PG is absent here. He hasn't posted in over five years. He's also mentioned that he doesn't care about initial popularity, as he doesn't think it matters for a "hundred-year language". I somewhat disagree; if people write off a language in year 0 because it's unpolished, they may not revisit the language in year 5 when it is.
It would be cool to have an Arc conference. I've met up with both akkartik and waterhouse when I traveled to SF for Startup School. Perhaps if you're interested, you could organize a virtual conference, or even a virtual chat with Google Hangouts or the like. Sacha Chua holds virtual hangouts for Emacs, and they've been pretty cool.