Midland
Counties Chess
Union

Papers for 2011 AGM
MCCU Home About MCCU Junior Chess Correspondence Chess County Matches Grand Prix Congresses Links Links Site Guide

 

 

About the MCCU MCCU Counties MCCU Officers Constitution Admin Papers

Page published 12 June 2011. Click here for a pdf version for printing.

MCCU Publicity Director’s Report 2010-11

Ray Collett 4 June 2011

I have used most of my time to update the MCCU web site. The intention has been to:

  1. enhance the visual impact of the site;
  2. report results of county matches and congresses participating in MCCU Grands Prix as rapidly as possible;
  3. add other items of Midlands news to the site; and publish a further short issue of The Middle Game.
  4. convert the site to new coding to make site maintenance easier.

I am most grateful to congress organisers, match captains and many players who have enabled me to record most results in a timely fashion.

During the year the director has also begun to build a contacts list of chess organisers in the MCCU area that goes beyond MCCU officials.

The visual appearance of the web site has been altered. The home page now has some information about MCCU and has links to further pages with more information about our chess union. The home page continues to carry a small number of items of recent news as well as notification of upcoming congresses and events.  The design of all web pages has been altered to allow a larger area for displaying content by reducing the size of the banner at the top of each web page.

The pages in the site been converted to ‘cascading style sheets’, which makes maintenance easier. The complexity of the site has been reduced so that the number of files and total size has been reduced by about two thirds.

Over the past twelve months, new sections have been added: Juniors, Grand Prix and Administrative pages. New pages provide links to county representatives to the MCCU, and all county and League websites within the MCCU. A total of 57 news items and 68 county match results have been published.

In terms of timeliness of reporting county match results, the speed of publication has been better than last year. All except one or two captains now report results on the weekend that matches take place. I believe this has added to players’ interest in the county team matches. The county league tables, however, were often recorded inaccurately by the webmaster and he is grateful for corrections from team captains. Most congress organisers were also very helpful and I was able to update the Midlands GP leader boards reasonably rapidly.

Courtesy of Carl Hibbard, sysop of the ECForum, I’ve started an “MCCU Matters” topic on the national forum. This topic has so far attracted about 6,500 views and generated 140 replies within 7 topics, considerably in excess of the activity recorded in the discussion forum in the MCCU website, which I have now discontinued in line with the policy adopted at the last annual meeting.

For the 2011-12 season, I recommend the Publicity Director to:

  1. use a spreadsheet for calculating county team competition tables and continue to encourage county team captains to send narrative reports of matches;
  2. promote more actively the Midlands Grand Prix competitions by contacting congress organisers and officials of chess organisations in the MCCU area;
  3. stimulate organisers to send pictures of events where prizes are presented;
  4. solicit reports from counties for publication on the MCCU website and publish further issues of The Middle Game; and
  5. continue to develop the contacts list so it includes all organisers of congresses in the MCCU area and club secretaries.

I am willing to continue as Publicity Director for the 2011-12 season.