This is great advice. I'm repeating it just so it doesn't get overlooked. As always, L19 admins will be happy to set up AGA sub-forums, and I suspect that WMS would not object to an AGA room on KGS.

_________________
Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

normally I'd agree with this, however, what has bitten us in the past is using proprietary software/services that disappear or become unmaintainable when the owner stops support.

if it can be open sourced, or if the owner is willing to hand over control, then it's more likely to be useful and maintained for a much longer time period

Please enlighten me with success stories of the AGA being successful reinventing something already successful.

I feel your pain on the few failures using proprietary software/services, but even those lasted a few years. There have been other open source initiatives that have been ignore as well. Proprietary software/services seem to be the only horses that can get out of the gate, so ride those while you can. I would love to be proven wrong some day.

_________________
Michael Dobbins; Dragon: mdobbins, KGS: mgd, AGA#: 4253,
My Website

Amid all the criticisms of the AGA, let us note the successes.

Working with L19 is one of the aforementioned goals, and let us observe that Daniel the Smith, an AGA officer, is doing it.

_________________
Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

https://github.com/usgo/

This houses the source code for the current ratings system, eidogo, a go league system/tournament crosstabs, the upcoming theme for the new website(not public) and last years congress site that could be redeployed very easily

_________________
Decisions are made by those who show up.
and possibly those willing to attend secret meetings in ancient basements

Hmm... I read this thread with a great interest, and many good things have been said. Here are some things that I would like to say.

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.

_________________
- Bantari
______________________________________________
WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Stop right there. I want a yes or no answer to this question:

Have you carefully read every document on this page:

http://www.usgo.org/board/ApprovedMinutes/

Some stray thoughts:

1) Board minutes are posted on the web. That was announced on these here boards.

2) One outgoing (thanks, Daniel) board member just co-directed Congress. I believe that involves some effort. But perhaps it's just an isolated case. I'm pretty sure that Paul Celmer would never, ever, even consider getting his hands dirty directing or organizing a tournament or a Congress.

3) It seems that the things where the most work is being done are the sort of technical things that you can "just do". In my opinion, the entire discussion of priorities concerns issues that are mushier, where a board member cannot necessarily just take action.

4) While I think it does make sense for board members to take the lead in putting forward ideas, we should bear in mind that not every race is even contested, and where they are, elections are often relatively low profile. One club that I've been involved with regularly had zero public discussion of its vote (I believe folks emailed the club organizer if they had an opinion), and no publicity concerning the candidates positions. Given that board members are not necessarily elected based on a detailed platform for what they are doing, soliciting feedback like this may be the primary way that members influence the boards' plans. It's just never going to be like the (paragon of wonders that is the) US political system where you really can (on some issues) vote for people who will carry out your preferred policies.

Edit: I was confused, Daniel was not.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I'd like to note that I really don't understand the criticism from [EDIT: apparantly I misunderstood Joaz's post. Sorry!] and Bantari: why do you seem to expect me to be the source of ideas? There's one of me and a ton of you. It would be arrogant of me to assume that I can come up with better ideas than all of you guys put together. My whole strategy for this board member thing is to find the best ideas possible, and then try to make them happen. You guys are a major source of ideas. I assume you guys want an AGA with goals that are actually connected to reality, right? Can you think of a better way for me to discover which goals are actually important than what I'm doing right now? If so, please let me know immediately (and I seriously mean that, I'm not just trying to score rhetorical points; I'm still figuring out how to do this).

By the time the board votes on something, it's already a policy (or not). If you want to have input into what the board does, giving your opinion in advance is the only way it's going to happen. The old system was 1. board does something; 2. everyone complains; 3. board changes mind. I'm trying to switch things to 1. everyone discusses; 2. board does best thing. In my mind, the common complaint that the board is schizophrenic is almost entirely explainable by the board's failing to solicit enough input to begin with.

