The value of the ECF Calendar

[Roger de Coverly]

The British Championships are listed on the Chess Scotland calendar free of charge. Will the ECF attempt to charge Chess Scotland for a similar listing for its event?

Presumably the Scottish Championships are not intending to be ECF graded, other than by English players submitting individual one-sided results. The calendar listing would not appear for free along with Welsh events and any other Scottish events wishing to attract English players. Guernsey would remain an anomaly, although the ECF will have to face whether to continue to give Guernsey a concession not available to English Congresses or ask them for £ 6 per head for every non-member. FIDE rating of Guernsey is, I would presume, in the name of the Guernsey Federation, so ECF rules on Gold membership are irrelevant for that part of rating.

Whilst no doubt it costs money to collect money for the ECF, I don't see that cause helped by handing free, in some circumstances, voting membership to English Congresses.

[Jim Wadsworth]

This will result in many junior events no longer being listed (e.g. NYCA, EPSCA, traning events)

The junior organisations I quoted above (NYCA, EPSCA) did not grade any games last year nor this. So they have in no way benefited from the retention of a junior game fee discount.

If they are not prepared to support the ECF, they won't mind that the ECF is not prepared to give them free advertising.

Sean if I understand this correctly you are asserting that organisations which are sufficiently well-regarded to each have a vote at the ECF's Council (namely NYCA and EPSCA), and which play an important role in introducing the next generation of players of the game (and hence members) do not "support the ECF". Just because they choose not to grade their games. If so, this would appear to be an extraordinarily narrow definition of "support"...

Note: posting in a personal capacity; I have no EPSCA or NYCA responsibilities or role.

[Carl Hibbard]

Since there is no serious cost to put it on the ECF web site it does seem a bit of a con?

[David Shepherd]

Out of interest though - I think the youngest age group in NYCA is U12 (I could be wrong), and they run National competitions - is there any reason that the games are ungraded?

Also from memory clocks are used on all boards in EPSCA events - which again are regional and then national - is there any reason why those events are not graded - at least at the U11 level?

[David Shepherd]

Maybe though its sometimes just nice to have ungraded events as it takes some of the pressure off, and players can just play and enjoy themselves without worrying about their grade, and also clearly saves on the admin.

[John Upham]

Since there is no serious cost to put it on the ECF web site it does seem a bit of a con?

Staff in the ECF Office collate the content for the calendar. I believe a flat file is created and then uploaded rather than a db table being populated which is then interrogated by a script of some nature.

I suspect that the cost is in terms of person hours to maintain the content as consequence of incoming emails, texts, telephone calls and maybe even the posting of entry forms!

Whether that is a serious or non-serious cost is not for me to say!

Would you volunteer to collate the information for the office staff?

[Carl Hibbard]

Since there is no serious cost to put it on the ECF web site it does seem a bit of a con?

Staff in the ECF Office collate the content for the calendar. I believe a flat file is created and then uploaded rather than a db table being populated which is then interrogated by a script of some nature.

I suspect that the cost is in terms of person hours to maintain the content as consequence of incoming emails, texts, telephone calls and maybe even the posting of entry forms!

Whether that is a serious or non-serious cost is not for me to say!

Would you volunteer to collate the information for the office staff?

I stand corrected, it looked like just standard WordPress to me but yes you do then have all the entry forms so yes I was wrong in this case

[John Upham]

I stand corrected, it looked like just standard WordPress to me but yes you do then have all the entry forms so yes I was wrong in this case

Carl,

I suspect that it is a pretty mind numbingly tedious task to keep the calendar updated.

I know that the office are proactive in asking organisers to submit their events.

There is a form (http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=13295) that allows event detail submission.

What I don't know is:

1. What proportion of events use this form?
2. How much effort is required to take this form data and add it to the calendar?

One could allow step 1. to update a db table and then a moderator could approve or deny the event to be advertised in the listing. This would be my approach.

I have recommended in the past that the webmaster be able to attend PHP and MySQL courses.

Also, there might (but there might not) be a WP plugin to allow a form to populate a record in a db table: I've not looked into this.

[Graham Borrowdale]

However time-consuming or otherwise the process of updating the calendar is, I imagine it is a very small part of the office staff's duties. As an ECF member I would very much expect the calendar to be as comprehensive as possible, and this move does seem to be particularly pernicious. I see the listing more as information than as advertising, in the same way that newspapers contain TV listings, sports fixtures, etc.

