Time for some possible specifics on what you may expect from me if you decide to elect me to the Executive Board:
ONLINE CHESS.
I believe that USCF does need to develop and promote online chess. It is chess of the future and it is immensely popular. It would be preferable in my opinion if we were running or at least had a great deal of influence in the running of a server associated directly with USCF membership. Personally, I believe that our deal with the Internet Chess Club or ICC was a poor financial deal for us for several reasons, but the most important one was that we basically promoted a separate membership organization that draws people away from our own services and charges $48.00/year for a membership. In exchange for financial support of our website, we sent letters to all USCF members with their renewal letters asking them to try ICC for free. Membership demographic data and survey information about why our members behave the way they do does not exist, but the ICC deal corresponds nearly exactly with the time that our over the board tournament chess began to suffer serious attendance declines. A number of higher rated players here in Omaha, told me that they stopped playing in rated chess tournaments because they enjoyed the convenience of online play. In the past year since our agreement with ICC ended and our partnership with Games Parlor began, attendance at local events seems to have recovered some. Certainly other factors are possible, but these two coincidences seem pretty unusual when taken in the context of us marketing and promoting ICC which charges $48.00/year while we charge $40.00/year for an adult to join. ICC has not released any figures about how many of their members used to be USCF members but quit us when they had to choose between paying for one or the other but not both. Some of us have long suspected that it was a significant number. In general, I think that the USCF and its new partner Games Parlor have done a good job of developing, marketing and starting up their own reasonably competitive chess server. Having said this however I do have a few concerns. Our general treatment of ICC and how we dealt with them has been called into question. At least twice, ICC officials claim that they attempted to meet with us, and bargain in good faith to make their offer competitive with what Games Parlor was offering. In both cases, it is claimed that we told them we were interested, but soon after in both cases it was discovered that we had already made up our minds and appeared to just be stringing them along. This kind of treatment can have negative consequences in the future, should we ever wish to resume a profitable partnership with them. The USCF should be interested in getting the best possible deal for USCF, not in getting revenge upon a company that is trying to competitively bid for the right to continue partnering with us. Even if the ICC deal was not a good one for us, it was signed in good faith by our leaders at the time, just like the Games Parlor deal has been signed in good faith by our leaders regardless of whether all of us agree with it or not. Since the present Board has signed a two year contract with Games Parlor to run our USCL online chess server, it is important for us to make this venture as profitable as possible for USCF. It may not be a perfect deal, but it is the deal we have agreed to, and it might turn out to be good for both organizations if we approach it in the right way. In two years, we should re-evaluate our online play options and decide at that point whether our arrangement with Games Parlor is worth continuing or if we should reopen the process and consider competitive bids from Games Parlor, ICC and any other internet provider that is interested. Personally, I don't think we should sell our own online play service short. Obviously ICC, Kasparov Chess and Games Parlor were very interested in getting exclusive rights to work with us. Some have even suggested allowing more than one organization to sponsor USCF on line play. Exclusivity for one company, ought to entitle us to greater shares of the profits if any from the operation's success. Allowing more than one partner sacrifices some of the profits, but offers choices and our members who love ICC might enjoy having the right to continuing to play on their service without having to pay full membership rates for both organizations. Remember, there are probably some people who have remained loyal to ICC and haven't come back to USCF. We won't get those people back by allowing Games Parlor to be our exclusive online play provider, but we might get them back if we had three or four providers. I would suggest in the future that Boards get a great deal more input from others before signing agreements that involve major financial and resource commitments over an extended period of time. In this case, I dislike the amount of secrecy involved, even after the contracts have been signed and there is no particular competitive advantage for anyone in keeping the agreement secret.
TECHNOLOGY.
I have suggested that possibly the single most critical thing that we must do as soon as possible is to begin upgrading our technology. When we attempted to do this in the late 1990's, we tried to pay a large sum of money for customized software that would handle all of our needs for all of our systems at once. This project failed and was written off as a total loss in 2000. I am not an expert in this area, but there are plenty of experienced USCF members that are. Most of them will work for little or nothing to help us, but have not been asked. George John of Texas is one of the few Board candidates running this year who has some background in technology. Funding is apparently the biggest problem. We are in a box of sorts. We are having financial problems partly because of our antiquated technology, yet we can't afford to fix the problems because they are capital expenditures. My idea is the 21st Century Campaign. I am recommending that we solicit in Chess Life, by renewal letter and by telephone, contributions from our members in the amount of $100.00. These contributions would be put into a special escrow account called the 21st Century Campaign Fund. We have 88,000 to 90,000 members at least 42,000 of whom are adults. If we could get 1/10th of these members to contribute $100.00 annually, we could complete the first stages the computer upgrade which some have estimated at $120,000.00 in a year's time. Absent fundraising, it does not appear that the organization will be able to pay for critically needed technology upgrades. Once the technology upgrade is completed, we could then continue the campaign for the many other worthwhile projects that must presently come out of our general operating budget. Imagine a fully funded LMA in five years time? With an idea like this and everyone getting behind it, a fully funded LMA would be possible. One thing that recent efforts to contact Life Members have found is that those being asked, appreciate the opportunity to know where their contributions are going and for what. For this reason, this fund would need to be segregated until enough money was in it to pay for the purpose for which it was intended.
OUTREACH AND COMMUNICATION.
