The ECF AGM held as a “hybrid” Zoom/face-to-face meeting on Saturday 26th of October was the least eventful and perhaps least interesting one there has been in years. There was not the conflict of opinions which always attends the April Finance Meeting, and none of the elections were contested. One person did in fact say, in effect, that he’d attended by Zoom rather than in person specifically because there was nothing to interest him in the meeting! Nevertheless, some matters of importance arose, and some mildly interesting information not really pertinent to the meeting got mentioned en passant.

There were about 35 attenders as registered on Zoom, of whom 17 were in the face-to-face part. (Those 17 were supposed to log into the Zoom meeting via their laptops to participate in the on-line voting system.)

Since the formation of the ECF from the BCF, the ECF AGM had always had embedded in it a BCF AGM conducted during the break for refreshments to merely fulfil the legal requirements of the dormant organisation and the occasional substantive topic. The BCF has now been wound down to the point where an AGM is not required, and so for the first time the ECF AGM did not contain an embedded BCF AGM.

As a hybrid meeting, this one was rather poor. Normally those at the face-to-face end are heard via their laptop microphone or by a microphone provided in the room. Problems with sound feedback echoing round within the sound system resulted in those in London muting their laptop microphones and reliance being placed on those on zoom picking up speech around the room in London via a laptop microphone at on end of the room. The result was that Zoom attenders received a lot of waffly speech which was not always discernible – varying from speaker to speaker.

Papers for the meeting can be seen on the ECF website here.

After the usual initial agenda items up to and including approval of minutes of the previous meeting and matters arising (of which there were none) there came reports from the Board and the Non-Executive Directors, then a Strategy Statement and Business Plan, then reports from the Governance and Finance Committees. The only one to stick out as important or containing anything seminal was the Strategy Statement and Business Plan.

Succession Planning

This phrase was not used in the Strategy Statement and Business Plan, but it well describes problems currently faced by the Sheffield & District Chess Association, The Yorkshire Chess Association, the Northern Counties Chess Union, and the ECF.

1) There is a perception that it is increasingly difficult to find volunteers (a word the ECF picks up on) to take over jobs in chess organisations – and probably in other fields as well. This is nothing new; in about 1912 the YCA was bemoaning the fact that “young men were not coming forward” to take over job. However, while the problem is a long-lived hardy perennial, modern culture seems to be exacerbating the problem.

2) There is also the problem that organising chess, like most things in live, is becoming increasingly more “technical”, which limits the number of people able to take on jobs.

Thus, volunteers who are both willing and able to take over jobs are quite literally a dying breed.

“Technical” of course refers to computer-related aspects of chess organisation. For the ECF, that means its website, its League Management System, and its all-important rating system. A less visible area is the ECF’s computerised membership system.

The problem lies in the fact that most if not all these computerised systems are currently dependent on one or few individuals who would be difficult to replace. People specifically mentioned were

1) Dave Thomas in connection with membership. Dave Thomas was formerly held the Membership Director post now held by Rob Willmoth, with Andrew Walker handling membership administration in the ECF office. The writer was not aware that Dave was still involved, but perhaps he works alongside the aforementioned in some membership-related capacity.

2) Brian Valentine as Manager of Rating. The writer is keenly aware that Brian, who is deeply immersed in rating matters, would be nigh impossible to replace. He is a year older that the writer. We played each other in the Chess, Suttton Coldfield, schools’ correspondence team competition over 50 years ago, but, as one involved in rating, I’ve since had dealing with him in this ECF context. Matthew Carr was not mentioned perhaps as he is still in his 30s, but my own involvement in rating has led me to suspect replacing him would be difficult.

3) Malcolm Peacock as creator of the ECF League Management System. The writer remembers Malcolm from his days playing for Sheffield University in the Sheffield & DCA’s competitions, and when he was appointed to create LMS, I was confident he’d make a good job of it, and he did. Since the revamp of LMS, others have been involved, so maybe Malcolm is winding down involvement. Be that as it may, overseeing and modifying LMS is a crucial role in that organisations have become dependent on it for feeding results into the rating system, and those like the writer who handle some rating outside LMS are winding down their input.

4) One could add the post of Finance Director to the list. Since David Eustace gave up that post there have been two incumbents who the writer feels agreed to take on the post because asked to in the absence of bright-eyed eager volunteers. Maybe outsourcing a finance function may be considered, though budgeting especially might be difficult to outsource.

The very fact that former Finance Director David Eustace, now 74, has been “recycled” as Chairman of Council further illustrates the succession problem of “young men” (and now women) not coming forward.

The phrase “key-person dependence” was used to describe this form of strategic weakness.

A song sung by Stanley Holloway described how a family on holiday had run out of things to do and resorted to the least-favoured option: “So, seeking for further amusement, they paid and went to the zoo.”

