*Interview of June 29, 2001

= What has happened since our last interview?

Since our last interview, I have accepted the position of Director of
Communications and Strategic Relations for Mason Integrated Technologies, a
company whose main objective is to create tools for communications, and the
accessibility of documents created in the world's minority languages. Due to the
board's experience in the matter, Haitian Creole (Kreyol) has been a prime area
of focus. Kreyol is the only national language of Haiti, and one of its two
official languages, the other being French. It is hardly a minority language in
the Caribbean context, since it is spoken by eight to ten million people.

Aside from those responsibilities, I have taken the promotion of Kreyol as a
personal cause, since that language is the strongest of bonds uniting all
Haitians, in spite of a small but disproportionately influential Haitian elite's
disdainful attitude to adopting standards for the writing of Kreyol and
supporting the publication of books and official communications in that
language. For instance, there was recently a two-week book event in Haiti's
Capital and it was promoted as "Livres en folie". Some 500 books from Haitian
authors were on display, among which one could find perhaps 20 written in
Kreyol. This is within the context of France's major push to celebrate
francophony among its former colonies. This palys rather well in Haiti, but
directly at the expense of creolophony.

What I have created in response to those attitudes are two discussion forums on
my web site, Windows on Haiti, held exclusively in Kreyol. One is for general
discussions on just about everything but obviously more focused on Haiti's
current socio-political problems. The other is reserved only to debates of
writing standards for Kreyol. Those debates have been quite spirited and have
met with the participation of a number of linguistic experts. The uniqueness of
these forums is their non-academic nature. Nowhere else on the Net have I found
such a willing and free exchange between experts and laymen debating the merits
and standards for a language in that language itself.

= How much do you still work with paper?

As little as possible, which is still a lot. If I am dealing with a document
that I want to preserve for future reference, I always print it and catalog it.
It may not be available when I am away from my home office, but when I am there,
I like the co