The art of pretending to know how to run a federation
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
SATIRE
BAREFOOT, KNOCKED UP AND WONDERING WHAT THE HELL IS NEXT!
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
”Once upon a time…the CFC owned a big office in Ottawa, ran a $250,000 a year book and equipment business, published a bi-monthly magazine , developed one of the first all-purpose chess federation-websites on the ‘net and had a membership list that averaged about 2500…”
No, you are not dreaming nor is this a fairytale! Not so long ago this was infact REALITY in the Canadian chess scene . Without getting into details (here today) of what happened to the CFC –and who is responsible–it is worth noting that today the CFC exists in some shoe-box in somebody’s basement. The Ottawa building was sold for a fraction of its worth; the book and equipment business was virtually given away; the bi-monthly magazine was transformed into a non-existant web-based e-zine; CFC memberships dropped below 2,000 and show little sign of growth; and the CFC website HOMEPAGE is a disaster that hasn’t even been updated in ages!
CFC Homepage this morning; same as many months ago!
The Art of Pretending
Even Tony Fizcere’s monthly PDF replacement of the magazine is rumoured to soon have the number of its issues axed. Yet, despite all this, the CFC leadership tries to present a happy face. Saving grace: there is a new website in the pipeline! And happy Bob Armstrong–self appointed political commissar of the Soviet-styled CFC politburo–has noted that there is much less criticism of the CFC than before…
Well, congratulations Bob!! But once more the membership will see a CFC president come and go this July without delivering on his election platform. The reason: Gillanders has linked his promise of a membership drive (to reach the mediocre level of 2,000) to having a fully functional modern website; even assuming the new website is up and running by the spring, then…where will Bob find a strategy that might work in 2 months?
Michael Yip has pointed out on one of the message boards last year that best of intentions should not be confused with actually achieving RESULTS. Bob Gillanders is a man of good intentions. Just as Bob Armstrong is filled with happy visions. BUT…you can not run a declining federation on good intentions and Soviet-style fairy tales and empty promises of a better world.
The truth is that the present CFC leadership is made up of almost the exact same individuals who were around when the CFC under-sold its assets in 2007-2008. Bob Gillanders included. We have heard the same promises for years: a new magazine, a new website, a new membership drive,etc, etc.
It is time to stop pretending that these people know what they are doing. If at the end of the day they can not even manually update the CFC Homepage, then accomplishing more complex tasks are out of the question all together.
”It is useless to hold a person to anything he says while he is in love, drunk, or running for office.” ~Shirley MacLaine
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SATIRE
THE CFC MEMBERSHIP IN 2011
BAREFOOT, KNOCKED UP AND WONDERING WHAT THE HELL IS NEXT!
Computer’s depiction of happy Bob Armstrong’s word by word account of this week’s CFC online meeting (!) . That is Bob prancing away on the table….(chairing the meeting)
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Bob Armstrong explaining his vision of the future of the CFC democracy: mass-hypnotism, combined with cyber-stalking of CfC governors, and supplemented with 1,500 annoying, mass-circulated posts a day will mobilize governor support for any and every motion that his fertile mind comes up with. Long live the CFC!! Long live Bob Armstrong!! Move over, Goebbels!!
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS