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Eric Van Dusen
05-21-2009, 06:15 PM
Election Platform of Eric Van Dusen for Vice-Presidency of 2009 OCA [/B]
-aid in the production of financial statements and budgets to make certain that all leagues are receiving their just and due rebates (subventions) from the OCA
-formation of committee to obtain sponsors (for example, Brian Fielder) in order to organize an Ontario Closed
-continued support of Investigation Committee of Issues arising out of the Trillium Fund and 2006 Canada Closed

Election Platform of Eric Van Dusen for 2009 Presidency of the CFC

Fiscal Probity
-each CFC program and business operation will be self-sustaining
-a budget for the upcoming year is created and voted by the AGM of incoming govenors

CFC as an not-for-profit corporation consisting of volunteers
-more consultation and communication at all levels of chess but especially the grass roots: governors, tournament organizers, tournament directors, and the CFC office contractors
-institution of a monthly electronic newsletter incorporating some material from web-based magazine distributed to each CFC member including updates from CFC Executive
-reduce the number of governors by half as only half of present numbers regularly give opinions and vote
-support a motion to expel governors who do not contribute or vote after three consecutive governors’ letters
-form a committee that will co-ordinate lobby efforts to each provincial government to get chess accepted as part of educational curriculum
-form a committee that will work with chess enthusiasts who have connections with business sponsors, for example, Gordon Ritchie, Brian Fielder and other notable chess supporters
-form a committee to support local organization of FIDE tournaments for FIDE norms, to support qualification of FIDE Arbiters and FIDE trainers

Junior Chess
-work much closer together with Chess & Math, a natural ally
-structured transition program from C&MA tournaments to CFC tournaments: FIDE rules, offering of draw, claiming three-fold repetition, chess etiquette
-exchange program between India (GM Kunte schools) and Canada (C&MA schools)
-lobbying provinces to get chess accepted in school curriculum

University Chess
-work with campus clubs and aid with organization of University chess championship of Canada
-help with organizing teams to compete in American university championship

Adult Chess
-Camps held by qualified and experienced trainers, for example, IM O'Donnell, GM Kunte, GM Sambuev/NM Dave Gordon
-licensed chess events that would attempt to emulate the Bermuda tournament

Senior Chess
-teaching chess to seniors in senior citizen homes, assisted living, etc.
-working with tournament organizers to host senior tournaments
-institution of Senior Chess Championship of Canada

Experience

PERSONAL
-married 8 years to an understanding chess widow, Arlene
-father of five-year old Willem who has been taught chess

Professional
-ten years working as a procurement and contracting officer for Public Works Government Services Canada where duties entailed the following: complex negotiations to form a win-win solution for both parties on a quantitative basis and emotional basis, written and verbal communications, time management, managing numerous procurement files simultaneously, policy development on procurement issues

University background
-university degrees:
-University of Ottawa: B.Sc. in Chemistry; B.A.Sc. in Chemical Engineering, Cum Laude
-Wilfrid Laurier University: M.A. in Religion and Culture
-St. Catharines: B.Ed (Secondary School).
-teaching assistant for psychology of religion courses including lecturing

Chess Related
-competitive OTB chess since 1990 including correspondence chess
-clubs: Scarborough, Waterloo, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Ottawa RA club, and Hull chess club, FQE
-tournament directing at Ottawa RA Club
-secretary of the Eastern Ontario Chess Association for several years
-teaching chess to children at Dovercourt Community Centre
-some volunteer work at CFC office
-CFC and OCA governor

Volunteer experience
-Ottawa civic hospital
-Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) working group where decision-making was on a consensus basis
-public affairs journalism at Carleton University and University of Ottawa radio stations
-journalist and photographer for University of Ottawa English newspaper, The Fulcrum

-President of the Science Students Association (SSA) with a budget of $25,000 to organize social, academic, cultural, charity events
-as President represented SSA at the Student Federation of University of Ottawa which had a million dollar budget that operated private businesses, oversaw radio and newspapers media outlets, and various services for students
-incidentally the SFUO as far as I know is the only university student organization in Ontario that is organized as a federated body, just like the CFC

Bob Gillanders
05-22-2009, 11:14 AM
Eric, that’s great news.

Your election platform highlights many of your strengths:

- an active tournament player and teacher
- your active participation in local chess activities
- an excellent grasp of the role of not for profit organizations
- a desire to attract more volunteers and work cooperatively
- a vision of how do we bring chess to the larger community
- an understanding of the need for greater consultation and communication amongst the chess community.

I am pleased to support your candidacy for CFC President.

ps. could the board administrator please edit my profile since I am no longer CFC Executive Director....

