What is Kopikon?
Kopikon is a daylong celebration of language creation featuring a host of speakers sharing their insights on the art and practice of conlanging.
How did it come about?
On February 27, 2020, David J. Peterson and Jessie Sams created a YouTube series called LangTime Studio. The goal was to work together to live stream the creation of a series of new languages—five in total—each for a unique band of anthropomorphic animals (combatants in a planned board game David's creating).
A Screenshot of a LangTime Studio Episode
During the course of a live stream, it became a tradition for David and Jessie to eat a Kopiko candy whenever they overcame some sort of linguistic challenge or finished something off in the language they were working on. Kopiko is a coffee candy from Indonesia that looks a bit like this:
An Oversized Kopiko Candy
As a community developed around LangTime Studio, the idea emerged to have an in person gathering. It was jokingly referred to as Kopikon—a play on Kopiko and "convention". Now, after three years of streaming and five seasons, and with the generous assistance of the Georgetown Linguistics Department, Kopikon has come to life as a way of celebrating the last stream of LangTime Studio's original five season run.