What can we do to improve our outreach and communication efforts? First we have to decide as an organization that we really want to know what our members think. If we really do want to know, then we need to develop ways to find out what they think and respond to their concerns or wishes accordingly. From 1998-2000, I worked for Census 2000 and for the Gallup Organization. I feel that I have some degree of expertise in developing surveys and measuring public opinion. Since funds are short right now, my first recommendation is that we do an inhouse survey of a representative portion of our membership. I suggest a broad range of questions about what they think and why they behave the way they do with regard to chess and USCF. While this is not a perfect method it is considerably better than merely assuming as we often do that WE know what our members think and what they want. This is arrogant presumption and it often gets us into hot water. Before we make a major organizational course change that costs us six figures annually, why don't we at least make the attempt to collect some data in a scientific matter? At some point if the 21st Century Campaign Fund has extra funds, we might sink it into a formal market research study of our members and their wishes and concerns. Presently I would be more than happy to lend my own expertise on this particular proposal if elected to the Board. In the past organizational surveys have consisted of our leaders telephoning a dozen of their friends or acquaintances and asking them what they think. This is hardly the type of "research" we should be basing critical strategic decisions upon.
REGIONAL CONTACTS
Another of my proposals which would cost very little but might improve communication is to develop a network of USCF regional contact representatives. When someone calls USCF and asks about USCF activities in their part of the country, the organization will happily forward this contact person's name, address, phone number and e-mail address so that the person can contact them and ask them for information about chess in their region. Some of the regions are big, and there might be a need for more than one representative in each region but as a start, I suggest that we get at least one in every USCF region. Years ago, I had suggested that the duties of RVP be expanded to include this but RVP's were mostly a political position in USCF governance and they have been abolished I believe. This should be a voluntary and apolitical position whose job it is to inform, and promote the organization in their particular part of the country. I would compare it to Tournament Clearinghouse Representatives, only these people would be handling information about local clubs, tournaments and chess activities going on. Anyone who wished to serve as a RCP (Regional Contact Person), could apply to do so, on the condition that they were willing to release their name, address and phone number to people who called from that region and requested it. I would strongly recommend that we require the RCP to have an e-mail address given the ever increasing popularity of e-mail. I have proposed an ADM formalizing this proposal in Framingham. Although the office has placed a $ sign by it, indicating it will have a financial impact, I am asking that this be set up nationwide on a voluntary basis with virtually no cost to the USCF.
LONG RANGE STRATEGIC PLANNING
Simply speaking, for years, USCF has had virtually NO long range strategic planning. This is partly because of the political nature of governing Boards, but it is also partly because of changes in adminstrative leadership and lack of consensus among those in charge as well. A mission statement is NOT a long range strategic plan. I hate to break it to people who mistake them for being the same thing. Our mission is to promote chess, but this is not a strategic goal, it is the mission. In my opinion we should set possibly three to four goals that we wish to accomplish or at least make significant progress towards in the next 5 years.
Here is one:
a) 30,000 or more by 2004. Simply put, our goal as an organization will be to attract, retain or enlist at least 30,000 regular adult members by the year 2004. Is this a reasonable goal? In my opinion yes. Will it help us fulfill our mission statement? Most definitely. Do other people agree it is highly important, necessary and/or desirable? I believe most would or do.
b) 21st Century technologically capable by 2004. I believe that within three years we should and must have our computer software systems in all areas fully operational.
c) LMA completely funded by 2011. I'm giving us a decade here to get our house in order, because the depth of this problem is a lot greater. I believe with ideas like the 21st Century Campaign Fund that I have suggested that we could achieve this long range goal within a decade. Presently there is only $800,000 left in the LMA. A line of credit of almost $400,000 was taken out a few years ago and the bank demanded payment. The only place we could get that amount of money to pay the bank was from the LMA fund. This money must be paid back, but it will take years with a shrinking membership base for the LMA to get back to $2 million let alone to full funding for the estimated liability.
MOVERS, SHAKERS AND RESULTS PEOPLE
I think that besides my expertise in survey and data collection that another area that I could make substantial contributions in is getting results. Most of the time success among groups of people with diverse opinions or interests is based upon people focusing on the end result and not the process. Too many times projects, ideas or implementations fail because people get involved in personality disputes or focus on the process rather than on the final result. I was a supervisor for a special aspect of Census 2000 here in Omaha. My project at its height involved the supervision of more than 70 people in the office and in the field to accomplish a project with strict deadlines, major budgetary limitations and expectations of high quality. My particular project finished first in the region and also had the highest quality of any other similar project in the region which included 10 states. I later heard that my people finished number one in the entire country in both quality and in meeting deadlines and budgetary limitations. One reason I was successful was because I was able to work with people of diverse temperments and personalities and got the most out of them. Being a results oriented people person is critical to success. Despite impressions that people get from reading newsgroup posts, most people who speak to me personally or contact me via e-mail realize that I am a very congenial person who prides himself on getting along well with others. More importantly however, I am good at developing compromises and getting people to work together to find acceptable solutions to problems. I'm sorry that this letter has been long, but it's getting down to the point where many of you are trying to decide who you are going to (or not going to) vote for. I think that you are entitled to as many specifics as possible from the candidates given the importance of this election. I hope that you find my proposals reasonable and my arguments in this letter compelling enough to honor me with your vote.
Sincerely,
Bruce Draney
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