Council News etc.

In the November Council meeting it was agreed that

- Colin Williams would take over the Chair of the Tournaments Committee, following the resignation of Matt Marsh. Matt will still be managing the running of this year's British Championship
- Stephen Tweedie would take over the Chair of the Technical Committee from Colin

Handover sessions are being arranged, and committee members should hear from the new Chairs reasonably soon.

The short Annual General Meeting of the British Go Association was held at 20:00 on the Saturday evening of the British Go Congress in Cambridge.

The President, Roger Huyshe, chaired the meeting and, in his report, thanked Paul Barnard and John Collins who had stepped down from the roles of Membership Secretary and Online Committee Chairman, both after several years. He also stated that player development had taken a backseat due to DeepMind’s AlphaGo matches, but this year training sessions were being planned for the autumn.

The membership accepted his and the other officers' reports (including that of new Membership Secretary Chris Kirkham) and on the recommendation of the auditor, Pat Ridley, approved the accounts for 2016. These showed a surplus thanks to DeepMind sponsorship and the omission of a strong player training day.

The Council were re-elected with Richard Wheeldon replacing John Collins.

A summary of the AGM will be sent to all Association members in the next Newsletter and full minutes posted in the Members' Area in due course.

Like some other sports organisations we have decided to initiate some British Go Association awards in order to encourage players and organisers. We have selected the following categories for this year:

• Player of the year
• Club of the year
• Loss of the year (of a game)
• President’s award for services to Go.

Your nominations in each category are solicited by 31st December 2014 with a citation of a maximum of 150 words supporting the nomination.

Following this there will then be a vote for Player of the Year amongst the membership to determine the winner. If there are more than three nominations in this category Council will choose three to participate in the subsequent voting.

The winner in the second and third categories will be determined by Council from the nominations received.

The President’s award may be given to someone who has given many years or service or to someone who has done something special this year.

For some while Council has been focusing its Clubs and Membership recruitment and development attention on the building up of University clubs.

There are a number of issues in the creation and support of these which we have been working on, but one of these issues is that students are extremely price sensitive and that in the digital age they now expect to receive almost all their information electronically, with printed material being considered of little importance and often discarded.

So Council has decided that, for an extended trial period and with immediate effect, the Student membership fee will be reduced to £5 per annum and that it will be the first online-only membership category.

The main change regarding this is that Students will not receive a printed copy of the British Go Journal, but they will be able to access it via our Members Area.

Association members are reminded of a benefit that few have taken up recently, perhaps in part because it was low down the website tree.

The Game Review Service can be a very efficient way of improving your game as comments are tailored to the individual's strengths and weaknesses.

So why don't you send in a game today?

As most of you are probably aware there has been an announcement about an international Learn to Play Go week from GoGameGuru:

"On Saturday, September 13, 2014, we’re going to go out into our local community and run a small Go teaching event. And we hope that you’ll join us – by organizing your own modest, local Go demonstration. If you already do this from time to time then you don’t have to do anything new. All we’re asking is that run your own demonstration on the same day as everyone else. September 13 will be the start of a new event called Learn Go Week."

We've decided not to organise a UK-wide special event, but would like everybody involved in Go to create their own local events to support this concept. This could be a great publicity occasion for local club, so please get out, arrange an event and publicise it in your local press.

I'm pleased to be able to announce that the following people have been appointed as Officials of our organisation:

• Gerry Gavigan as the London Open Organiser
• Maria Tabor as our new Marketing Manager

I'd like to welcome both of them on board - Please give them all they help they need.

At the suggestion of one of our members we are pleased to announce that the reports submitted for the AGM are now available in the Members Area of our website.

This includes the unaudited accounts for 2013.

Apologies for the delay in issuing the following - it was intended for the Newsletter but not included by mistake (not the Editor’s).

The agenda for our AGM next Saturday to be held at Butlins, Bognor Regis 7:30pm is:

• Election of Tellers
• Minutes of the 2013 AGM
• Matters Arising
• Officers, Membership Secretary and Auditors reports
• 2013 Accounts
• Election of Officers and Auditor
• Election of Ordinary Council Members
• Consideration of Proposals Received
• Any Other Business

Please note that no proposals for item 8 from members were received by the Constitutional deadline.