Life In 19x19

Just a reminder that I brought this up before. Though now we have a board member regularly reading these. Still not convinced that outside of those currently doing work big projects will magically find volunteers. those are hard to find and very easy to lose.

A few ideas that stood out to me from that thread:

* formal orientation and ongoing training for chapter officers. (hilltopgo)

Ok, so that was only one idea. Other things there have already been mentioned here or are not really goals, or I missed them while skimming...

oren wrote:

daniel_the_smith wrote:
Noted. Now, the hard part: is there something specific you can think of that the AGA could do over the next year or two in this general category?

Set aside some prize money for elementary, middle, and high school team tournaments. Organize, publicize, and help get teams started. Find some people willing to TD, set schedules, and create the rules for play.

I know there was something for high school stuff before, but it doesn't seem too easy to find right off the bat. I think team tournaments from schools should have its own top level link on usgo.org.

Universities should follow as well... create some competition out there.

Edit: Found high school tournament through Tiger's Mouth link, http://aghs.cc/

Those are all good ideas, and I'd be happy to know if anyone has ideas about how a volunteer could help.

But I wanted to aim lower. We Americans learn our standard repertoire of sports and games in pre-school.

I'll start thinking it over now. (I didn't want to spend an hour or more thinking about this only to be told "the AGA doesn't do that kind of thing".) I'll report back with my results

jts wrote:But I wanted to aim lower. We Americans learn our standard repertoire of sports and games in pre-school.

Organized competition for preschoolers would be rather fun.

I learned Chess around elementary-mid and there were a lot of places to play at that time.

jts wrote:Those are all good ideas, and I'd be happy to know if anyone has ideas about how a volunteer could help.

PM me, I can let you know a small to medium way to help

I am a big believer in if you can't do the little things right it's pretty hard to do the big things right. As a new volunteer I have been lucky to work with some cool people who care but I get the general sense that there is a leadership vacuum and new volunteers are almost on their own. It would be nice to have some sort of orientation document on how things work for new volunteers so they have some level of comfort.

I just got access to the webmaster account and nobody had answered email for four months. I know the position was vacant for a while but someone should have been checking the account (a certain 9D pro wanted some information undated, I don't think waiting months for a reply made us look good). It also appears that some of the email addresses listed on the web site are not being checked at all, again this is the little stuff that drives people crazy when dealing with the AGA. Maybe the short term focus should be on "thick moves" like making our organization base stronger before we attempt grand plans with weak shape. The day it doesn't take 3 months and 10 emails to get chapter listing information updated will be a day of progress.

Summary so far, categorized in importance according to my whim:

Urgent problems:
* Improve "user experience"; leave people with a good feeling when they interact with the AGA (yertle).
* Fix interaction with volunteers (pwaldron: the volunteers I have spoken to after they left have had the universal feeling of being used. It's not a way to build an organization.)
* My interpretation: there's a perception that the AGA is incompetent/scatterbrained, which is quite possibly based in reality. My ideas for possible resolutions: don't overload volunteers. Redundant volunteers (don't have just a single person doing an important task). Public commitments/goals (so everyone knows who is trying to do what). Some form of rapid public recognition/feedback for completing tasks for the organization (e.g., karma on reddit). Place on the website for rapidly updating the status of the various AGA goals (so, say, you could look at the rating certificate project and find that it needs a volunteer). Please suggest more, I think the AGA needs to try and fix this right away.

Important:
* Go promotion/education (jts). (specific goals: tournament w/ prizes? --oren)

* Analyze (important because it affects future decisions):
** historical analysis of membership -- how long do people stay AGA members? Why do they leave? How long does their membership have to be expired before we're unlikely to see them renew? (pwaldron)
** analysis of whether online games should be included in the same ratings pool as face-to-face games (pwaldron)
** demographic analysis of AGA members -- to help attract sponsors interested in targetting a particular audience. (pwaldron)
** historical analysis of whether youth players remain AGA members after losing their youth subsidies -- with that information the board can decide whether the current youth efforts are working to provide long-term members to the AGA (pwaldron)

Useful and low-hanging fruit:
* Provide simple templates for less tech-savvy chapters to create their own webpages. The standard AGA chapter webpage would have a page for club information, a Google Maps link to the club meeting place, an announcement page and an online photo gallery. (pwaldron)
* TD training manual to allow an inexperienced but motivated player to run their own event. (pwaldron)
* Provide guidance/mentorship to new chapters. (hilltopgo, me)
* Create repository of teaching and publicity material on usgo.org to help chapters and teachers. (pwaldron)
* Put some money in a diplomacy slush fund. (Helel)
* Whatever the board decides, publicly announce it and let the membership hold us accountable. (me)

People who feel strongly should volunteer and take charge (i.e., not bad ideas but not organization-wide goals either):
* Hard-copy of e-journal stuff (Kirby, locoron).


