Locales presentation for conference at Winneba

Tunde, Henry (codes for PALDO) and I attended West African Languages Conference (WALC) 2024 between late last month and early this month.

I was given 15 minutes to present* *"100 African Language Locales". The plan was to have a 30-minute presentation, and another 30-minute session in a 1-hour plenary session to explain the locale contribution and submission process, and also to collect locales. Although I didn't have much time to present, I was able to introduce ANLoc and the locales project to the 60 or more linguists (mostly language professors in African universities or African language professors in non-African universities)

There was no question time, so I could not reliably determine how well the participants understood ANLoc's locales project after my presentation. The only feedback I got was applause from the language experts after I had finished. I also noticed a few smiles here and there :)

Going forward, Tunde will use his influence as a council member (re-elected at the conference. Congratulations Tunde!) to collect all the email addresses of participants so Martin can follow up with sending them the localegen questionnaire file for collecting locale data. Participants were also given hard copies of the localegen questionnaire Louise prepared. Tunde will get these too from the secretary of the West African Linguistic Society (WALS) and pass them on to me or Martin. This method is a less recommended option.

In my opinion, the meeting was a good opportunity to sow seeds, to create awareness about the ANLoc project in general, and the locales subproject in particular. I'm just a little disappointed that we could not achieve our aim immediately - get some locale data for Martin and ANLoc!

Jojoo Imbeah