2013 Annual Meeting

Page published 14 June 2013

MCCU Publicity Officer's and Webmaster's Report 2012-3

Ray Collett 13 June 2013

Introduction

As in the previous year I have concentrated my efforts on maintaining the MCCU website, which now takes up as much time as I have available for this task. The publication policy remains centred on the MCCU area and players in affiliated counties and I try to link the MCCU site to county, league or club sites rather than to duplicate results on other websites.

Review of annual performance

The major business has been to report in as timely a fashion as possible the results of MCCU stage county matches. A total of 54 MCCU stage match results were published, almost all within two days of a match being held. I am very grateful to county captains who have sent me details and corrected my errors. A further 15 results of national stage county matches involving MCCU teams have also been published, but with some delay as I was ill for a period after Easter.

A second major aim has been to report the current leading positions in the Midlands Grand Prix and Rapid Grand Prix. The results service was timely for during the period until February and I was unable to keep up with the flood of congress results at the end of March and in April and some results had to wait up to two weeks before publication.

A third aim has been to promote and develop chess in the MCCU area. About seventy news items were reported including about a dozen items about MCCU junior players, compared with about one hundred last year. I have increased the coverage of national and regional junior events. When junior regional events include MCCU counties, but take place outside the MCCU, I have included them within the web pages when I receive information about them.

The website continues to feature upcoming congresses and chess-related events in the MCCU area. I regret that I do not have time to include congresses in other counties, which in any case are usually listed by the ECF website. A director for e2-e4, which holds congresses in MCCU counties and in other counties and Ireland has asked me not include their events in the MCCU diary because I did not feel able to accede to a request to include all e2-e4 congresses in the MCCU website. I feel my decision was consistent with the publication policy that members have seen in my reports since becoming Publicity Director. I believe were I to have published information about one company's congresses outside the MCCU, I would have had to publish similar information for other organiser's congresses and I judged I did not have time to do this.

 A director of e2-e4 asked me to remove a news item which reported the achievements of a prominent MCCU player at an e2-e4 congress and to publish no information about MCCU players' achievements in e2-e4 congresses in the future. The relevant news item was removed within a short time of the complaint being received and I have ceased to report e2‑e4 events.

Last year's meeting discussed whether a games viewer should be added and games collections be included within the website. There was some support for this addition and I have very recently added games collections from organisers of four congresses to the MCCU website. These are available as downloadable portable game notation (.pgn) files from the Grand Prix page of the website. I decided that I had insufficient time to include a game viewer.

Conclusion

Again I thank all correspondents who have reported news, match results and pointed out errors. Without this input the website would be less comprehensive and much less accurate. I am willing to continue as Publicity Director and website editor next season.