@bantari, It may sound bad at first blush to say that the board is setting aside time to talk about priorities. But it is actually a good thing; if you don't schedule time to talk about your goals/priorities, it will never happen because little stuff will come up and crowd it out. There is no shortage of stuff the board could spend its meetings talking about; adding this discussion ahead of other things is an admission that it is more important than other things. If you think the AGA needs to sort out its priorities, this should make you happy. If it appalls you that the AGA currently has no coherent set of goals, then by all means, be appalled--but it makes no sense to simultaneously criticize us for trying to fix that...

And, by the way, this priority thing is something that came up at the last meeting, and I see this thread as a routine part of my job. This isn't me trying to "take over" or set lifelong AGA goals or anything like that. At some point, I probably will have a list of new goals and things that I want to change ("fix") about the organization. But right now, I don't have enough knowledge, experience, or political capital to do any such thing, and it would be arrogant of me to pretend that I did. A classic failure pattern is "young guy takes over, changes everything, royally screws it up." I'm not gonna be that guy. On the other hand, outsiders can see clearly things that insiders have stopped noticing. Currently I'm so much of an outsider that my "innovations" would be more annoying than useful; if I wait too long, I'll be an insider and have lost the ability to see what needs to be fixed (at which point, you should vote me off, btw). At some point in between, I'll be optimally placed to make a meaningful difference. I'm definitely not at that point yet, having been a board member for only one meeting.

@hyperpape, either I am confused about the outgoing board member's identity, or you are...

Finally, @vash3g: sorry, that was just the first example that popped into my head.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

What about Go classes in universities? iirc, Peter Drake, a CS professor at L&C college, did a course in Go that counted for electives over there, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't the first to do this either. I think it'd be awesome if more universities and colleges had Go classes that could count for electives and could help a lot in promoting Go among young adults. For example, in my university everyone needs a certain # of credits of VLPA (Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts) classes. I think a Go class would be a great fit there. And while we're on the topic of universities, it's a real shame this never picked up steam.

Also, Korean churches. Every summer, tons of Korean churches near my area do some sort of summer program like VBS (Vacation Bible School) that doesn't just teach about the Bible and all that jazz, but also gives classes on Korean culture since a lot of the Korean children were raised in the US and parents don't want to lose their touch on Korean culture. Classes on Go are occasionally taught, but because a lot of the older church-goers who know how to play the game don't really have time, teachers are usually scarce and the Go class gets a lower priority than the other ones. If the AGA taps into the Korean churches and assists in these kinds of programs, not only is there the promotional benefit to the kids, the parents, and the people involved in the churches, but also it's a great way to break the barrier into the Korean Go-playing community and getting them to become AGA members and play in their tournaments. Before I went to university, I taught a Go class for one of the Korean churches over the summer with a parent and it was a great experience.

And what about anime cons? Sakura-con, the local anime con for me, is pretty much covered as the Seattle Go center gets a panel every year and for the most part has had success in promoting the game through Sakura-con. Same for Otakon, which I happened to go to a few years ago. The room where Go was taught was huge, there was a big projector, and the attendance was wonderful. Kumori-con also had a Go panel that was run by a lady named Wendy the last time I went. However, the vast majority of anime cons don't have Go panels at all. Actually I went to Anime Expo a few months ago, which is NA's biggest con, and there was no Go there at all to my surprise. There were over 40,000 people attending that con. And there are so many cons...I feel that the AGA could do a lot better job at getting involved in this as well.

Universities are serious business. I'm sure there are math and CS majors already getting credit for research into CGS, AI, pattern recognition, what have you, but you can't really give credit for learning to play Go more goodly...

What exactly were they trying to do? I don't use reddit so it's a little vague.

I just quickly looked into it and it seems rather daunting. (The websites are all in Korean, for one thing.) Can you give us more of a picture of how you arranged your class?

Well, everyone should look up the next event in their city and check that they already have go.

Shaddy, his roommate, and I are actually teaching a go class that offers elective units next semester ...

I suspect they (and many others) aren't looking for you and the board to come up with ideas, they're looking for leadership. We've all seen the board talk; there's an open question about whether the board is capable of anything else.

You've got a list of ideas from here, and I suspect each of the board members has their own thoughts. It would be nice to see a statement of the board's top three priorities...just a single page with three points and maybe an introductory paragraph. Not the wish list of one person on the board, mind you, or a list of pet projects from twenty years ago, but something that all seven board members have considered and agreed represent the best goals for the AGA over the next few years.