Christopher Mallon
05-22-2009, 12:05 PM
Fixed... it'll update all the old posts whenever you make your next post.

Bob Gillanders
05-22-2009, 12:25 PM
Thanks Chris, and good work on the OCA reports now on OCA website. It's good to have your thoughts on the year ahead as well as a budget.

Bob

Christopher Mallon
05-22-2009, 01:40 PM
hmmm.... or maybe not fixed. It *did* un-bold your name though.

One mistake in the reports, the leagues were cut and pasted in the wrong order on the actual balance sheet, the membership report shows them in the correct order for the amount owing.

Christopher Mallon
05-22-2009, 01:43 PM
OK apparently even though if I add someone to a usergroup, it automatically changes their user title, if I remove them from the group, it doesn't. Interesting. Fixed now though.

Jason Lohner
05-22-2009, 02:19 PM
Eric, what is your stance on the following issues?

1. Tournament membership
2. inactive governors
3. measures to be taken to prevent cheating

Thanks

Egidijus Zeromskis
06-15-2009, 02:32 PM
Eric Van Dusen, will you bring your own Executive team (candidates)?

Jason Lohner
06-16-2009, 01:34 AM
Kinda hard to vote for someone when they wont answer your questions...

John Coleman
06-16-2009, 09:35 AM
Jason (and others):

Eric is on vacation till July 2nd.

Jason Lohner
06-17-2009, 03:14 AM
I posted my questions 3 hrs after he posted his announcement.

Eric Van Dusen
07-02-2009, 04:14 PM
Greetings to fellow CFC members,

I apologize for my tardiness in replying to your responses. I was quite busy with preparations for the NATO Chess championship held in Germany and now I have returned.

Regarding a creation of slates for the CFC Executive, I frankly do not think this is required. As president you should have the ability to work with anyone who is elected by the CFC governors.

I just had a conversation with the present VP Stijn De Kerpel and he told me he is running again for VP. We have worked together on the EOCA Executive successfullly. Hal Bond is running for FIDE representative. Apparently, Maurice Smith is running again as Treasurer. Frankly, I could not think of a stronger slate. I already have good relations with all of these people. In particular, Maurice Smith is an ex-CFC president with a well known reputation for fiscal probity and resposibility and in my opinion, he is an exellent candidate for treasurer.

This past year a number of difficult decisions were made and had to be carried out by the CFC Executive. While I supported the CFC Executive in making those tough decisions, I believe that the David Lavin and I have a fundamentally different way of viewing the CFC and how to lead it.

The CFC is a non-for-profit corporation where the bulk of the work is carried out by the volunteers. The CFC is organized politically as a federation. It is my belief that to lead such an organization requires both political and communication skills. Coalitions are required to be built among the governors. That requires a lot of work in the form of communication.

When certain decisions of this year, such as terminating the CFC Office Staff, were made there was little information that was given to the governors.

A direct result of the way this situatin was managed, the CFC lost two governors that were key volunteers in their respective provinces: Kerry Liles of Ontario who also resigned from as OCA treasurer, and Tony Fizcere of Alberta. This sort of top down decision making by president David Lavin with little regard for the opinions of governors discourages members from volunteering.

On a different note, the Electronic Magazine at least for this past year has been a failure in execution and David has at least admitted as such and promised he will try to make this a success in the future.

My own idea is too publish a monthly electronic newsletter in addition to a web magazine. If Jean Hebert can publish a newsletter on his own, an organisation such as the CFC can follow suit. The newsletter would go a long way in giving CFC members something tangible for their membership dues.

Cheers, Eric Van Dusen

Eric Van Dusen
07-02-2009, 04:42 PM
Hi Jason,

Thanks for your timely response. Again I apologize for the late response. Preparations for Germany plus other chess commitments were much more onerous than anticipated.

As for your issues:

1. Tournament membership
2. inactive governors
3. measures to be taken to prevent cheating

1. Tournament memberships - To be honest, I am very much in agreement with the EOCA President Aris Marghetis on memberships fees. There should only be only one uniform fee for each member of the CFC.

However, one of my team members in Germany, Brian Murray who runs tournaments at the Kingston Club brought up this particular issue. Many members at the Kingston Club do not play any tournament chess outside of the club. As we all know a rating is not an absolute measure of chess strength but a measure relative to other chess players in your local rating pool. For rating purposes it would be entirely useless for Kingston club players to subscribe to the CFC. The club could run its own rating system based on the linear approximation of the Arpad Elo equation.

In addition, the Kingston players find that the CFC web magazine a failure and again not much of a selling point in obtaining a membership. For this reason, I want to implement a monthly electronic newsletter.

