Author: Don Beal
Date: 10:51:40 05/29/00
Some ICCA facts. The "ICCA" consists of the "Board": 1. David Levy - president and sponsorship finder 2. Monty Newborn - vice president 3. Don Beal - secretary/treasurer 4. Martin Zentner - programmers representative plus 5. Jaap vd Herik - Journal editor plus Johanna Hellemons or deputy - a part-time paid assistant to typeset the Journal, and do some administration. None of the five main members is paid. We even pay our own individual membership subscriptions. We volunteered to help mainly because we are ex-chess programmers and enthusiasts who wanted to see continued activity in Computer Chess and raise the profile so that major sponsors would have an official organisation to deal with. The academic involvement has often been an asset - sponsors generally trust universities. Jaap vd Herik gets academic kudos from the scientific content of the Journal - he gives his own time free for that benefit. David Levy used to benefit commercially from being in contact with chess programmers - he doesn't now (as far as I know). The occasional ICCA Journal article brought me some academic benefit. The Journal also contains news and other information of general interest, which is useful to a wider community than just academics. The ICCA has successfully organised major tournaments, attracting media attention, over a period of 25 years. Programmers have been pleased to have the opportunity to enter them - the tournaments would not have happened without the ICCA. The Journal, like all traditional publications, costs significant money to produce because it adds quality to the content. Papers submitted are considered by referees, may be returned to authors with requests for changes, and will be edited and typeset in a consistent style to improve them. It is this selection and improvement process that costs the main money, not the printing and postage. People frequently say something like "you could publish on the web and it would be free". People buy and read traditional publications expecting a certain level of quality. If the filtering and improvement process is abandoned, the quality goes down. You have only to look at some of the unmoderated newsgroups to see the end result. Web publishing does not (yet) carry academic kudos, so the ICCA might become disconnected from the academic community if the printed Journal was abandoned. People also say "you should accept subscriptions by credit card". Well we'd like to, and have been intermittently checking on this. Ten years ago we were too small - the banks refused to allow us to operate credit card transactions. Five years ago, they acknowledged that perhaps our business would be acceptable, but their charges would have gobbled up about 25% of the payments. Currently credit-card bank charges would consume about 5% of payments. However there is some awkwardness, to do with internation transactions. Although credit card transactions are easily combined with currency conversion, the amount to be charged has to be specified in the currency of the receiving bank account. The bank would be in the UK (because that's where the treasurer is). The amount would be in pounds. So if you pay in dollars or european currency, the amount charged to you would be variable, depending on the exchange rate. So you might pay 45 dollars (or 39 dollars) or 83 guilders or whatever, instead of knowing the exact amount when you specified the transaction. It's not a big problem in one sense, but some people might feel uncomfortable not knowing exactly how much they were paying in their own currency. Despite that awkwardness, we now think the time is right to pay the banks for a credit card facility. (My most recent email to other board members about this was in May 3, _prior_ to the recent public messages, in case you think we only do things when people post public messages.) Please note that the obstacle has been bank charges, not problems with hi-tech flashy websites or lack thereof (and not because we "hadn't thought of it"). Now some of my opinions. Like other readers of the CCC forum we choose whether to, when, and when not, to read CCC messages. I personally think it is not reasonable of CCC members to expect that any message about the ICCA will receive an ICCA response the same day. So complaints about "the ICCA should be here" I regard as mischief-making. I AM here. What's your grudge? In general it would be better if people with time to spare could do something to help, rather than complain. The community could do with a few more Ernst Heinz's and a few less <deleted to avoid flame wars>'s. Bruce, thanks for pointing out the ICCA board page didn't include Martin Zentner. I put that in as soon as I read your public message. You could have also used the email link that says "please send any comments about these pages to icca@dcs.qmw.ac.uk". I don't think any of the board members has such a strong motive to do this voluntary work that we would continue against serious opposition. The occasional attack by the ill-informed, or malicious, we ignore. Marsland and Herik chose never to read rgcc or CCC. It's not a question of nerves, Frederic, but whether the time spent in writing messages is worth it from our point of view. The nutters on r.g.c.c were relentless. Replying merely brought more innuendo, misinformation and lies. I felt that continuing to reply would cost me more time and effort than I wished to spend. Teerapong, thanks for your suggestion that the ICCA Journal should contain more "beginners start here" articles. I agree, and I'll forward your message to Jaap. I believe he'd receive such articles favourably if anyone offered them. I once had the good intention to write some myself, but the task never reached the top of my do-list. (Rather like Bob Hyatt's book :-). Don Beal.
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