Kevin L. Bachler writes:

...
There is a difference between telling someone to stay in the realm of reality
and telling them to shut-up Bruce.
...

Not in this case.

--
Kenneth Sloan
Computer and Information Sciences (205) 934-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX (205) 934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/sloan/

Kevin L. Bachler writes:

Since the goal on electronic submission is to make it essentially a
hands-off operation for the office (meaning that the TD's do their own
validation), it should be possible to set the fee well below the new
diskette rate.

But that should be done by RAISING the diskette and the paper rate, Mike, not by
setting the rate for electronic submission lower. Electronic submission offers
at least the same value, and the other methods are more expensive to process.

Assuming that small events will be able to be keyed in online, at the same time
a program should be implemented that will start significantly raising paper
submission rates over several years.

The action taken by the Board in LA raises both the diskette and paper rates.
Based on both my analysis and Stan Booz's analysis, the increase should
be close to what is needed to cover losses in the ratings department.

Assuming that it will take very little hands-on effort to rate electronic
submissions, the cost to process them should be far less than for either
diskette or paper submission, and that service should be priced accordingly.

Whether the diskette and paper rates should be adjusted again at some future
time to encourage more people to use online submission when it becomes
available is a decision that cannot be adequately analyzed at this time.
--
Mike Nolan

Kevin L. Bachler wrote:


Because, Bruce, it gets to the point that you've raised it to such a level of
absurdity that it needs to be talked about.

LOL!! Absurdity? It was posed as speculation just as almost everything
else stated on this forum. Anyone who takes stuff said here as gospel,
must be an idiot.


People are sending in posts saying
"What should I do about my TLA?" because you've scared them. At that point
you've harmed members, you've crossed the line. It needs to stop.


If someone is scared about their TLA because of something I said in a
newsgroup post, they need to go to the source rather than taking my word
for it when I'm clearly speculating. What really scares me is that the
President of the USCF, the ED of the USCF and the Finance Committee of
the USCF, and VP of Finance of the USCF all thought we were going to
show a profit this year, as did the most successful tournament organizer
in the country, who had a direct information conduit to the inner circle
in the office. Now THAT is frightening, not an RGCP newsgroup post
speculating that the USCF might cease publication of CL for a couple of
months because they fired all the top officials who produce the
magazine. I've already stated that the speculation was based on
something said in a newsgroup post by Hal Terrie who was in LA and said
cessation of publication of Chess Life for a time was being considered.
If you don't like this perhaps you should complain to Hal for suggesting
it. I wasn't in LA and he was. Booz later said that while the idea was
considered, it was decided that staff layoffs were absolutely necessary
and saved money immediately.

You've crossed the line many, many times and once you stop, I'll
consider following suit. Until then, bite me.

Also, your angry reaction to my posts did not appear to be related to
the post about Chess Life, but rather my tirade on Saturday afternoon
complaining about the many foolish caterings to the whims of the
scholastic lobby in the past and why it is hard to any longer do more
than scoff at USCF people claiming we've turned the corner and we're
going to sail the ship home to port.

As far as your attempts to manipulate what I do or don't say, I say
stick it in your ear, Kevin. I will say what I want to say and if you
don't like tough luck. Once you stop annoying half the world here on
the newsgroup, I'll consider following suit with the things I say. In
the meantime I suggest you kilfile me and attempt to start your own
threads about discussing discussions or how we can charge people for
value transfer when they use USCF ratings in their unrated events. You
once said that this was tantamount to theft, which crossed the line and
it needs to stop.

Best Regards,

Bruce



SNIP

Kevin L. Bachler

Mike Nolan wrote:

Kevin L. Bachler writes:

Since the goal on electronic submission is to make it essentially a
hands-off operation for the office (meaning that the TD's do their own
validation), it should be possible to set the fee well below the new
diskette rate.

But that should be done by RAISING the diskette and the paper rate, Mike, not by
setting the rate for electronic submission lower. Electronic submission offers
at least the same value, and the other methods are more expensive to process.

Assuming that small events will be able to be keyed in online, at the same time
a program should be implemented that will start significantly raising paper
submission rates over several years.

The action taken by the Board in LA raises both the diskette and paper rates.
Based on both my analysis and Stan Booz's analysis, the increase should
be close to what is needed to cover losses in the ratings department.

Assuming that it will take very little hands-on effort to rate electronic
submissions, the cost to process them should be far less than for either
diskette or paper submission, and that service should be priced accordingly.

Whether the diskette and paper rates should be adjusted again at some future
time to encourage more people to use online submission when it becomes
available is a decision that cannot be adequately analyzed at this time.
--
Mike Nolan

While certainly ratings should not be losing money Mike, I have to
wonder at this point exactly what things that USCF does should be MAKING
money?

There is some question whether B&E is making money. It is pretty much
agreed that the only significantly profitable part of our operations is
from dues revenue.

Do you foresee the idea of actually turning ratings into a signficant
profit center for the organization rather than a break even
proposition?

What would you look for in the next ED? Would you hire an office
manager type who tries to keep things running smoothly at home in the
hopes that a smoothly run office will be productive, or would you
instead go for a salesman who can aggressively rebuild B&E so that it
becomes a second profit cornerstone for the organization? Do you think
that Grant and Stan feel that the B&E business has a truly profitable
future?

Another approach could be the PR ED who knows the bigwigs of other
corporations and can through his influence get them to support chess
with sponsorship dollars. Obviously neither Cavallo or DeFeis were this
type of ED, but Niro struck me as being more of this type of guy, had he
had the health, stamina, and time to do it.

