Future projects/goals of the AGA

[shimari]

Bump? I don't get it. Why is this thread left to die? Can we get some of these things looked at or talked about? I thought discussions was what we wanted. Is there anyway an AGA member involved in some of these decisions possibly comment on ANY of the suggestions? As far as I've seen, we suggested, then just got nothing. I thought the whole point was so we could have some feedback back and forth. At the very least, are any of these suggestions being looked into/ brought up between the AGA representatives?

I'm not really sure what you mean. Phil Waldron, Keith Arnold, and myself all responded to various items. Talk is cheap, making any of these things happen is another story all together. I also didn't see any clear consensus on ideas, just diverse opinions, and the AGA has plenty of those I can assure you ^_^ On the congress in a fixed location idea, the problem is finding anyone who is willing to do it more than once every ten years. A year or two back we tried to get people interested in the idea of having a semi permanent congress staff that would go to each location and run key aspects of the congress. Despite much discussion, only two people were willing to make a commitment to doing it every year - myself in the youth room, and Chris Garlock for the E-Journal. I personally think splitting up the congress to two separate locations would not only be a nightmare logistically, but would be a huge detriment to both locations. We are a tiny group of players nationwide, we don't have the resources, the members, or quite frankly the interest, to sustain two separate locations.

[uglyboxer]

I agree with two of your points, Shimari. Talk is cheap and a single fixed location is highly problematic.
But fixing it to four locations seems plausible. Each director would run it once every four years and thus be able lock in certain basics of the Congress that wouldn't have to pursued year after year (venue, catering, transportation). When a problem arose with one of these items over the course of four years, there would be plenty of time to replace it with something comparable. Once such basics become a known quantity, you could move the registrar to single nationwide position (with tech support obviously). Once that position is standardized, the hardest job (in my opinion) in the Congress begins to look more manageable.
As it is, the Congress staff reinvents the wheel every year. Even if the city has done it ten years earlier, everything they learned is mostly irrelevant and most of their former resources are no longer options.
I can see many issues with this system as well, but it is hard to see the Congress growing (in terms of new offerings as well as attendance) without some new model. The resources of individual clubs simply don't grow as fast as the apparent demand for a robust Congress.

[Joaz Banbeck]

...
But fixing it to four locations seems plausible. Each director would run it once every four years and thus be able lock in certain basics of the Congress that wouldn't have to pursued year after year (venue, catering, transportation). When a problem arose with one of these items over the course of four years, there would be plenty of time to replace it with something comparable. Once such basics become a known quantity, you could move the registrar to single nationwide position (with tech support obviously). Once that position is standardized, the hardest job (in my opinion) in the Congress begins to look more manageable.
As it is, the Congress staff reinvents the wheel every year. Even if the city has done it ten years earlier, everything they learned is mostly irrelevant and most of their former resources are no longer options.
I can see many issues with this system as well, but it is hard to see the Congress growing (in terms of new offerings as well as attendance) without some new model. The resources of individual clubs simply don't grow as fast as the apparent demand for a robust Congress.

I like the idea of approximately 4 fixed locations.

In my line of business ( books ) the American Bookseller's Association's annual trade show usually rotates between LA, Chicago and NY. Those are major air hubs, and have lots of hotels and convention rooms. Occasionally it stays in NY for a few years in a row because they have been able to negotiate good rates by doing that.

We have lots of people in NY, LA, and Seattle. Fourth might be Chicago? Atlanta? Houston?

[shimari]

Once every four years would be cool if we could find folks willing to do it, this too may be quite hard. You are absolutely right that the congress staff has to reinvent the wheel every year, and it is maddening. This will be my 4th year on staff, and every year I see congress directors going nuts with the stress. I still favor a core group that could manage critical congress tasks each year, but as I said we couldn't get enough people interested in volunteering for it. I wonder if four alternating teams could be a possibility? Worth asking about it, or bringing it up at the AGA Chapters meeting at congress to see if there was any interest.

One huge benefit of doing it somewhere else every year is that people always get to go to new destinations, which makes the appeal of a vacation much more enticing.

[vash3g]

The E-Journal has a core team of people who know their jobs. The few things that change for us are the game recorders. This year we are doing prep work before the congress for our recorders so we can be more prepared on site. We also seem to retain a number of people to do the same job every year.

[mdobbins]

every year I see congress directors going nuts with the stress.

Start the work 1 year earlier. Fix the location and lock in a site 2 years in advance. Everything else will revolve around that. The problem I hear is that we often don't have a site locked in until 6-9 months in advance. That compresses the time to plan and setup for the directors and makes it harder for attendees who may need to make travel arrangements earlier.

[John Fairbairn]

Start the work 1 year earlier. Fix the location and lock in a site 2 years in advance.

This looks like a good first step to me. I see little evidence of the AGA trying to understand why the European Congresses are much bigger. It may be that the talk is behind the scenes. It may be that no-one in the US wants a monster European-style congress - a perfectly valid stance.

