News

Updates & Plans

Many things to cover here so I'll get right to it. As I promised earlier the Winter Tournament details are now online, as are the details for the Spring and Summer events. The Division Plan has also been updated to reflect the details for the new expanded WCC.

The Out of Town Section has been updated, including new Results. Unfortunately there hasn't been too much good news to speak of lately with regard to performances of Calgary players, but at least they're trying.

Okay, I also promised a brief outline of the site plans for 2002, so here it is. The core of the planned improvements for this year will focus on the club's members, but there will be something for everybody. Of course, all of the improvements are contingent on the amount of time I have available to work on the site.

For members I am hoping to be able to create a more open line of communication with the directors in the form of a Web Discussion Forum. I'm willing to moderate discussions on important issues should anybody want to participate. I'll also be providing a separate non-member forum, but only for finding out specific information about the Calgary club and how we do things. For general issues there are already many Scrabble®-related mailing lists and forums out there.

I'm also hoping to open up the accountability of the club's Directors a bit by posting summaries of what happens at our Directors' meetings. However, the extent of my ability to do this, and to provide the kind of openness I desire in the forum, hinges on approval from the other Directors. I suspect I'm going to take some heat for even mentioning this before it's approved, but it's not the first time. Anyhow, there will be a forum of some sort - exactly what I'll be allowed to say in it is what's yet to be decided. The forum should be up pretty soon. The hard part is finding some decent forum software - once I do that it shouldn't take very long to install and test.

For prospective members, I'd like to put together a decent kind of FAQ. This won't be like the crazy FAQ that used to be on the site (which was misnamed; none of the questions on there were anything close to frequently asked). Instead this FAQ will concentrate specifically on new players. Sample questions might be: "Do I need to be a competitive person to play at your club?", "Do I need to study thousands of words to have success?", and "What kind of people attend your club?".

For all, my main focus will be on automating and steamlining the existing site. Many things will be behind the scenes, but not all. The most exciting thing I'm planning is live round-by-round results from both the Club and tournaments. However, this will hinge on several things, so don't expect it until much later in the year. And of course it may not happen at all. But the whole point of doing live round-by-round results is ultimately to make things easier on myself so I'd like to do it if I can. (Don't worry, if I do an upgrade to the Club Results Archive I'll make sure it's a non-disruptive one so I don't get backed up on the results again!)

Lastly, some loose ends will be tied up, like the completion of the Virtual Tour and stuff. Of course as various modifications are made I will post more details. Hopefully it will be a good year for the site!