Raffi Kojian

Raffi Kojian
Languages	Armenian
Ethnicities	Armenian
Dialects	Eastern Armenian, Western Armenian
Ancestral villages	Marash, Gesaria, Constantinople, Tiflis

Owner of Armeniapedia.org (founded in 2004) and Cilicia.com (founded in 1996 on my netcom webspace at the time, and the domain name coming maybe a year later)

Publication and mentions

• Rediscovering Armenia, (co-author) ISBN 9993052280
• Special Residency Status: 18 Tales from Armenian Repatriates, (1 tale and some photos) ISBN 9789994120857
• Armenia: The Bradt Travel Guide (mentioned in credits) ISBN 1841620815
• Lonely Planet Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, second edition. (mentioned in credits) ISBN 1740591380
• Adventure Armenia: Hiking and Rock Climbing (mentioned in credits) ISBN 9993078549.
• Gruzja, Armenia. Magiczne zakaukazie (mentioned in credits to Polish guidebook) ISBN 836050606X.
• Armenia: Land of Contrasts (mentioned in credits)
• My Limp Through Armenia (mentioned in credits)
• Wall Street Journal Europe - Mentioned in article appearing on July 6, 2001.
• Armenian Impressions book of Armenia photos, one of three photographers. ISBN 9994120573
• Appeared in 1994 documentary Beyond Commitment on Land and Culture Organization.
• Appeared in 2006 documentary The Long Journey from the NFL to Armenia on NFL star Rien Long
• Mentioned as "one Armenian nationalist blogger" (and a drooling one at that) in The New Republic July 23, 2007 article, "K Street Cashes In On The 1915 Armenian Genocide".
• Murder at the Altar, novel by Terry Phillips. (mentioned in acknowledgments) ISBN 1892918021
• Here, 2011 movie by Braden King. Thank you in the credits.
• Sonntag Aktuell article about the Janapar Trail (Deutch - May 13, 2012)
• Le Janapar Trail - an article in Nouvelles d'Armenie (French - April 2013)
• Destination Janapar - an article in Yerevan Magazine's U.S. edition in May, 2013.
• Armenia Wants Every Armenian to Write a Wikipedia Article - an article in Motherboard / Vice.com (August 1, 2014)
• The Idiot's Guide to the Internet - Included Raffi's ASCII art signature with name, email address, Mt. Ararat and Ren & Stimpy (1995?)
• Letter - 2001
• Reuters letter

Some projects

• Fonts - Raffi created truetype fonts from some paper fonts in the mid-1990s, including Arax, AraxBarab, Masis, MasisNihar and Sassoun, with Tamar coming a few years later. In the mid 2010s, he released a bunch more, which included ArmeniapediaArevelyan, ArmeniapediaGarun, ArmeniapediaGeghagrutyun, ArmeniapediaJhapaven, ArmeniapediaKisat, ArmeniapediaKonfet, ArmeniapediaLatinakan, ArmeniapediaMeghu, ArmeniapediaPigh, ArmeniapediaZaritap, and ArmeniapediaAkhtamar.
• Janapar Trail - after initially being hired for a year to design and launch the Janapar Trail in Artsakh, Raffi kept the project going for the next 10 years with his own time, finances, and sweat, as well as the help of other volunteers and supporters.
• Digitizing many books and articles and putting them online beginning with the book The Fool by the original Raffi in the mid-1990s, and the entirety of the catalogue of newspaper articles in major publications such as the New York Times published during the Armenian Genocide.
• Armenian Group Blogs - beginning around the year 2000, a few group blogs were setup on Cilicia.com, one for repatriates to Armenia, one for Diasporans living in the Diaspora, and one for locals of Armenia. This gave people around the world a taste of what life was like for those communities, and the repatriate blog, with over 10 different bloggers over the years, became wildly popular, with a number of readers moving to Armenia as a result of what they learned there. Those blogs naturally slowed down and ended, with another year or two of Raffi posting a photo blog of sorts on Flickr, which he used as a kind of Instagram before Instagram, which was also very popular.
• Gardenology.org - started a gardening wiki encyclopedia which hit about 20,000 pages, making it one of the largest gardening at the time, and then passed the project along at which point it doesn't seem to have grown
• Made over 130 Armenian t-shirt designs, by far the largest collection in the world: https://www.teepublic.com/user/armeniapedia - they are a combination of digitized older designs mixed with new concepts.

Plants

Some plants that Raffi's brought to Armenia and donated to the Yerevan Botanical Garden include: Japanese Lantern Hibiscus, Cardamon, Buddha's Hand, Limequat, Cup-of-gold Vine, Black Bamboo, Giant Cane Begonia, Lemon Thyme, Prostate Rosemary, Acalypha, Carnation 'Queen of Hearts', Bay Leaf, and 7 kinds of English Ivy (including California, Mint Kolibri, Needlepoint).

Plants Raffi's brought and donated to the Ijevan Botanical Garden include: Thornless Boysenberry, Black Bamboo, Egyptian Onions, many varieties of English Ivy, Hardy kiwi 'Issai' (Self-fertile), Hardy kiwi 'Ken's Red' (Female), Hardy kiwi 'Ken's Red Pollinator' (Male), Purple Honeysuckle Lonicera japonica 'Purpurea', Black Mondo Grass, Gardenia jasminoides 'Frostproof', Jasminum officinale (Hardy Jasmine), Hydrangea 'Shooting Star', Giant Cane Begonia, and Carnation 'Queen of Hearts'.

Plants Raffi's brought and donated to GreenLane's Green Training Center outside of Yerevan include: Ken's Red Kiwi, a male pollinator for that, an Ananasnaja Kiwi, Egyptian walking onions, Boston Ivy, 8 varieties of mint, and about 7 varieties of English Ivy, plus a half dozen varieties of seeds from Seed Savers Exchange (including 3 types of orange melons/cantaloupes, white sweet corn, and others).

Other plants Raffi's brought and perhaps introduced to Armenia include Thornless Boysenberry, Hardy Kiwis (including Ken's Red), Concorde Grapes, Candy Lily, Columbines, Byzantine Gladiolus, Alstromeria 'Sweet Laura', Hardy Begonia, Sweet Maple, Gingko, Pawpaws, etc.