As for the tournament membership, the tournament membership has been abused in it's implementation and according to Brian the tournament membership has changed to a fee that is executed more than once in a year. Perhaps the CFC should come up with user fees to deal with the members of the Kingston club. The Kingston Club is probably not unique in Canada.

Whatever the final solution for the Tournament Fee, this fee in the final analysis is a user fee. I would favour a set of user fees for people who would forgo the annual membership fee. What those user fees are and what amount would require a wide basis of consulation with CFC governors, club executive, and tournament organizors.

2 - Inactive govenors - Essentially the baseball rule: Three consecutive missed votes, missed contributions to the Governor's newsletters, and said inactive governor would be recalled and the provincial affiliation would have to nominate another person. In addition, about half of the governors do not participate so perhaps a reduction of half of the governors may be in order.

As for the CFC, it uses Robert's Rules of Order. A fundamental assumption of Roobet's Rules of Order is informed decision makers discussing various solutions. Proxies are not permitted under Robert's. In the past, proxy abuse has been rapant at CFC AGM's. It is time to for the CFC to set up televised conference calls to allow more governors to participate in the meetings and eliminate proxies. This idea requires constitutional changes but I think it is the only avenue that is open to the CFC to get better decisions made at the AGM.

3. Cheating: I have to be honest here. I am not sure what you mean by cheating: individual cheating at tournaments, fake tournament results, computer aided cheating.

If you are speaking of computer aided cheating, most if not all tournament directors are cognizant of the various forms methods dealing with electronic cheating. For the most part, head gear is outlawed.

If you could describe your specific concerns regarding cheating, I will be happy to respond to you.

Cheers, Eric.

Jason Lohner
07-02-2009, 05:20 PM
On the issue of cheating, I only brought it up because of a post of Kevin Spraggett on his blog. He had issues with the lack of safeguards and has stated that he refuses to play in a CFC event. If the top GM that Canada has produced has issues, perhaps we should listen and rectify them?

As for the other issues I propose that that we reduce the tournament fee back to $10 and limit it to only once a year. This would bring back to at least a limited degree the many people who wish to play in a CFC event but feel that the entire CFC fee is not worth it. When I figure out how to bring this as a Governors proposal I will submit a formal proposal. (first time gov. so I am kind of lost on how this works). I have been to non-CFC events and one of the main reasons these events are non-cfc and these people don't play in CFC events is because of the fee. Once again I actually spoke to these people before this ill conceived rule was put into place...

As for inactive Governors, I don't really have a problem with the reduction, but I don't think that it will solve the problem. The 'inactivity' rule makes far more sense.

David Lavin
07-03-2009, 07:58 PM
Hi Eric:

First of all, I want to wish you the best of luck.

Secondly, I do want to address a statement you made in your recent post.

I've addressed it numerous times, but the rumour persists that the previous Executive Director team was terminated. Rather, the Executive voted unanimously to reject the financial terms which the incumbent team presented to us.

As for volunteers... I hope that that we have stopped losing money (nearly $160,000 in the years 2005-2008!!) I think we may find that more people will feel comfortable volunteering for an organization that they know will actually exist in the years to come!!

All the best.

David

Bob Gillanders
07-04-2009, 02:49 AM
David,

Playing with semantics does not change the facts. The previous Executive Director team was indeed terminated.

In January, with the sale of the condo, the Ottawa staff was terminated. In addition, we started the new webzine. This increased the workload of the ED team from 40 hours to approx. 60 hours. We quite correctly forecasted this workload for you in December. You and I met around Christmas time to discuss. You offered a salary plan based on a share of revenues, which at current membership levels meant no increase at all ($39,000) or even possibly less. We instead asked for $ 52,000, or $1,000 per week. At this level salaries would still be significantly lower than before. You and Stijn just kept saying,” we can't afford it, we can't afford it". We prepared a balanced budget demonstrating that you could afford it, but you just ignored it.

With no agreement in place, and the building already sold, we soldered on in an act of good faith with the increased workload. But not to worry I told my associates, they will pay us more once the dust settles and we have a positive cash flow. Besides, we're not in it just for the money, and surely our CFC friends will treat us fairly!? I was so naive!

Every 2 weeks we reported the hours worked vs. hours paid. For the first month, Jan 15 to Feb 15, the Executive did pay the extra hours worked. Then after that, our requests went unanswered for 8 weeks. When we finally met again on April 8th, you told me you had a cheaper alternative with the Litchfield team.

Well okay, but that all adds up to being terminated in my dictionary. You’re saving money, okay. Getting an experienced ED, Gerry Litchfield, that’s good. But then you go and tell the governors this ridiculous tale about us demanding $ 90,000.

Bob