Certificate of Merit

[John Upham]

Student number 208 registered today. On average the current subscription rate is three new students per day.

[Carl Hibbard]

Student number 208 registered today. On average the current subscription rate is three new students per day.

Some good news, how many of those paid compared to registered?

[John Upham]

Student number 208 registered today. On average the current subscription rate is three new students per day.

Some good news, how many of those paid compared to registered?

It is quite varied. Some have merely registered, some have purchased only one credit and some have purchased a number of credits.

To date, 141 credits (and a number of packages) have been purchased, some of which have yet to be used. The unspent ones are mainly schools who are registering more students and have yet to allocate all of their credits.

I'm not going to claim that this is good or bad news but merely news. I assume one or two forum members are hoping for a disaster and the rest success : the criteria for each are yet to be agreed.

I also apologise for the good reviews by IM Malcolm Pein and IGM Raymond D. Keene OBE : again those who want CoM to fail may be disappointed.

[Carl Hibbard]

I'm not going to claim that this is good or bad news but merely news. I assume one or two forum members are hoping for a disaster and the rest success : the criteria for each are yet to be agreed.

Nobody is "hoping for a disaster" so I am really not sure where you get that impression from, some (including me...) have questioned the unknown cost nothing more

The criteria is the project turning a profit

[John Upham]

some (including me...) have questioned the unknown cost nothing more

The criteria is the project turning a profit

I have also questioned the fantasy £24k figure and await a response from the ECF DoF. It would appear that a salary has been included in the cost of two different (but loosely coupled) projects.

I'm thinking a more accurate figure is £12.5 - £15K.

Another criteria must be that CoM is contributing to the promotion of education by chess in England. I'm not convinced that our only criterion should be that of making a profit. Would you entertain altruistic motives or are these out of the question?

We anticipate rolling out CoM internationally as another phase of CoM development. Luckily (or may be it was foresight), I planned this in when designing the application some two years ago.

[Alex Holowczak]

The criteria is the project turning a profit

Surely that'd be a criterion, then?

The idea of CoM surely isn't to just make some money off juniors, and then watch them end up not playing as they get older. Otherwise, the ECF may well make money, but it'll have nothing left to spend that money on. For me, CoM will be a success is that more juniors end up playing chess and get involved in tournaments and things. If CoM makes a profit, great. With more players playing the game, congress attendance goes up, so the ECF gets more money from Game Fee/Membership.

The ECF doesn't just have one way of winning financially with CoM, but the second is much more long-term.

[Sean Hewitt]

It would appear that a salary has been included in the cost of two different (but loosely coupled) projects.
I'm thinking a more accurate figure is £12.5 - £15K.

If that's true John then there is a £10k - £12k hole in the ECF accounts.

[Matthew Turner]

John upham wrote
"Another criteria must be that CoM is contributing to the promotion of education by chess in England. I'm not convinced that our only criterion should be that of making a profit. Would you entertain altruistic motives or are these out of the question?"

I have said elsewhere how I see the way forward on the Certificate of Merit, making the test free and using it as a way of promoting chess. However, at the moment we are in a situation where profit has to be the main criterion for judging the sucess of the CoM. Remember at the moment we are still claiming that the scheme is going to make £450 a month to pay for the right Move magazine. Once it starts to do that it can presumably chip away at the remaining £40,000+ of costs.

[Carl Hibbard]

Remember at the moment we are still claiming that the scheme is going to make £450 a month to pay for the right Move magazine.

That one is just electronic distribution isn't it, so why does it cost that much to produce?

[Angus French]

If CoM is going to be a success but currently represents a risk to the ECF and requires investment from it, why not detach it and have John Upham and his associates take on full responsibilty and allow them to receive all the income? That would solve the ECF's problem of balancing its books after the reduction in the value of the DCMS grant and everyone would be a winner wouldn't they?

[John Upham]

If CoM is going to be a success but currently represents a risk to the ECF and requires investment from it, why not detach it and have John Upham and his associates take on full responsibilty and allow them to receive all the income? That would solve the ECF's problem of balancing its books after the reduction in the value of the DCMS grant and everyone would be a winner wouldn't they?

Angus,

You may be forgetting that the creator of CoM is IM Andrew Martin. I was contracted to design and build the associated web application only.

All the best,

J.

[Peter Turner]

John Upham wrote:-
"I don't know how long it took CoE to become established and right now there might be confusion about the two competing offerings. The confusion needs to be addressed.

The feedback from non-forum users has been excellent and we hope to reproduce this with permissions.

I hope that everyone will want this scheme to be successful."

Good morning John

As I have said previously the CofE has never been in competition with CofM so you will be pleased to know that I have arranged for all reference to the CofE to be removed from the ECF website.
Any update available for latest uptake of CofM and have any 'non-forum' feedbacks been authorised. I don't think you should panic if things are a bit quiet at the moment because at this time of year schools are busy with exams and summer activities etc. It was always a quiet time with the CofE and September is probably a good time to focus efforts on a publicity campaign.

Regards
Peter T

[John Upham]

Peter,

Thanks for your help in this matter.

When I had the idea for on-line chess testing in 2004 I hoped that the CoE materials would get used.

It took me another four years for the idea to be accepted within the envelope of CoM.

In that time CoE had become incorporated into the work of KJCA and morphed into the Institute of Chess run by Peter Bayliss and Chris Ward.

I did talk to PB several times about doing on-line testing but they went their own way : I wish them all the best for the future.

It would be good if the CoE materials remained on-line for archive purposes : I hope that this could happen.

[Peter Turner]

Hi John

I'm not sure if the material is archived, I simply asked for it to be removed from the website to avoid any misunderstandings.

Cheers

Peter T

[Roger de Coverly]

The CoM received a less than enthusiastic review at the NCCU's AGM.

From http://www.nccu.org.uk/nccu/mins/docs/N ... 0610DC.doc

..... said it was ‘a sheer waste of money. It was worse than the existing scheme, which was viewed as very valuable. The CoM was certainly not to be recommended due to its content being bad, boring and tedious; in fact it was anti-chess!’