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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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By the way, on an unrelated topic, I tried to find something on the Senior championship in the handbook at Chess.CA this evening and I couldn't find a mention on it. Am I missing something as it's the qualifier for the world senior from what I understand.
I think the handbook is probably out of date in a number of ways. Consider this clause:
370. Membership Cards for Tournament Entry
All potential participants in a CFC rated tournament shall be required to produce an up-to-date CFC Membership card or a recently dated receipt for CFC membership. If the potential participant cannot present such a card, he will not be allowed to participate in the tournament without paying CFC membership to the tournament organizers before his entry is accepted.
I think the handbook is probably out of date in a number of ways. Consider this clause:
370. Membership Cards for Tournament Entry
All potential participants in a CFC rated tournament shall be required to produce an up-to-date CFC Membership card or a recently dated receipt for CFC membership. If the potential participant cannot present such a card, he will not be allowed to participate in the tournament without paying CFC membership to the tournament organizers before his entry is accepted.
Membership cards?
The thing I don't like are the updates of the CFC handbook cannot be found without reading the whole handbook or reprinting it again. It would be nice to see new or changed clauses,policies with a revised date noted beside the change. That way anyone who already has a hard copy of the Handbook can just reprint the updated pages.
I think the handbook is probably out of date in a number of ways. Consider this clause:
370. Membership Cards for Tournament Entry
All potential participants in a CFC rated tournament shall be required to produce an up-to-date CFC Membership card or a recently dated receipt for CFC membership. If the potential participant cannot present such a card, he will not be allowed to participate in the tournament without paying CFC membership to the tournament organizers before his entry is accepted.
Membership cards?
The handbook is full of such anomalies. There is even a blacklist listing a current voting member for some sin against CFC chess or another. The whole thing needs to be rewritten clause by clause in a logical way removing all of the inconsistencies and the blacklist. The NFP process as required by the government gave us a reset. There was simply not time to bring the whole set of bylaws into compliance with the NFP act. Many would have required a complete rewrite and many have become irrelevant because the provisions of the NFP act govern certain things which previously had to be spelled out in a non-profit's constitutions and bylaws. The handbook is no longer the law of the land though there are parts that will be resurrected in due time.
Gerrry, I am uncomfortable with your comments regarding Fred McKim. I admire Fred and appreciate the work he has done for the CFC.
I was on the selection committee that chose the winning bid for the CFC office contract and there were 5 good proposals, including the one from your organization "Outpost". It doesn't sound to me like you got any feedback on your bid so I'll tell you my own impressions and perhaps you can benefit or perhaps you will vent on me but I think you deserve to know my thoughts. I rated Outpost highly in several important areas (familiarity with the CFC, provincial organizations and FIDE, financial accounting, rating system knowledge, office structure) and poorly some other areas (high proposed cost, customer service, taking responsibility, communications). I was not influenced at all by Fred. The members of the selection committee made independent judgements and arrived at a unanimous decision. The process was as fair as anyone could make it.
Paul, you probably should have replied to one of Gerry's posts (but perhaps he will figure it all out anyway).
I still think that the system used was effective and fair. I attempted to obtain members for all three committees who would approach their job and the contract proposals with an open mind. If I wanted to try and sway the Committee I would have thrown my support at one of the Candidates who has been a personal friend of mine for 40 years, after all I did hand pick the committees.
For various reasons, that will probably never be fully understood, the performance of the new Executive Director ran into trouble from almost day one. Vlad has already said as much. I'm not sure there was any way that could have been predicted. Things already seem to be significantly improved under new Executive Director (effective June 1), who has taken on the remainder of the contract.
I think my reputation speaks for itself, although I guess politics makes for enemies along the way. I doubt you're doing yourself any favours continuing with your rant.
I think your reputation doesn't speak enough. You are one of the rocks that keeps the CFC on a solid foundation. You contribute promptly whenever any question is asked and you are one of the workhorses on the board of directors.
I think that anyone on the 2013/2014 or 2014/2015 CFC Executives will be ineligible for the next Executive Director contract, which I think comes due June 1, 2015 as per the motion passed by the Governors last fall.
That is not strictly correct. The handbook has passed out of existence from a legal perspective when the Canadian government accepted our transition into the new act. Having said that, I have no intention of ever, ever, ever applying to run the CFC office and would probably not look favourably on someone leaving the executive and applying to be Executive Director except in a dire emergency. The skill set to be a good member of the executive is not necessarily the skill set required to run the CFC office.
I think that Bob Gillanders is somewhat of an exception in that he has both skill sets. The email interview process we used as part of the RFP is really not sufficient.
I don't think we do ourselves any favours by upsetting the apple cart if we are happy with the way things are being run and done in the CFC office. Continuity is a good thing if simply to know that there are arrangements by such and such a person to auto renew their membership. That being said we are in a precarious position and have been in a precarious position for some years as we are on the cusp of not being able to pay for the office that we need to function if we experience too many drops in membership and participation.
The previous contract had many inflexible features. I was told several times when I was the chair of the long term planning committee that many things were not possible because of the contract that we had for the office (for example reduced memberships on the order of $5 or $10 for the parents of players so that they could have more input into the CFC). Now we are constrained by the NFP act as creating new classes of members can have some additional unforeseen consequences.
