Part 5

Steve: On the numbers, I think if you get some historical document that had a lot of numbers, look for different-it's going to be a matter of recording, basically, documents. Then we can go and buy stuff that's $10 and you get $3.50 back, but I think where people have a lot of trouble-especially Asians, because their fundamental unit is ten thousand, and ours is one thousand, that the numbers get totally-I have the same problem going into Chinese or Japanese that they have coming back. So, if we're talking about where they have millions, ten million, fifty-five thousand, those kinds of things is what they would like to see, I think. David: The next thing I'm going to look for right now is something with numbers. I know that there's been short stories written about numbers, and there's a brilliant book called Innumeracy, about people's misapprehension about numbers. I'm sure there's something that-we do have some things on space or history that have numbers-but something that has more. Steve: One thing while I remember it, David, is I still think there are things in our library that are misfiled.

David: This is probably one of the most significant problems right now-is the fact that I've just upload a new discussion that Chris and I had, fifteen minutes long, about music. I'm not sure where to put it. I put it under "Entertainment," but people who are looking for that specific thing are not interested in entertainment. They're interested in the fact that it's a natural conversation. Steve: "Conversations about Popular Culture"? Is that going to cover it? Or "Popular Culture"? David: It's another category, and- Steve: Okay, you're the content editor, do what you want. Mark: I mean, the reality is that for all our other categories, we have interviews in there, it's more or less casual conversation on them. So that is the format we have used so far. Probably entertainment should be all right, like it should cover it, I would think. We could certainly have another category called "Popular Culture." I don't think we want to identify it as a "conversation," because we have a lot of other conversations. It's all mixed together. It's just that what the conversation's about is pop culture or entertainment. Steve: Any suggestions that you have as you're combing through it, in terms of the design of our library, how we organize it-I mean, these are not things that we can change in the short term, but we have this long list of things that are desirables, and if we can make our whole library more attractive in some way, then we should be thinking of doing that. And maybe we can get input from people as well, over time, but it's dangerous to jump because two people say something, and we change it, but in fact, fifty people don't like that. We have to make sure that we respond to predominant opinion, that the majority of people feel a certain way.

David: When I'm putting this together, the content in The Linguist library, my interest in language is everything. I study everything, and I'm not sure if people who are studying English would do that. If I was studying English, I would want to read the business, and I would want to read the history, and I would want to read the pop culture. I would want to read it all. I'm not sure everybody's like that. Steve: People are not like that, but people-it depends on their mood. I know that when I study languages, at times I'm interested in history, at times I'm interested in literature, at times I feel, "Okay, I want to work on my business vocabulary, so I'm in a serious mood, so I'll work on business." I think people jump around, and of course, we advise them. Like, very often, the employer will say, "I want them to study technical terms." Yeah, but they also have to be able to communicate. To be able to communicate, you need a broader exposure to a variety of things. But there are times when you want to focus in on those technical terms, because you've just sat in a meeting, and you didn't understand the technical terms, so you really want to work the technical terms. So I think we have to offer both, and if we're weak in certain technical areas, we've got to increase that. We have a lot of literature in general, and we want to continue doing that, and then allow people to choose what they're interested in. I think that's one of the fundamental principles of The Linguist, that if people are able to learn from content they find interesting, they'll be motivated enough to stay with it, that they will learn. Mark: As far as feedback goes, I think it's-I mean, we have asked many times what types of content people like or would like us to add. Very rarely do we get feedback on that. People don't really want to think about it and give us answers. Really, they want us to provide content that they're interested in. So it's up to us to sort of monitor what items they go after. If we have a forum for each item, obviously the more popular forums, those are the areas we should be going after. The items that they want to talk about, those are obviously items that struck a chord.

Jill: I've noticed-when I do my reports, I've noticed that the very casual conversations like that you and I have had about sports, or whatever, and you and Chris, those very natural, kind of unscripted articles, or whatever you want to call them-are showing up almost always in the content that's chosen when I do reports, so I think that people really like those a lot. I think that we should be doing a lot of those. Those seem to be really popular.

Steve: I agree, and I think that's one of the sort of distinctive features of The Linguist. So, again, Jill and David, and all of us, really-if we can think of ways of how can we cover a lot of the sort of daily conversation that people need without making it artificial? Because the worst thing is to go back to the artificial textbook reading, or that, you know, "This is Mr. Smith and this is Mrs. Jones." So, how can we keep it natural and yet provide them with not-too-difficult, and yet interesting and useful conversation? This is the challenge.

David: You've mentioned going to Safeway and speaking to people that work there. You know, there's got to be an easier way. I mean, I know enough people who work there, who are friends of mine, that will do it, and they don't have to be standing over a counter of meat. Tell me about it. I mean, my father knows teachers, and, you know, he taught for forty years. I know the Superintendent of Schools over in Richmond. I could talk to him. There's ways to go, they're there. Steve: Okay, sounds good. I mean, those were the main points we wanted to cover. Marketing is key, we're all marketers. We have certain areas of specialization, I'm going to make sure that we're all copied, and we should all be thinking of how we can sell, and thinking of how we can continue to improve the site, obviously, which Mark is going to take the lead on. But as we get feedback from different people, we need to feed it into Mark. Not everything can be done right away, that's the problem. We have a good idea and we expect it to be done now. There's a long list of things that have to be done. Basically, that's it. It's basically working together and combining all these things.