The conclusion has been arrived at that the ECF must consider procuring paid professional support, which of course means higher membership fees! Hitherto, the ECF has had a one-day discussion with just one potential IT services provider. A 3-figure potential (initial?) cost was suggested, though that is wildly approximate and very likely understated. As a former in-house computer programmer, the writer maintains a healthy scepticism regarding outsourcing computer services. The in-house programmer knows and understands in general terms what the end user wants and what makes them tick. This understanding is possessed by the volunteers mentioned above. The outsourced supplier has only the end user’s often inadequate articulation of requirements, hence the adage, “You only know what the user actually wants after the first live run.” There’s potentially a rocky road ahead.

It has long been at the back of my mind that Matthew Carr and perhaps others supporting the 4NCL, probably get paid by the 4NCL but support the ECF on a voluntary basis. (Who “does” the 4NCL website?)

Re-Structuring of the ECF Board

There has been in the air the idea of re-structuring the ECF Board, but this was not touched on by the above reports, but it was raised from the floor and taken as the subject of a verbal report, following the written ones, and to which various ECF Directors contributed. Nigel Towers, as Home Director, said the Home Directorate was now too big. (You could say that Nigel’s own industry had made it too big!) He seemed to suggest a separate Events Directorate should be instituted, perhaps with a number of “managers” appointed within it. (Shohreh Bayat was appointed Director of Events at the 2021 AGM and seemingly re-elected in 2022, so why that directorate since then vanished is a question one might ask.)

An IT Directorate was also suggested. Currently there is a Manager of IT among those listed as “Officers Reporting to the Board, President, Chief Executive or Chair of Council”.

An underlying element seems to be division of responsibilities within directorates, which perhaps makes some contribution to easing the above Succession Planning problem.

Nigel Towers (Home Director) said Board re-structuring “needs addressing in the reasonably short term.” The topic is bound to appear on the April 2025 Finance Meeting agenda.

Elections

Not all posts arise for election each year. There is a rota controlling when they arise. Intended tenure of posts is mainly for three years. There were no posts for election for which there was no nominee, and no posts where contested, so, unless the meeting took extreme exception to any candidate (when they would vote for “none of the above” i. e. leave a vacancy) elections could have been completed in very short time with all candidates being elected.

Elections have to be “card votes”, i. e. ones where the varying number of votes carried by delegates need to be taken into account rather than just going by a show of hands. Unfortunately, the Council Database used as an on-line voting method, had been modified, and whereas the off-line version (probably on Michael Farthing’s laptop) had been working okay, the version on the internet for some reason was not. This is a further illustration of increasing problems with IT systems lacking professional support.

As no post was contested by more than one candidate, it was possible to use the simple “for” or “against” voting facility, using “against” as the “none” of these” option.

All candidates were eventually elected. Some of the questions asked were arguably unnecessary and time-wasting.

The one point of interest was that Mike Truran had been expected by some to be standing down at this meeting. However, he was standing again, evidently as there was as yet no alternative coming forward. The Board is now expected to apply itself to finding a successor, though surely they should have started doing that at least 12 months ago. Maybe the writer is missing something here.

Appointment of Auditor

Reappointment of Watson Associates went through in a flash.

Future-Proofing the ECF’s IT Estate: Addressing Weaknesses and Enhancing Resilience

Despite the grand-sounding title and the allocation of a number to identify the document (C41.7), not paper was presented, and what was menmtioned here has been incorporated into “Succession Planning” above.

ECF Awards and Report on Grassroots Fund

These were primarily items to note. No paper on the first was available; rather, people were directed to a page on the ECF website. Stephen Greep had taken the trouble to provide a paper and to attend the meeting to speak to the Grassroot Funding topic, so all credit to him for that. Whilst he explained things, he had little to add to his report’s content beyond pointing out a typo, there being 9 “regions” not 10. He mentioned that after the first trench, they would in time go out to recipients for an assessment of the impact of the funding. There will be a DCMS Civil Servant somewhere avidly awaiting feedback. (The writer has been a Civil Servant, been there and done it!) See ECF Awards and Report on Grassroots Fund.

Constitution Changes

None of the revisions of wording of the Articles, Bye-Laws and Regulations were substantive, being aimed at improved clarity and adjustment as necessary to reflect recent changes such abolition of Silver membership. They were passed “nem, con,”.

Time and Place of Future Meetings

. . .also the form of meetings. There was a discussion about the relative merits of face-to-face meetings, Zoom meetings, and “hybrid” meetings combining the two. The simple reality is that people do not agree as different people have different requirements. The upshot was that the 2025 Finance Meeting is to be purely by Zoom on the 26th of April 2025, and that the 2025 AGM is to be a hybrid meeting on 25th October 2025 with the face-to-face element in Birmingham. (The proposal on the agenda was for the April meeting to be on 27th April, but that will be a Sunday.)

Steve Mann

(attending as Doncaster Congress delegate)