The CFC office is not the engine of growth for memberships. It can be a bottleneck. It was a bottleneck under the old contract because it simply tied our hands as far as going in different directions to engage more people into the CFC or even if we wanted to cut membership prices. It was a bottleneck in the last year or so because people had to make heroic efforts just to pay their bills. I simply could not undertake any new initiatives which increased the load on the office when simply making sure that money was collected was something that I had to keep addressing. Its a good thing that chess players are honest as they kept sending me emails telling me about these situations.
We need to improve our communications. Not everyone reads Chesstalk or the CFC discussion board nor the excellent email magazine that John Upper puts out. Some people don't read their email as I have come to realize. We need to create a better network for passing along information in a timely manner particularly in the area of junior chess. Fortunately there are networks that we can tap: the parents of the kids that play chess.
We need to purge ourselves of the "nattering nabobs of negativity". They suck the life out of us and make good people reconsider their involvement in chess organization. People get involved in chess organization by accident sometimes. I got involved because Hal Bond asked for someone to stand as masters rep at a Canadian closed. At first I wasn't going to throw my hat in the ring but then I thought to myself that I had no right to complain about the petty tyrants if I didn't get involved. One thing led to another and here I am as president of the CFC.
I temporarily quit chess in the mid 1990s because of all the squabbling as part of the Windsor Chess Association. I didn't expect my hiatus to last ten years or more. When you fall out of the habit of being involved in chess it is easy to fall completely out of the habit. There is a lesson for our membership woes in this. Find ways to keep people from falling out of the habit.
We need to purge ourselves of the "nattering nabobs of negativity". They suck the life out of us and make good people reconsider their involvement in chess organization. People get involved in chess organization by accident sometimes.
"Chess, like any creative activity, can exist only through the combined efforts of those who have creative talent, and of those who have the ability to organize this creative work."
Mikhail Botvinnik (1911-1995) Feb. 3, 1977 from Kurs Debyutov
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
By the way, on an unrelated topic, I tried to find something on the Senior championship in the handbook at Chess.CA this evening and I couldn't find a mention on it. Am I missing something as it's the qualifier for the world senior from what I understand.
That just means the CFC doesn't have any specific rules on the tournament, so it would follow normal CFC tournament rules (along with any special FIDE rules for the event).
1. Not certain, they only asked for a few hours of training, about 1/10th of the time needed just for the basics. Had to cram as much in as possible. I mean ask them, they had control over everything. I fit in the training for base rating runs and quickbooks, he would have had to expand further on his own. Find somebody else on this board who would believe it is my responsibility to be sure he was trained, I mean come on…
2. Well am I being provided the environment for other options? Incoming interim President Dutton emailed me quickly that he did not want to be bothered on any issues. Apparently he was working on the set agenda. Was left by myself against entire organized political team.
3. As below. These figures were for myself only. I’ve noticed it takes others 2 to 3 times longer, especially if missing bookkeeping, logical thinking, organize an office, skills. Not sure why everyone says needed more than one person, did it myself for 5 years and I was not complaining about the base tasks. I did have an extra person to deal with political problems the CFC insisted on creating. Also new special projects not included below. President and officers/governors were creating these for me especially in last 6 months. Could not keep up and two of them ended up on the “selection committee”. How many bosses was I supposed to have, can you find out? Infinite politics was not disclosed to us. Also “admin the retail” hours listed below were contracted to CMA, so in 2013-14 nine hours a month was free up. Can you find out how that time got re-allocated for us? Have fun at CFC annual meeting.
1. Not certain, they only asked for a few hours of training, about 1/10th of the time needed just for the basics. Had to cram as much in as possible. I mean ask them, they had control over everything. I fit in the training for base rating runs and quickbooks, he would have had to expand further on his own. Find somebody else on this board who would believe it is my responsibility to be sure he was trained, I mean come on…
2. Well am I being provided the environment for other options? Incoming interim President Dutton emailed me quickly that he did not want to be bothered on any issues. Apparently he was working on the set agenda. Was left by myself against entire organized political team.
3. As below. These figures were for myself only. I’ve noticed it takes others 2 to 3 times longer, especially if missing bookkeeping, logical thinking, organize an office, skills. Not sure why everyone says needed more than one person, did it myself for 5 years and I was not complaining about the base tasks. I did have an extra person to deal with political problems the CFC insisted on creating. Also new special projects not included below. President and officers/governors were creating these for me especially in last 6 months. Could not keep up and two of them ended up on the “selection committee”. How many bosses was I supposed to have, can you find out? Infinite politics was not disclosed to us. Also “admin the retail” hours listed below were contracted to CMA, so in 2013-14 nine hours a month was free up. Can you find out how that time got re-allocated for us? Have fun at CFC annual meeting.
The 1 hour is only once it is all ready in the hopper.
Event submissions prep = 4 weekly & Event submissions accounting = 2 weekly are integral to the rating run.
There are many ways to present the data and figures are only a best guess average over a year.
In the end almost every task is integral to any other in varying degrees of separation.
I did have 1 week with no events to rate once = zero time. Other weeks are well above average.
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