But assuming growth is wanted and there are lessons in the European model, the one that I hear most often quoted is a very early announcement of a fixed location and a fixed schedule. For many people visiting a congress is a vast expense and commitment, involving families who might like to go somewhere else, work colleagues who want holidays at the same time, and bank managers whose concerns about accounts need to be assuaged. Having time to work on deals and compromises, and to save a known amount, seems to make a huge difference.

It seems doubly important in the USA where I gather (much to my surprise) that holidays from work are much, much less than Europe (I was used to six weeks a year plus umpteen national holidays; I believe the US average is about 17 days leave). In Europe, one of the compromises we can use is "let's use two weeks for the European and two weeks later in the summer for a bucket-and spade holiday for the kids". In the US it seems to be "let's use a week this year for the congress and next year we'll go where you want to go, cross my heart". A two-year pre-notification under that scenario seems downright essential.

[shimari]

We often have the location set two years in advance. It was agreed last year that 2011 would be in LA for example, the dates are also often set. None of the details are though, and then there are countless logistics to work out.

The European Congress is bigger and longer because Europeans get more vacation time, and they are virtually guaranteed that time in the summer. This is not the case in the US, there are no fixed vacation times, and each break from work must be timed not to conflict with other co-workers at the same job. The European model is simply not tenable in the US.

I think pretty much everyone who comes to congress is quite happy with the congress itself, it is the work burden on the organizers that we really need to improve on. Compartmentalizing tasks is helpful. As Vash3g pointed out, they get return volunteers on the E-J staff. That is because most of the jobs are smaller in scale, and they are fun and educational to do as well. Vash3g has a very hard job, and he always does it really well, same with Chris Garlock. Other difficult jobs are much harder to fill unfortunately.

[vash3g]

Vash3g has a very hard job, and he always does it really well, same with Chris Garlock. Other difficult jobs are much harder to fill unfortunately.

I can tell you that at this point my job at congress has gotten much easier due to the times i've done it. By next year it should be pie and i'll have to do less work then this year even. Two years ago was a dog and the last year was much better.

[kokomi]

What would everyone like to see the AGA do over the next three to five years?

I do not know if the President or Board of Directors have a future plan of what they would like to happen. Maybe we can give them and all of us some ideas for what we would like to see.

Cheaper congress entrance fee.
The pricing is ridiculously high compared to European one.

[hilltopgo]

What would everyone like to see the AGA do over the next three to five years?

I gave my own comments earlier - but my wife, who is neither a member of the AGA or a Go player also has one suggestion.

My wife would like to see a future Go Congress take place on a Cruise Ship so that she has reason to take the whole family.

There would be a *lot* of challenges associated with an idea like this - probably it's completely impractical. But... if it worked out somehow, the idea is really attractive. I'll at least mention the idea.

(I've told her to keep her fingers crossed for easy beach access for the 2011 so.cal congress as an alternative.)

A few years ago iirc, there was a gung-ho Go organizer in Florida who had an idea to have a "mini-Congress" over a long winter weekend. I sort of dropped out before it got going, so I don't know if it fizzled or what, but that just as easily could have been done on a cruise ship, right? (I seem to recall that a resort in Jamaica is owned by a Go player who offered discounts to other players... I remember fantasizing about having a winter Go gathering there...)

I wonder -- how does the per-person cost of chartering a cruise ship compare with the per-person cost of chartering a college campus?

[hilltopgo]

[...] I can't speak for the US congresses, but the European congresses are actually already pretty family oriented and often take place in sites where non-players can have lots of fun - capital cities, forests, mountains and beaches have all featured. Maybe that's why they seem to attract much bigger attendances then the US????

I think the main reason the EGC has bigger attendance than the USGC is that Europeans generally have much more accomodating vacation policies than their American counterparts.

[hilltopgo]

What would everyone like to see the AGA do over the next three to five years? [...]

Cheaper congress entrance fee.
The pricing is ridiculously high compared to European one.

I just don't know how to easily do that and still have a decent venue. The Congress pricing is, when compared to other American week-long conventions, relatively low.

When we co-hosted it (with Seattle) in Tacoma in 2005, we got price quotes from local colleges, and PLU seemed to be the best choice. (We also checked a few conference centers and hotels -- the colleges were way cheaper.) To reduce the price, we'd have had to either get financial sponsorship, or operate at a loss, or reduce the quality of the venue, or reduce the length of time, or come up with some idea we didn't think of.

I believe that Hitachi and Japan Air Lines were sponsors at the Cleveland Congress in 1996. (IIrc, I saw a photo of sponsor banners from that event -- that's why I believe that.) In 2005, I think we tried to get Toyota interested in sponsoring -- after all, they were sponsoring the N.A. Oza and they were selling a pickup truck called the Tacoma -- but for some reason, I think it never got off the ground; I don't remember why. I think we did have sponsorship of some sort for some of the events (I think IGS put forth some resources for the Pair Go tournament, for example). But sponsorship can be a two-edged sword: the members can feel like the organization has sold out, or isn't getting enough money from the sponsors; the sponsors can feel like they aren't getting enough value for their money; etc. I think it requires a talented "people" person to handle it well -- my current skill set would be inadequate -- which gets us back to the "volunteers" question.

