A new blog for Organizers and Directors

A blog for Organizers and Directors, by an Organizer and Director

There are a number of blogs out there dedicated to the various facets of chess – analysis, equipment, gossip, news, improving your game, etc.

But I cannot find a blog or website to give advice to those seeking to become organizers or directors / arbiters. So I’ve decided to start documenting my experiences so others can learn. Most of this though will focus from the organizers point of view.

When I started to discuss this idea with a few chess friends of mine these questions were posed:

Q1 – Why show others what you’ve learned with your own time, money, and pain?
A1 – Simple – to grow chess we have to work together or agree to not work together and leave each other alone. The more chess, the better. It gets chess in front of people’s eyeballs. That’s the key.

Q2 – Are you going to show them all of the tricks you’ve learned, like how to identify, approach, and talk to sponsors?
A2 – I’ll show everything up to a point. It’s impossible to document everything. Also having something documented and having some execute it are two different things. An individuals personality and the image they project when you meet them or talk to them is something that no advice can help with.

Q3 – What are your goals for doing this?
A3 – To educate. First for those that don’t know me personally, I’ve been teaching at Northwestern University since 2001 as an adjunct in their Graduate program of Computer Information Systems and their Non-Credit Degree program in Information Security. So I like to teach. It helps make connections, it helps keeping presentation and communication skills sharp, and it’s fun. But from a chess point of view there are not many organizers out there which is one reason why we have a decline in local area chess. If a large out of state organizer doesn’t come in to fill the gap then there isn’t much chess going on. So if I can help educate and get people to become organizers, then I think we’ll see a resurgence of local tournaments, by local organizers.

Now I’m not sure how often I am going to blog. I’m not going to set expectations and say I am going to blog once a day and have it turn out to be once a week. I have a lot going on with my family, work, and yes – go figure – chess. I believe you can sign up and get notified when this blog is updated. I’ll have to look into that. I will send out some quick emails to a group of blogs that I know are well travelled to alert them of a new posting.

A few rules for this blog:
(1) No chess politics. I will delete your chess politics posts;
(2) No slamming people. I will delete your slamming posts;
(3) No off topic posts. I will delete your off topic posts;

Click here to check out this new blog.

By Sevan Muradian of North American Chess Association