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Saturday Night Dinner in Michigan

Posted By: phil Simborg
Date: Wednesday, 24 June 2009, at 9:51 a.m.

In Response To: Saturday Night Dinner in Michigan (Stick)

Getting a bunch of people together to share ideas and brainstorm is always fun, but in my experience, little gets accomplished. Everyone has their own perspective, ideas, and agenda. Conversations tend to get off topic and get into debates about various points, and conversations tend to get dominated by people who have the strongest egos and biggest mouths.

Again, these conversations can be great to air issues, but if the goal is to get some decisions made and come up with a plan to affect positive change, it is not going to happen around a big table with a bunch of people--even good people with good ideas and intentions (as I believe you all are).

I am one of those people who believes that "a committee of two people is most effective when one doesn't show up." I also believe that any gathering without an agenda is doomed to accomplish little or nothing.

The point I am making is that after everyone has sounded off about what they think needs to be done to improve tournaments, ratings, and backgammon participation in general, in order for something to really get done, a single person, or a very small group, needs to be "empowered" by the group to take the bull by the horns and make specific recommendations and work toward getting them accepted by the ABT and all of us involved.

There is no way these recommendations will be warmly accepted and agreed to by all--no matter what changes are recommended, there will be many who will disagree.

What I am suggesting is that when you guys meet that you have a real agenda, and I would like to recommend that it be something along the following lines:

1. Try to get a concensus that the status quo is not adequately promoting backgammon to the masses; that the current structure of tournaments is not encouraging participation and growth in the manner it could and should; and that "some" changes need to be made to improve these areas. 2. Agree to disagree. Get everyone who agrees that there should be changes to also agree that we will never be able to please everyone, but refusal to try new things and to revise things like ratings, fees, tournament formats, etc. etc. will simply paralyze the ABT and backgammon and nothing will get done. So get people to agree to disagree about specific changes, but agree that we need to try them anyway and doing something is better than doing nothing. 3. Instead of trying to determine exactly what changes need to be made at this gathering, designate a very small group of people who are respected by the group for their intelligence, leadership abilities, and willingness to take the time and effort, to take the lead on coming up with specific recommendations and ideas to bring back to the leaders of the ABT and the major tournament players who need to support these changes to make them happen. 4. Set a definite time-frame and plan for that group to come back with it's recommendations.

I applaud you guys for getting together and I can assure you there are plenty of us not on your list that will support your efforts to change and improve tournaments and backgammon in general in the US.

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