Did I miss anything? Is there anything you want to add? I don't think all of this can be a goal at the same time; what do you think is the most important?


Other great pwaldron suggestions that aren't above and weren't mentioned in the board meeting. maybe for next year:

Membership services
ii) 'dating website' type interface to allow isolated players to find each other and start chapters

Chapter services
i) simplify method of updating chapter contact information (a common complaint) (might be done already, I need to check)

Tournaments
ii) annual online tournament open to all AGA members
iii) The results of all major AGA tournaments should be posted to usgo.org as a matter of course -- when I left the tournament coordinator position everything was done, but updates are much less common now.

Volunteers
i) a volunteer job board to help recruit and retain talent -- the volunteers I have spoken to after they left have had the universal feeling of being used. It's not a way to build an organization.

Communications
i) create repository of teaching and publicity material on usgo.org to help chapters and teachers
ii) create an asian studies curriculum for elementary school students with go as part of the program -- the Europeans have already done this; the AGA just needs to get the material from them.

Publicizing the places where volunteers are needed is definitely important.

There are at least a few resources for a new TD available on the website. And there are teaching and publicity materials available as well. So people complaining about that should probably try and point out some of the ways we need to go beyond what's already available.

I am continually surprised by what's on the AGA website. Perhaps that's just me but perhaps there are ways to make finding things easier.

daniel_the_smith wrote:Place on the website for rapidly updating the status of the various AGA goals (so, say, you could look at the rating certificate project and find that it needs a volunteer).

Don't take this the wrong way...

Copulate. That. Detritus.

[edited due to TOS violations, wouldn't you miss my shining thoughts into aga's past insanity?"

This is just a quick reply, but I thought I had something to add. In terms of the website, we are currently in the process of a major migration and updating a lot of the content, so I think that this is the perfect time to make suggestions about how the content might be organized differently and additional types of content that might be included.

That said, the migration project will take some time and is largely being done in a way that does not disrupt the use of the current website, so even the changes that we do make may not be instantly visible. (People who know more than I do should please correct me.)

Anyone who has any urgent issues should also feel free to send me a PM here or to email me (my email address is available from the AGA website, or you can use lisa.scott@usgo.org). I will try to keep up with this thread, but I trust that Daniel will do a better job of that than I.

Lisa

Kirby wrote:I know it probably won't happen, but I would still like hard-copy material (eg. a go magazine or newsletter in paper format).

It's more expensive than doing it electronically, so it probably isn't feasible. I would still like it, though.

There has been talk about making at least the Yearbook (now that it is only electronic) printable, through print-on-demand-type websites and at an extra cost. As far as I know, we decided that this was possible but did not actually set anything up. That said, if this is a popular idea we could probably get something set up in the relatively near future.

Lisa

daniel_the_smith wrote:Other great pwaldron suggestions that aren't above and weren't mentioned in the board meeting. maybe for next year:

Does this imply that the topic was discussed at the Sept. board meeting? If so, what were the results?

vash3g wrote:

daniel_the_smith wrote:Place on the website for rapidly updating the status of the various AGA goals (so, say, you could look at the rating certificate project and find that it needs a volunteer).

Don't take this the wrong way...

*cough*. That. *cough*.

my (likely flawed) interpretation: kindly use the wiki for that.

So, profanity is allowed on L19 now?

rubin427 wrote:

vash3g wrote:

daniel_the_smith wrote:Place on the website for rapidly updating the status of the various AGA goals (so, say, you could look at the rating certificate project and find that it needs a volunteer).

Don't take this the wrong way...

*cough*. That. *cough*.

my (likely flawed) interpretation: kindly use the wiki for that.

That's probably the right place for it, but we'd also need to make sure that people can find it, which they can't right now.