ACF Election/Nat. Organizer/Do we phase out ratings?

[rich beckwith]

ACF members will receive a ballot in the February bulletin. Gene Ellison has asked that envelopes to him be marked “ballot” so that he doesn’t prematurely open envelopes before election committee convenes in early March.

Secondly, besides the elected positions, ACF still has several volunteer appointed positions that have been advertised before: National Organizer, scholastic checkers, membership retention, corporate sponsorship ideas, etc.:

Now an important personal note:

I have been filling in as “temporary” National Organizer for a long time now. If I am re-elected as Player Rep, then I will no longer be able to serve in this additional National Organizer role due to increased workloads from my chemist job, Player Rep, ACF store, WCDF duties, running some tournaments, annotating games (all while trying to compete well in tournaments). Secondly, there is little time for me to help grow ACF when my time is consumed with ordinary maintenance activities (and there are “big things” in the works). So, this is one last call for a volunteer, preferably someone who can handle e-mail, Word, and Excel files (or equivalent programs) in timely fashion with attention to detail.

Today, National Organizer duties entail assisting with forwarding tournament announcements and results to bulletin and website editors. (Ryan Pronk and Kim Willis have helped out with ACF calendar on this site). Also, the National Organizer will maintain accuracy of roster of champions and see that tournament results get submitted to ratings processors (Dave Butler and Igor Keder) in order to compute player ratings. There is a specific Excel format for this with player ID’s pre-entered (Igor has requested this). See example info below for what I have been doing in 2006, although it won't look pretty here without the usual table grid. It makes less sense for both ratings processors (who have limited time available to help) to do this when one person can prepare for both. I will be happy to provide more details to anyone who may have interest by replying to beckwith24@msn.com if you wish to consider more information about this important role.

# Name ACF ID WCDF ID Rd. 1 Rd. 2 Rd. 3
1 Millhone, Alan (OH) 3215 101032 4T3 3T5* 2T8
2 Jones, Bo (Can) 2618 101126 3T2 4T5 1T6
3 Smith, Mike (MO) 5241 101089 2T2 1T4 BYE T7
4 Brown, Joe (FL) 3320 101144 1T1 2T2 W-drew
*”3T5” means he just played opponent #3 and now has 5 cumulative points.

If no one is available to serve as National Organizer, then I will announce to tournament directors to submit their own results directly to ratings processors in the above required format, or else ratings may not be accepted. This is not a desirable situation, since I suspect few ratings will get turned in correctly and processed, especially when some tournament directors do not use a computer. This will lead to stagnant ratings.