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The presentation

I’m baaaack!

Yeah, it was a busy week. Probably the busiest week I’ve ever had. I stayed up late. I accidentally skipped a meal. Almost all of my time was spent studying, doing schoolwork, or promoting my Esperanto club’s first event. Of course, I also went to my first Florida Free Culture meeting, which was very cool. I also had a Get Carded meeting. Basically, I did all the things I said I was going to do, except that the deadline for my programming project got moved to Monday. Otherwise, I would have been spending much of tonight working on it. I finally have a break.

I worked hard, though. I got a 7 out of 10 on my physics exam, which was higher than the class average and the same score I got on the first exam. At this rate, I can squeak by with a B+ in the class. I think I’m right on the line. I spent many consecutive hours working on my Indian Ocean take-home test, and I did well. I know that because the professor said everyone’s responses were probably good before he saw them.

Of course, the elephant in the room is: “Jordon, how was your new Esperanto Club’s first event, ‘Esperanto: The Solution to the World Language Problem,’ that you were promoting like crazy?”

Okay, I promoted this presentation every way I knew how. I invited friends on Facebook (only two said they would come), I sent a blurb to various mailing lists (some of which actually ran the blurb), I contacted the major student newspaper (they didn’t write back), I contacted a vaguely related club (they didn’t reply), I advertised at other club meetings (okay, one), I handed out and posted flyers (which got covered up by other flyers almost immediately), and I even spoke in a class (of ten people, and not everyone was there).

At first, I had no idea how many people to expect. I wanted a room for 150 people, but I was told flat out that I wouldn’t be able to get one at night. (They tend to be used for exams.) I settled for a room seating about 100. Yesterday, 19 people on Facebook said they would go to the presentation. I expected some more than that because I didn’t just promote the event on Facebook. 20-30 people sounded pretty reasonable. I would be happy to have that many.

I got to the classroom extra early to make sure the computer and projector worked. Someone was already waiting outside. “Esperanto Club?” I asked. “Mission meeting?” she asked. Uh-oh. Could they have double-booked the room? She was very convinced that there was another meeting there at that same time, but she went over to the computer to double-check the e-mail. Turns out she missed her meeting by a week. Close call for me.

By the magical time of 8:00, only a handful of people were there. I figured the others would be coming shortly; you know how no one’s ever on time. At 8:15, there were still only a few people. I decided the show must go on. Present were three of the four club officers, our faculty advisor, and seven others (five of whom were friends with one or another of the officers). Seven people. Actually, really only two.

I decided I couldn’t let that put a damper on my enthusiasm. I presented the presentation, and even though I hadn’t had any practice with the vocal delivery, I think I did quite well. It’s probably because I’d been working on it bit by bit over the course of several weeks. I familiarized myself with it that way. Anyway, if you’re curious, here’s the presentation as a 5.6 MB PDF. Yes, I am actually hosting a large file here, believe it or not!

It was kind of discouraging to have only seven people come to the presentation, but at the end, when I asked how many people would be interested in learning the language, my spirits were lifted a bit. Almost everyone raised their hand, even our faculty advisor and the other officers, who don’t know Esperanto very well yet. It seems that of the seven people in the audience, almost all were very interested. When I showed the information about our recommended textbook, several people jotted it down.

If I could have a small core group of people for this club who will stick with it for the long term, that would be great. And it would give the group room to grow. I use Gator Freethought, whose meetings I usually attend, as a sort of model for my own club. Their meetings draw about 50 people, so they’ve already reached critical mass. They have enough momentum to go on forever, even when the officers graduate. My vice president and I have three years to build the club up so that it can outlast us. Can we do it? I think so.

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