Eric Van Dusen's Candicacy for CFC President

[Jason Lohner]

I posted my questions 3 hrs after he posted his announcement.

[Eric Van Dusen]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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