Araban: your post makes me think that there should be some kind of collection of people's experiences and observations introducing Go in different environments. I doubt that there's any technical information you need (is there a code-word to get into a Korean church? ) but talking about the atmosphere and reaction in various contexts might be helpful.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I would like to also thank everyone for their input. I agree with Daniel that soliciting comments from members is the best way to get a list of priorities that are really important to US go players. There are a number of housekeeping tasks that are currently being undertaken (for example, the website migration that I think I mentioned a few days ago), and which are sucking a lot of our volunteer and leadership time. While these tasks are being completed, we are trying to come up with a list of priorities that we can put into practice as soon as the manpower can be found to do so (and we will actively search for the volunteers).

For those who, like me prior to one year ago, are a little unclear on how boards generally operate, I think that it is important to clarify that putting a priorities discussion on the agenda was new business. This means that while, hopefully, all board members have ideas that they would like to put into practice, they were not given notice prior to the meeting that they should bring these ideas (hopefully fully-formed) to the meeting and be prepared to discuss. This is not to say that two pressing ideas, 1 introduced by me, were not mentioned at the introduction of the topic. Daniel mentioned both of these ideas when he started this thread.

When we meet again in 2 1/2 weeks, this topic will now be old business and will officially have its place in the agenda. This means that all members should be prepared to discuss, and hopefully come to a decision on, this topic. We all want the board to make reasoned, considered decisions. This invariably requires the time and thought necessary to think issues through. My hope is that Daniel will be able to come up with a clear list of priorities, presented by you and vetted by him, that he will be able to present. If time allows, I hope to comb through my notes from meeting with clubs last summer and to come up with more than the top priorities that I have been working towards realizing (yes, they are not yet visible, but progress has been made) since I joined the board a year ago. Ideally, Daniel and I will both be able to circulate these ideas to the board before the meeting, and thus the board will be prepared to discuss them.

I know I speak for myself, if not for other board members, when I say that I do not like it when all the board does is discuss an issue ad nauseum. It is important to me that we make progress on all projects and issues, when we can do so in a reasoned and not schizophrenic manner, as soon as possible.

I would also like to commend Daniel on his efforts to stay as close to the membership, to whom the board is responsible, as is possible to do. We both came to office on platforms of wanting to be more responsible to our constituents, and to be more transparent, and have undertaken to live up to our goals in our own ways. Daniel, as a regular presence on L19, is perfectly placed to take the pulse of the membership through this forum. As a person who often has free time in the summer, I was able to visit with 30+ clubs in 12+ states last summer, to run the Go Congress this summer, and to unofficially discuss American and European go European go volunteers and national officials while studying this summer. We really welcome your comments, and I at least ask only that you recognize that I take this position seriously and hope, as much as is possible, to fix the recurrent problems that seem to alienate US go players.

I apologize for the length of this post.

Lisa Scott

i dont think that the leadership is really involved outside of their pocketbook. its really like 5-6 dudes who run everything and some minor help (which really hasnt contributed anything yet) from some new volunteers. [redacted snarky comment]

_________________
Decisions are made by those who show up.
and possibly those willing to attend secret meetings in ancient basements

Phil said part of it, I'll try and do as one of my bosses asks me: Burger King Words.

Members get Ideas -> Board member contacts members -> Members relay thoughts, Ideas, concerns -> Board discusses member thoughts/ideas/concerns -> Priorities form -> President figured out how to execute -> XXXXX -> PROFIT

_________________
Decisions are made by those who show up.
and possibly those willing to attend secret meetings in ancient basements

That's the point of this whole exercise*. Such a list will exist after the next board meeting if I can do anything about it.

[*] Well, I guess the point is to actually go and then acomplish whatever is on the list. But one step at a time.

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

You have absolutely nothing to apologize for. We want AGA officers to post here. The longer, the better.

_________________
Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

Don't be sorry for not getting everything said in one post. Just post the rest when you have more time!

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21