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Thread: remarks on Voting Members Online Quarterly Meeting December 2017

  1. #1
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    Default remarks on Voting Members Online Quarterly Meeting December 2017

    Hi guys - I can't post on the thread so I'm posting over here. I hope that's OK.

    Ken Craft remarked that "Chesstalk is about to charge for tournament notices. I think we should emphasize that the service is free on our discussion forum."

    Just in case anyone doesn't know, John Upper also provides a very good Upcoming Events on his newsfeed and I've been doing something similar over here. So there are options in addition to the Discussion Forum.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir Drkulec View Post
    i am not in favour of any increase in CFC dues unless someone gives me a good rationale for it and explains what we will do with the money. It appears that we are headed for a record year revenue wise. Doing something with youth dues seems less unreasonable but I wouldn't look at any large increases anywhere. Lets increase the numbers and we can make do with the current fee structure.
    There are any number of ideas I could come up with. First I think having a Junior discount is probably a decent idea but you could halve it.

    Just randomly throwing out ideas in no particular order to do with the $6/year. I see that that would bring in something in the range of $4500 a year. I'm assuming you keep the money in Junior chess; obviously there are many things starting with a new website that could be done as well.

    - Put some or all of it automatically into the Pugi fund
    - Solve some of the apparent funding issues (coaches, etc) with WYCC
    - I don't know the current cost but I imagine that'd make a fair dent in running a Futurity style event for Juniors, at least at the IM level.
    - Additional support for in-Canada events like the Canadian Junior and/or CYCC.
    - Random rewards - for example, randomly pick a Junior event each month and cover the rating fees.
    - Some kind of retention effort specifically aimed at junior/youth players - perhaps sponsoring the CUCC and/or provincial level high school events, or offer "coupons" for $xx off tournament entries if they return to playing chess.
    Christopher Mallon
    FIDE Arbiter

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    Junior membership rates and also regular membership rates are a question for the voting members.

    We can usually find pretty good coaches for international events who are willing to work under the current volunteer scenario where we pay a $500 gratuity. We have had two coaches recently who have asked for higher pay. We have a constant parade of well regarded international coaches mostly GMs who also apply to coach Canadian players. Since these GMs are often local they can represent a large savings to the CFC. Being a coach for the national team also can help coaches market their services. Several WYCC coaches have used the opportunity to solicit the players they coached for additional work as a coach. As I have coached many WYCC players I know of at least half a dozen WYCC coaches who have solicited my players over the years.

    You must remember that air fare, hotel and meals are included. We probably need to be more insistent that a FIDE trainer license is a requirement for consideration at least for the lead coach position. The CFC has paid for this training in some cases as it means we don't have to pay for hotel and food. In some cases this requirement can be fulfilled at the tournament by taking a course but sometimes this is not possible.

    CYCC's do not need to be subsidized. I also don't like the idea of taking money from all of the players to subsidize a few through the Pugi Fund. I'm not even clear that it would pass the NFP act smell test.

    The chaos of a new website will have to wait for the next CFC president, I think. I have gone through that a number of times as part of my job and nothing is less appealing to me at the moment. Certainly if I did commission something like that I would find someone who would do the work for 3 to 5 thousand dollars and not the ridiculous number of past iterations.

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    Unless there's some urgent reason to do so, I'd suggest the CFC not replace their main website (or this Discussion Board) anytime soon. Especially if the philosophy were to be to go for relatively cheap stuff that also on the whole (or in an important way) is poorer in quality than what the CFC already has. At the same time, the CFC should not want to get hosed with something awful that's also expensive (echoes of the past). Other than that, I understand that as the years go by, doing such replacement for some reason or another seems inevitable due to advances in technology, or the threat level posed by hackers. But then, how would going cheap normally help in the battle to defend vs. the latter?
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

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    The CFC needs a new website. Pretty soon they will badly need a new website. There was a suggestion at the time that the CFC should actually put away $1-2k per year to save towards a new website. I'm fairly sure that didn't happen but here we are.

    The discussion board is completely separate - hosted on a different server, in a different country even I believe (I think the main CFC site is hosted on Amazon now?).

    AS long as the CFC maintains its main database offline (DO they still do this?) the vulnerability to hackers, assuming proper backups, is much less. Even if the entire site were wiped by hackers, no actual data would be lost other than maybe the news feed. But you could reupload the site, then update the ratings and poof 95% of the site is back.
    Christopher Mallon
    FIDE Arbiter

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    We are no longer hosted by Amazon as the service was not working for us. I believe that we are hosted on a computer on a Cogeco business account.

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