[John Swain]

However time-consuming or otherwise the process of updating the calendar is, I imagine it is a very small part of the office staff's duties. As an ECF member I would very much expect the calendar to be as comprehensive as possible, and this move does seem to be particularly pernicious. I see the listing more as information than as advertising, in the same way that newspapers contain TV listings, sports fixtures, etc.

I totally agree with this viewpoint, and that initially expressed by Neill Cooper and supported by Harry Lamb and others.

The ECF should wish to publicise as much chess as possible and help avoid clashes, whether or not they directly benefit financially from each and every event in the short term.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Sean if I understand this correctly you are asserting that organisations which are sufficiently well-regarded to each have a vote at the ECF's Council (namely NYCA and EPSCA), and which play an important role in introducing the next generation of players of the game (and hence members) do not "support the ECF". Just because they choose not to grade their games. If so, this would appear to be an extraordinarily narrow definition of "support"..."

Does this mean that EPSCA (e.g.) have a vote at ECF Council, but make no financial contribution to ECF?

[Roger de Coverly]

Does this mean that EPSCA (e.g.) have a vote at ECF Council, but make no financial contribution to ECF?

The ECF and the BCF before it, permitted voting membership to bodies who don't organise any graded chess. The current membership fee is £ 58. If a Congress isn't FIDE rated and every player is at least a Silver member, their voting membership is now at no cost to the Congress.

[Sean Hewitt]

Sean if I understand this correctly you are asserting that organisations which are sufficiently well-regarded to each have a vote at the ECF's Council (namely NYCA and EPSCA), and which play an important role in introducing the next generation of players of the game (and hence members) do not "support the ECF". Just because they choose not to grade their games.

That's not my assertion Jim, and apologies if I've given that impression. Let's take EPSCA and NYCA as examples (as you've given them) plus one other. In doing so I'm looking at the 2012 AGM voting register.

EPSCA do not have a vote on council and are not members of the ECF. That's entirely their choice of course but it would seem odd to me to provide an advertsing service to such an organsation free of charge.

NYCAare members of the ECF - in the "Other Organisations" category. They have one vote on council because they (presumably) pay the minimum a £58 per year membership fee (membership fees are set as the greater of £58 or game fee on events which members organise). NYCA choose not to require players in their events to be ECF members, nor pay game fee on those events. That's their choice but in doing so they are not supporting the ECF's principal way of raising revenue. That's perfectly fine of course, but in doing so it would seem to me they should not reasonably expect the ECF to do things for them for free in return.

Now let's look at another "Other Organisation" which also arranges tournaments - BUCA. They do require playes in their events to be ECF members, and pay game fee where that is not the case. In setting this requirement they are actively supporting the ECF. In return for fully supporting the ECF, the ECF supports graded events by allowing them to advertise such events free of charge. This seems a fair, reciprocal relationship.

It appears to be reasonable to differentiate between different types of organisation to me, based on the way they support the ECF. It's important to remember that the ECF is not withdrawing the calendar to ungraded events. It's entirely at the discretion of an event whether to grade their event or not, and whether to be listed in the ECF calendar or not - just as it always has been. Simply, the ECF have aligned benefits to events with the level of support the event gives to the ECF.

Perhaps the most important point is this - it's the ECF Calendar.

[Matthew Turner]

It is also completely reasonable for Jim and Neill to decide which organizations to give their time and effort free of charge to support. I hope they will put their effort into supporting organizations which actually wish to promote chess.

[Roger de Coverly]

EPSCA do not have a vote on council and are not members of the ECF. That's entirely their choice of course but it would seem odd to me to provide an advertsing service to such an organsation free of charge.

EPSCA are shown as lapsed on the April 2012 voting register. So they used to have a vote.

I don't think it's odd for a national body with a remit to promote chess to run a complimentary calendar as part of its generic marketing of chess and chess events. Think of the cost as being part of the budget for marketing and promotion.

(edit) Having just looked for the calendar on the ECF website, it appears all calendar links have been withdrawn. The submission form now says that graded events are free and non-graded events cost an extra £ 50. Going back to the Governance issue, the Board can take a unilateral decision which annoys both players and organisers alike. It isn't possible for the ECF voting members meeting as Council to reverse this until the April Finance meeting at the earliest, unless enough voting members are sufficiently annoyed to call an EGM. There is precedent for this type of threat, a rather minor dispute on classification of tournaments for international rating caused a call for an EGM. (/edit)

(edit) According to John Philpott, there is a third way, which is to get 5% of the voting membership to support a written resolution. I gather that for the resolution to be passed, 50% of the total voting membership has to be in favour and in practice the representatives have been reluctant to cast votes outside of the formal Council meetings. (/edit)