Niro was clearly weak in office management and this led to some
personnel blowups which have hurt the office. DeFeis, I do not see as
having been good at any of the three primary areas mentioned, but he was
probably the least ineffective at the office management aspect of the
job. He had no apparent fund raising skills and was obviously not
skilled in sales or inventory management. My impression though was that
DeFeis was a Redman puppet who did whatever Redman told him to. Maybe
I'm being unfair to him, but it seemed to me like Redman was running the
USCF as defacto ED.

Cavallo seemed to understand business management, but running a small
not-for-profit seemed to be beyond his grasp. Cavallo did not strike me
as a PR guy at all, nor did he strike me as a great salesperson.

Your thoughts?

Best Regards,

Bruce

On 26 Aug 2003 14:35:05 GMT, (Mike Nolan) wrote:

Yes, what the Board passed (in open session for those who waited around
that long) was to raise the rates to 20 cents per game on diskette and
40 cents per game on paper, effective January 1, 2004. The minimum ratings
fee remains $5 for events submitted on diskette but was raised to $8 for
events submitted on paper.

When electronic submission becomes available it will be priced appropriately.
Hopefully electronic submission will be in testing some time around the end
of the calendar year, though there are other systems issues that will
contend for development time and other resources.

This Canadian would be absolutely delighted to pay only $.20 per game
- in a 5 round tournament that's $.50 per player and I've been
submitting tournament reports by e-mail for years with no discount at
all. In fact next week the CFC is raising rating fees from $2/player
to $3/player...what I'm saying is that if the USCF is short of funds,
this is one area that can be raised without too much difficulty -
certainly far better than raising the rate on ordinary memberships.

(With provincial dues included our fees up here have just been
increased to $49/year as well but ours are CanuckBucks so multiply by
..71 to get the US$ equivalent)

Don't they simply charge less than merchant accounts?

Paul Rubin wrote:

"Jerry Snitselaar" writes:
You might look into something like PayPal. That can process credit cards,
and payments through the PayPal system.

That's really just for lemonade stands (i.e. tiny businesses that
can't get normal CC merchant accounts). The USCF should use a real
credit card processor. I'm sure Grant is on top of it.

On 26 Aug 2003 11:54:52 -0700, Paul Rubin
wrote:

The Horny Goat writes:
On top of that we don't have a 6-month intro membership but DO have a
"tournament membership" which is good only for that tournament and
does get the player a rating. This is aimed at infrequent players. I'm
unconvinced as to whether this is a good thing or not...

How much does the CFC tournament membership cost? Thanks.

It depends on the province since each provincial affiliate has their
portion of the dues (set by the province but collected by the TD on
behalf of the CFC which pays the provincial affiliate 4 times a year).

In British Columbia it's $13.00 - $10 for the CFC, $3 for the BCCF.
There's a junior tournament membership as well which I forget.

Bear in mind that currently 1 Canadian dollar trades at about
US$.70-72 so that would be roughly US $9.

Annual regular adult dues for BC players have just been raised from
$45 to $48 per year by way of comparison so the CFC tournament fee is
sort of like a proxy for the USCF 6 month dues - by the way is this
available to ALL players or just first-time members?

The Horny Goat wrote:

On 26 Aug 2003 11:54:52 -0700, Paul Rubin
wrote:

The Horny Goat writes:
On top of that we don't have a 6-month intro membership but DO have a
"tournament membership" which is good only for that tournament and
does get the player a rating. This is aimed at infrequent players. I'm
unconvinced as to whether this is a good thing or not...

How much does the CFC tournament membership cost? Thanks.

It depends on the province since each provincial affiliate has their
portion of the dues (set by the province but collected by the TD on
behalf of the CFC which pays the provincial affiliate 4 times a year).

In British Columbia it's $13.00 - $10 for the CFC, $3 for the BCCF.
There's a junior tournament membership as well which I forget.

Bear in mind that currently 1 Canadian dollar trades at about
US$.70-72 so that would be roughly US $9.

Annual regular adult dues for BC players have just been raised from
$45 to $48 per year by way of comparison so the CFC tournament fee is
sort of like a proxy for the USCF 6 month dues - by the way is this
available to ALL players or just first-time members?

This is all interesting, and since I've never played chess in Canada
and have only even travelled to Canada one time, I am taking my name out
of the title.

Best Regards,

Bruce

On 26 Aug 2003 23:21:14 -0500, Bruce Draney wrote:

This is all interesting, and since I've never played chess in Canada
and have only even travelled to Canada one time, I am taking my name out
of the title.

Well, I don't claim to have travelled in all 50 states (though I've
travelled in some 20 of them) but the point of comparing the USCF vs
CFC is basically that some areas the USCF does better, other areas the
CFC does better - and where there are useful lessons to be learned
from the other both organizations gain.

All of this is irrespective of whether I ever host Tim or Beatriz or
they me.

Obviously not all lessons are going to be useful given the different
environments but there is definitely a different mindset between the
two organizations which to some extent reflects the two countries and
in other respects reflects the respective histories of the two
organizations.

In fairness, N California + S California has more members than the
entire CFC so one shouldn't accept things completely uncritically.

On 26 Aug 2003 06:24:43 -0700, (Don
Mihokovich) wrote:


Also, I don't believe that funds collected and held by PayPal are FDIC
or otherwise government insured.

KidDon

I am concerned about this. I have had several thousand dollars held by
PayPal. What if they go down, as so many Internet sites have? Lately,
I never keep more than a few hundred dollars in my PayPal account.

Sam Sloan