Operating at a loss is not OK with me. AFAIK, Congresses generally end with a small profit that gets split between the AGA and the local organizing clubs, who use the money to further spread Go. (In our case, we used the money to send a couple of kids to Go Camp and to defray expenses of some tournaments, including a national youth qualifier event; and I'm pretty sure we still have a little left in an interest-bearing account.) This is way better than operating at a slight loss.

Choice of venue is an engineering compromise between quality and cost. I feel that the Congresses I've attended have pretty much hit the mark. People always complain about the food (except for the one in New Mexico in 1998 -- people who were there (which doesn't include me) still talk about how great the food was), and the dorm rooms generally are not luxurious; but I have found them to be adequate and reasonably priced. In 2005 we seriously considered having it at a conference center in a state park on the Olympic Peninsula -- absolutely gorgeous surroundings, right on the beach -- but between the additional cost, the additional travel from the nearest airports, and the restrictive booking policies of the government organization that handled it, we decided it was infeasible. Unless the AGA purchases a conference center in Kansas or a hotel in Indiana (which -- hey, that might not be a bad idea, given the real estate slump), I don't know how to reduce the cost of the venue. If you have ideas on this, I'm very interested.

A three-day weekend event, like the Congress I attended in Canada (when it was near Vancouver BC), would cost much less than a week-long event. But having a whole week of Go sure is fun, so that's not my first choice for bringing down the cost.

So basically, I feel that for what attendees get, the cost of the Congress is pretty low. It is still high compared to the European Congresses -- and I need to learn more about how they are able to do that, and see what can be applied in the U.S. But I suspect their cost structures are just different than ours.

If you have suggestions for how to trim the cost, please share them.

[hilltopgo]

I'd like to suggest making a "sticky" topic in this forum with useful AGA links (bylaws, board meeting minutes, tournament rules, officers, etc.). I know you can get to that stuff through usgo.org but I think it'll still be useful to have a handy reference at the top of this forum.

In my plethora of posts above (sorry for quadruple-posting... I've been "away" a while, and I guess I overdid it in my enthusiasm about being "back"), I mostly focused on the Go Congress. To wrap that up --
More timely announcements of Congress info -- Helluva good idea; mostly in the hands of the local volunteers organizing the shindig
Dual Congresses -- Interesting; it worked OK for the N.A. Oza tournaments. I'd be willing to experiment with it, but my gut instinct is that "there can be only one" per year.
Fixed Congress location(s) year after year -- Also interesting, especially if it significantly reduces costs. I think the way it's done now, with different clubs around the country hosting it, has good points as well as difficulties. Overall, I lean toward the current system, but if lots of other folks prefer two (East, West) or three (plus Midwest) fixed locations, I'd be OK with that.
Lower cost -- I'm interested, eager even; but I don't know how.

The original question -- What would everyone like to see the AGA do over the next three to five years? -- is a worthy one. The Congress is a cool event, but not the reason I joined the AGA in the first place.

The AGA is useful to me to the extent that it helps "spread Go" and helps me play interesting games. So that's what I want the AGA to do for the next five years. So, continue to help local club / chapter organizers (there was a mentoring program -- I was involved with it, but then I flaked out and disappeared; don't know the current status of it). And, continue to foster local, regional, national, and international tournaments and other opportunities to play; and continue the ratings system, maybe bringing it into accord with the EGF ratings system (though I like having the sigma).

Specifically, I'd like to see the AGA offer formal orientation and ongoing training for chapter officers. There are info packets and PDF downloads, and those are good, but I think we can do better. In particular, topics useful to me would include basic leadership stuff (how to gracefully delegate, how to motivate others, how to motivate yourself, how to avoid burnout) and basic salesmanship stuff. And probably there should be stuff about Roberts Rules of Order or similar, or at least how to efficiently run a Chapter meeting; and suggestions (even role-playing) for dealing with players who may be (for example), ah, strong on the board but unusually challenged in the interpersonal skills department. I guess this stuff is costly -- at least, companies seem to pay lots to send their managers to seminars on these things. But there must be some way to do it, maybe with YouTube or VOIP conference calls?

Also, I'd like to see a Tournament Director and Assistant TD training program. Again, there's stuff available to read, but I think we can do better. And I think that online tournaments are sufficiently different that they merit additional training, perhaps even server-specific training.

Well, thats my 2¢ for now. I'll shut up and let someone else speak.

[rubin427]

New ideas for fund-raising appears to be of interest to the AGA right now. Clearly, fund-raising must be successful to allow other organizational goals to be met. Along that line of thought, I'll offer the following idea.

There are certain credit cards called affinity credit cards that instead of offering perks like free airline miles,instead make a small donation to specific non-profit organization with each purchase.

Would it be possible for the AGA to partner with a financial institution to offer an AGA affinity credit card (with awesome AGA logo)?

One such possible program is: capital one affinity portal.

links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_credit_card
https://www.cardlabconnect.com/AffinityPortal