Author: Tom Kerrigan
Date: 14:32:00 05/29/00
Go up one level in this thread
On May 29, 2000 at 13:51:40, Don Beal wrote: >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? I think you missed the point. Nobody (that I noticed) was complaining about the time it takes for the ICCA to reply to a post here. The complaint is that the ICCA does not have a "presence" here. I don't recall ever seeing any CCC posts made by Levy, Newborn, or vd Herik. And I've been on CCC since the beginning. I don't think you or Martin have posted in the past few weeks, or possibly months. CCC is arguably the computer chess community, and I think the Computer Chess Association should have some interest in participating in said community. To reiterate Bruce's point, the bare minimum of activity would be to announce ICCA events here. Every time an event nears, there is a huge mass of confusion about the event on CCC. This is unnecessary confusion if the ICCA is here (as you claim). -Tom
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