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BGonline.org Forums
Opinions and Policies and Members, oh my
Posted By: Rich Munitz In Response To: One of my dealings with a USBGF director and match recording (Justin N.)
Date: Saturday, 29 January 2011, at 5:09 p.m.
Michael,
The USBGF Board of Directors and Board of Governors is made up of numerous individual members of the backgammon community – just like this forum. As we know from the forum, there will be numerous personal opinions, often radically opposing, on any topic. You can’t take every statement by every person with some connection to the USBGF and assume that the statement represents USBGF policy. Stick may be a Board member, but as a free individual and member of the backgammon community he is free to insult whoever he wants. It is certainly not USBGF policy to go around insulting people. But I think that we are all committed to free speech. So we need to separate the individual from the organization.
Justin had a personal opinion. It was not policy. It was his own opinion both as a player and as an individual that devotes countless hours of his time to try to make the USBGF succeed. It doesn’t mean that everyone else involved with the USBGF shares that opinion. Stick doesn’t. I don’t. Before even reading this thread, Justin emailed me and I responded to him with the following:
I understand the sentiments. However, personally I tend to agree with Michael. I think there is a big difference between playing live and having someone recording a match by hand or videotape, and playing on a public server where anyone is able to watch the match and automatically obtain a recording of that match. I think if people play on a public server they can have no expectation of rights to the match records. Michael has been analyzing and posting match records for years in this manner. If you play regularly on SHG, you just expect it, just like you expect that when Iancho is watching your match on GridGammon, it will affect your PR that he will publish to the world. I think that the USBGF site can post important matches of online tournaments, but we should have no expectation of exclusivity.
If you are going to condemn an entire organization because one player involved states a personal opinion that you don’t like, then you have set the bar impossibly high. If someone makes a statement and you want to know if it is their individual opinion, or the policy of the USBGF, there is a simple solution – ASK!
I'm not sure what I or Perry said that you found disagreeable. You asked me if I would have any issue if you made use of my match for some special purpose of yours and I said it was ok with me.
As far as the question of the perceived conflict at times between the USBGF’s focus on obtaining members, and its mission to work for the good of backgammon, it is necessary to look at the big picture. The USBGF will only be able to accomplish its mission if it continues to exist. I can tell you that given the number of members, assuming that they all continue to renew their memberships, the annual burn rate of expenses currently significantly exceeds the membership revenues. Let’s put this in perspective. Let’s say that the USBGF has 250 members each paying $40 per year. That is $10000 in annual revenues. Now in a utopian world, everyone having exactly the skills needed would be stepping forward to say "here's what I can do, how can I help", donating their time to the organization and expecting nothing in return. However, we don’t live in that world; we live in the real world. So let’s say that the USBGF has to actually pay for 50 hours of professional services per month across all of its operations. That is next to nothing if you think about it. Let’s also say that such pro-services can be obtained for a rather low average billing rate of $20/hour. The expenses for pro-services alone are then $1000 per month or $12000 per year. If those were the only expenses, the USBGF would still be in the red. The only reason the USBGF can continue to operate is because of the generous donations of our Founding Sponsors. Those donations are assumed to be one-time donations and give us a temporary operating cushion. This is just not sustainable, let alone capable of funding the various things we would actually like to do. The USBGF’s top priority must be bringing in a critical mass of paid members so that its long term survival can be counted on. Otherwise we will be forced to close up shop and that helps nobody.
I hope that you will reconsider your support for the USBGF. We need it! And I was sincere that I believe that it would be great to have you involved on the inside. But I hope that you can understand that giving it all away for free to everyone with the hope that a generous benefactor descends from the sky before we run out of money is not a viable business model.
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