people come on Friday night, and
some stay over until Monday - we are fairly flexible in hosting.  Bring
a sleeping bag if convenient, and we ask for a voluntary donation of $30
or more for the weekend to help offset expenses.  We ask that people let
us know informally whether they might attend, so we can plan for meals
and other logistical considerations.

All activities are held at my house in Fairfax VA, located at the end of
the Metro line and hence fairly convenient for travellers coming from
out of town via bus train or plane - rarely does any out of town guest
need to rent a car.

For those unable to attend in person, we are planning our annual Lojban
IRC interaction on the net at internationally convenient times.  These
have generally been at one or more of 930AM, 2PM, 6PM, and 10PM EDT (GMT
-4 hours) on both Saturday and Sunday.  In previous years we have had
people from as many as 5 different countries participating in
in-language discussion, though IRC glitches seem to crop up to somehow
make things other than optimal.

Just as a brief progress report on book publication of the Lojban
Reference Grammar.  We have had a well-timed contact with a printer who
can take the book to press with considerably less work needed on our
part than we were expecting.  By adjusting to a somewhat larger than
standard book/page size (5" of text per line), I have been able to cut
the page count down to around 640 pages - it was over 800 prior to this
change. 90% of the book is rough formatted, and I am doing a second
formatting pass to clean things up which is half done.  What all this
means is that there is a realistic chance that the book can go to press
before LogFest, and it is possible that we may have several paperbound
proof copies at LogFest for people to pore over.  At LogFest we will be
able to discuss final pricing, but a price for the textbook-quality
hardbound volume will probably be between $30 and $50.

Comments and questions on all this are welcome.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab
    or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/";