I apologize up front if some if it seems negative, especially to the Board of AGA. I am sure the board does a lot of great things, and every member is very very important and contributes hugely to everything they touch. I will start another thread patting them on the back for all that is right... here lets just concentrate on what I think is wrong and what needs fixing. Maybe some of it will make it to the future priorities list. I see it as constructive criticism.
Please read on.
1. Less talking, more doing.
We need more board activity and more energy displayed. Take this thread, for example. I see it started sort-of like that "The board had a meeting, and decided its ok to talk about something else, presumably in another meeting." It reminds me of all the wasted time in my life when I attended the meetings to decide the necessity of other meetings... If the board thinks it is necessary to talk about something, they should talk about it, not talk about talking about it.
2. Why aren't there priorities already?.
It is very surprising to me that it takes a specific decision that its 'ok' to talk about future priorities. I would think every board member should have a list of current and future priorities, and at best it can be open to discussion if some of the priorities should be adjusted, and for what reason - and this should have been presented here. The way it looks, it seems like there are NO PRIORITIES AT ALL, and the board finally caught up, but instead of deciding what to do - it decided to talk about it some more at a later date.
3. The board needs to come up with ideas too.
When talking about board/AGA priorities, I would love the discussion to be structured differently. Like "Here are the IDEAS WE HAVE now, lets discuss them, maybe we can change and maybe we come up with better ideas." Instead, a blank-slate call is made to the wide populance for any and all ideas people can come up with... which suggests to me that the board does not have ANY ideas of their own, or at least - none which are open for discussion.
4. AGA needs transparency
Many good ideas are presented here, and a very informal and private prioritization sequence was presented. But what will happen in the future?... I have no clue, but here is the guess I can venture: The board will meet, behind close doors possibly (or, at least, in a fashion which will not be open to your average member), and some decisions will get made. Maybe the list of ideas will get presented at this meeting, maybe not. Maybe it will be taken seriouesly, maybe not. In any case - some decisions will get made, but I am sure that I will not have a clue why these decisions were made, what they have to do with anything, and who pushed for them or why. In short - there is no transparency at all! And this is why I personally find it very hard to be a member, to contribute or volunteer, and even to take part in such threads like this one.
5. Treat volunteers like precious resource.
I was working with a manager once... He was a lazy little turd, never did nothing, but always took credit for what others did and put blame on others for any failures. Each time I had to work with that guy, I felt used... And most of the times I volunteered for any organization, Go associations included, I felt the same way. Not each time, but most of the times, mind you. And this was caused not as much by the fact that they will get most of the credit, as a volunteer - this is usually given. But my feelings were hurt the most by the fact that the people I usually volunteered for - they did not even show up. Sometimes there was some low assistant coming in to supervise the work... but the people up top - they made speeches, full of promise and bright hopes, on how WE will accomplish things, how WE will change the world, and how WE will sacrifice our time to make things better... but in the end it was ME alone with a shovel in the muck, tired and sweaty, while they were fresh and ready for then next day's speeches to lure another bunch of suckers to do their work for them. I have heard stories like that from AGA volunteers, even on this forum... People working with no recognition, no input, no nothing... like it does not count what they do. But when things get done, somebody up there will take credit for the 'initiative'.
6. Provide visibility
Here is what I would LOVE to see: A list of all the current projects of AGA. And I do not mean the ongoing murky processes, like 'popularization of Go' or 'attempting to get sponsors' but honest-to-god projects with well defined roles, steps, goals, and responsibilities. It seems there are precious few of those, if any. But I would still like to see a list. And here what I would like to see with this list: get some tracking software, like Lighthouse, Bugzilla, whatever... something that allows you to define projects and split them into specific steps and then track the progress. Make this open to the public (or at least to the board members) - so people can see what is going on, how the progress is made, who is responsible for what and if there is a hang-up - what caused it? People could make comments of various tasks, find places to volunteer, and offer ideas how to overcome obstacles when projects drive themselves into the bushes. This is the kind of system I set up for our company, and it woks great in spite of the fact that we are split between multiple cities. And I bet you that something like that would start things moving so fast you wouldn't believe! Alas... there will probably need to be meetings and discussions to no end before people can even agree to start talking about it... and when they finally do, it will take years to implement... even though I set it up by myself in half a day.... Ah well... can you hear the bitterness in my voice?
And finally...
7. Have a well-selected representative!
In my experience, an organization like AGA should have a specific representative whose job it is to provide an information conduit between the board and the membership. Both ways, but mostly keeping the members informed. For example: such rep should attend each board meeting and take minutes, make notes, and so on... and then have a place on the web to post it so that members can see. It does not have to be publicly open, maybe a member-only forum or something. Same goes for each decision, each problem, each issue... I think this is more necessary that sponsors or new members right now, to be honest. The organization first has to heal before it can think about growing, or all the bad things will also grow and will get harder and harder to fix with each year.
That's pretty much it.
Again - I am sorry for all the negativity. I mean what I say.
PS>
I am tired of all this BS generic 'idears' - and not just in AGA, this is more of a generic observation here.
People talking about 'better ratings', 'more tournaments', 'better advertising', 'more sponsors'... and so on... great! But such 'goals' are too generic to be simply accomplished, and they are really never fully accomplished - you always need more members, for example, so how do you measure success? Most importantly - How do you assign blame? And it is necessary to assign blame, because this is the one of the cornerstones of responsibility. To be responsible for something - it means that you will be blamed if it fails, or at least that you will have to explain the failure to others and put yourself up front for judgement. This is a notion which seems to be completely foreign in politics, and this is what AGA has become to certain extent - a political sandbox.
Some of the ideas are mention above are very specific things, which can be simply done... Just sit down, make a decision, and then do it.
You are a board member, you volunteered to be one, and them was elected or chosen... come up with a set of priorities, dammit! Give us some ideas we can discuss, tell us what YOU think should be done and why? Your position from the top certainly allows you to see more and further than I can from the bottom, so why don't you think about what is needed? And then you present it to us, so we can make sure you did not overlook anything and maybe throw in stuff you did not think about. THIS is how I would like to see AGA working...
Ok... I feel better now.
