Directors Reports

[Roger de Coverly]

Reports for the AGM have started to be added to the ECF site.

So there's the President
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... report.pdf
the Home Director
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... Report.pdf
the International Director
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... report.pdf

I'm not sure if it's new but there's a statement of how the Director's responsibilities have been changed.
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... report.pdf

The proposal to remove the office of Chairman has been struck through. This could mean that this office will continue or the proposal has been redrafted.

Those who thought that the need to produce an annual Business Plan was just civil servants wanting to make people do things for the sake it, will be pleased to notice that with the lack of a Strategic Planning Officer comes the scrapping of a responsibility to produce a Strategic Business Plan.

[Carl Hibbard]

Interesting, who is doing the work for the 'Specialist software for leagues is being developed' that is mentioned?

[John Philpott]

Roger de Coverly wrote:

The proposal to remove the office of Chairman has been struck through. This could mean that this office will continue or the proposal has been redrafted.

No, it simply means that the individual who, in the absence of the ECF webmaster over the weekend, attempted to edit the page yesterday, displayed a lack of technical competence. Now fixed.

[Carl Hibbard]

Interesting, who is doing the work for the 'Specialist software for leagues is being developed' that is mentioned?

I am informed it is based on the Yorkshire software which is a little ironic.

[David Clayton]

Interesting, who is doing the work for the 'Specialist software for leagues is being developed' that is mentioned?

I am informed it is based on the Yorkshire software which is a little ironic.

Why would we (over here) want League software developed in Yorkshire, when we have an excellent League software package developed on this side of the Pennines?

It creates automatic fixtures, allows team captains to input match results, provides on-line reference to Grading and Membership files and automatically produces files for grading, plus various reports of outstanding fixtures, and even a list of players who are not ECF members!

[Mick Norris]

Why would we (over here) want League software developed in Yorkshire, when we have an excellent League software package developed on this side of the Pennines?

I'd second that statement, although the one we use in Manchester isn't locally developed

[MartinCarpenter]

Well the Yorkshire stuff is rather nice. Especially for holding massive amounts of historic data because it does keep it very organised and lets you look at all sorts of reports about it all. Like the Yorkshire league in 2009/10:

http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/league. ... tionid=471 (basic league table),
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/fixture ... tionid=471 (fixture list with results attached),
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/pstats. ... tionid=471 (Players in a given league year, ordered by board),
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/pstats. ... eamid=2021 (Stats for a given team in a given league for a given year),

Also players/year of course, although an ECF version might not want that. The only thing it doesn't do in terms of the historic data is to provide a good interface for getting at it. You have to go in through the games of someone you know played in the league that year (fixable of course.).

It might well make sense as a compliment to existing software which is managing the more mundane tasks during the year.

[Sean Hewitt]

Why would we (over here) want League software developed in Yorkshire, when we have an excellent League software package developed on this side of the Pennines?

I'd second that statement, although the one we use in Manchester isn't locally developed

Don't worry Mick - no one will force anyone to use the ECF software. However, I'm sure that of the many leagues out there that don't have such software, some will find some value in the ECF providing something for them.

[Graham Ives]

The Shropshire League has been using its own results database for 4 seasons now. Results are entered by team captains via a php webpage and update an SQL database in real time. This allows everyone to see the results of every match, immediately, as well as summaries and statistics of the performance of each team, each player and a list of all the games played by each player.

Current Division 1 results

try clicking on teams names or player names to see various stats, eg.

http://www.shropshirechess.org/Chess%20 ... am=Newport A&season=2012-2013&comp=Division 1
- Newport Team stats from last year, and

http://www.shropshirechess.org/Chess%20 ... &Submit=Go
- my own stats from last year.

All the results are retained, so historic stats can be seen at any time. Results can also be shown in a form compatible with the ECF grading submission file so that they can be copied and pasted to an excel spreadsheet and submitted to ECF at the end of each season. (Of course it would be much better for the code to simply add the results directly into the ECF results database if that were possible - and I imagine it might save a few emails and quite a bit of office/ admin time .....)

There are also tools for specifying fixture dates and creating new sets of teams and fixtures at season start, as well as for mundane things like correcting mis-entered results and so on.

This is something I've developed (and am still developing) in my spare time with help from the Shropshire chess community. If anyone is interested in using it or helping to develop it further, I'd welcome suggestions!

[Roger de Coverly]

This is something I've developed (and am still developing) in my spare time with help from the Shropshire chess community. If anyone is interested in using it or helping to develop it further, I'd welcome suggestions!

A number of developers have come up with equivalent designs with a varying degree of integration with the ECF grading and accounting systems. New player identification can be a problem, given the historic lags in allocating an ECF grading code. I believe the local graders have use , if they want it, of a system developed by the BCF almost in the pre-Internet era.

[MartinCarpenter]

That Shropshire thing does look nice - its worth looking at the chessnuts stuff for a comparison. Quite similar, as I'm sure are others.

Given that there's no money at all in this, just a few volunteer coders, the advantages of pooling programming resources by having a single collective system would be hard to argue with Especially if it lets the ECF do the work of providing back end hooks into their grading databases once and then everyone to use it.

Just so long as they manage to make whatever they release reasonably easy to customise at the front end, mantain etc. (not always at all easy!). Logically it'd be open source so people can feed improvements back into it.

[Roger de Coverly]

Nigel Short as FIDE Delegate.

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... eport1.pdf

Also commenting on a nomination for President.

[John McKenna]

Powerful stuff and essential reading!

[Roger de Coverly]

Sean Hewitt's report
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... report.pdf

No mention of what many regard as the ECF's most idiotic decision of the year, namely to demand membership as a condition of participation in inter-school matches. Admittedly limited to matches being graded and nominally run by the ECF.

Arguably that's why the existing Non-Exec directors are facing an election battle.

[Jonathan Rogers]

I am curious to see that Sean is so confident on his interpretation of the Bribery Act. If he is able to apply the Act in anything other than the most blatant cases imaginable, then he could make a lot of money lecturing the Serious Fraud Office and big businesses ...