Board Meeting in Amsterdam, January 17-18, 2004
KWA Board Meeting in Amsterdam January 17-18, 2004
Our deputy chairman Peter Holmgren was not able to attend the meeting but he has sent us a photo of himself together with Andy Ansel, whom he had visited shortly before in California. Although it was a more private meeting, we wouldn’t like to withhold this nice photo from our members:
On their way to Utrecht/Amsterdam on Jan. 16, Michael Negele and Ralf Binnewirtz visited Jürgen Daniel (Chessgate) at his shop in Nettetal. Many thanks at this point to Jürgen Daniel for giving us a warm welcome and for his additional offers of assistance to the KWA.
We will remind here only of the main points of our discussion:
Jürgen Daniel offered his support for arranging payments of KWA members from non-EU countries per credit card (i.e. paying from credit card to credit card).
Some professional database experts cooperating with Jürgen Daniel have frequently proved to be a valuable help; possibly they would also be so for the KWA.
Moreover Jürgen Daniel would be able to offer chess books from overseas (especially McFarland Publishing House) at reasonable prices and reduced delivery times.
There are also rather frequently complaints about the long delivery times of Publishing House Moravian Chess. A cooperation between Vlastimil Fiala and Jürgen Daniel would surely better things.
The Saturday meeting was attended by:
Jurgen Stigter (JS), Michael Negele (MN), Ralf Binnewirtz (RB), Andreas Saremba (AS), Hans Engberts (HE) arrived at 10:45 am
Henk van Riemsdijk (of Scutula - for the database project) arrived at 11:30 am
Vlastimil Fiala (VF) arrived after 1:15 pm.
The Sunday meeting was attended by:
Jurgen Stigter (JS), Michael Negele (MN), Ralf Binnewirtz (RB), Andreas Saremba (AS)
Michael Negele has written an extensive report on this meeting, so I will concentrate here on the main topics (most important action points, decisions) and otherwise leave it at a short summary; where appropriate I also refer to MN’s minutes (in the following only called “minutes” – to be found in our Member's Area).
Financial Budget 2004 / Institutional Memberships / Donations / Membership Fee 2004
The development of membership (end of Jan. 2004: 99 members) is very pleasing, as a consequence sufficient capital will be available.
Our treasurer Hans Engberts has to take over the KWA account as soon as possible, therefore JS and MN will hand over their personal balances (expenses/earnings) before. HE will manage the members’ payments and ask the members for their speedy payments (all fees should be received till end of March 2004).
The membership fee will remain unchanged for 2004. The topic “fee reduction from 2005 on” has to be discussed again at the next general meeting in late summer 2004.
The list of donors is given in the minutes.
Administrational / Organizational Work of the KWA-Board in 2004
To relieve the strain on our secretary MN the board strives for a more well-balanced distribution of the administrative work. For this purpose the contacts to our country representatives have to be intensified, too (some suggestions of the latter concerning their role/contributions are given in the minutes).
The workflow for the admission of new members (membership agreement) was established.
The member list will be maintained by MN; our treasurer HE will take care of the members’ address list.
A web page especially for KWA members and not accessible to the public (i.e. a password protected page) should be created by RB to offer (of course only with the approval of the members/at the members’ request) any personal information. Communication between members may happen via the KWA Forum (in password protected usergroups) or as before by private e-mails.
Organization of payments: there is no need for a KWA credit card at the moment, otherwise the association has to be registered according to Dutch law. But Hans Engberts would appreciate a registration of the KWA at the Dutch chamber of commerce in view of the amount of money to be handled in the meantime. The discussion has to be continued at the next general meeting.
For economical reasons the postal delivery of reprints (Chess Reader: nearly finished) should be done preferably from Germany.
Andreas Saremba would like to publish (with help of the KWA) a sort of coffee-table book on the subject “chess literature”; for this project suitable contributors among the members should declare their willingness. Those present at the Amsterdam meeting are not able at the moment to do such a piece of work.
For economical reasons the postal delivery of reprints (Chess Reader: nearly finished) should be done preferably from Germany.
Andreas Saremba would like to publish (with help of the KWA) a sort of coffee-table book on the subject “chess literature”; for this project suitable contributors among the members should declare their willingness. Those present at the Amsterdam meeting are not able at the moment to do such a piece of work.
Next general meeting
Two alternatives were on the agenda:
Musée Suisse du Jeu (La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland) will be the best choice if the transfer of the Ken Whyld Library is finished till September 2004 (to be clarified by JS). Otherwise a meeting at Forchheim (South Germany) according to a proposal of our member Udo Güldner will be favoured.
Next board meeting
will take place on June 18, 2004 in Brunswick on the eve of the next Klittich book auction.
Database Project
Andreas Saremba presented a hierarchical database model (“Functional requirements for bibliographical records”) which met the general approval of the participants. For a more detailed treatment of this complex subject we refer to the short paper by AS (still to be expected).
A meeting of our database experts is intended to take place on April 17 in Germany (maybe in Wuppertal). The expert group has to deal with:
- definition of the necessary software and hardware;
- specification of the database;
- definition of user requirements;
- front-end design for data search and input
- a project plan / timetable (AS)
[Comment by RB: I believe that I can hope (namely for conclusions/solutions in this project).]
A later data administration by our members will probably not be possible offline for technical reasons. Therefore the future members will have to possess the technical equipment in order to input the data online.
Publications / Reprints
There is a lasting interest on the part of Vlastimil Fiala to cooperate with the KWA. But there should be put more attention in future to the quality of the reprints (for example avoidance of simple typing errors directly on the title page). The sometimes far too long delivery times were already addressed above.
The present state of the other KWA publications (CR supplement issue; Yuletide series No. 0; Zukertort biography) is recorded in the minutes and also on our pages Publications p. 2-4. The manuscript of a Colman biography (in preparation by our member Olimpiu Urcan) probably needs a thorough revision by a native speaker – who is interested in such a lectorate?
Organization of the KWA Forum / Website activities
In order to put some life into our Forum RB will send an e-mail to the members including a short instruction for using this software.
Further updates of the website for the next months were discussed between MN and RB on their way back home (IGK symposium Berlin 2003; publications of our members; tribute to Ricardo Calvo; monthly birthdays).
Any further contributions by our members would be very welcome!
Our supporting programme intended on Saturday afternoon a visit of the Corus Tournament in Wijk aan Zee (about 25 kms away). An account of this visit was provided by Michael Negele together with an appendix Bibliographical Remarks about the literature and the history of this famous tournament: please surf through the following pages!