NSC 2009 Town Hall Meeting
August 3, 2009, 8:30-10:15.

Panel:
Chris Cree (CC)
Mary Rhoades (MR)
John Robertson (JR)
Andy Saunders (AS)
John Williams (JW)

Executive Summary
* NASPA has now been running for 34 days. It has 1800 paid members, and an
official license to use the Scrabble name.
* Onlilne membership registration coming soon.
* NASPA efforts and decision-making are delegated to committees, and most of
those committees have open spots, looking for volunteers. Email committee
chairs for more info.
* NSC 2010, 2011 will be at Intercontinental Hotel near Addison Center in
Dallas, TX.
* NASPA is open for volunteers for 2012 tournament committee.
* Video coverage of games was too expensive this year, but there's lots of high
quality coverage on the web.
* Liability insurance is being looked into.
* NASPA has put off the decision of whether to join WESPA.
* The decision on the proposed governance committee has not yet been made, and
will be reviewed by the steering committee.



CC: NASPA has been open for 34 days. Since March, we have had 1800 paid
memberships..More are continuing to trickle in as memberships are required for
people to play in tournaments. We'll know the actual size of the community by
July 2010. As of 2 days ago, NASPA is the only organization officially licensed
to use the name Scrabble in their events. Even NSA didn't have that. The plan,
principally, is to keep tournament Scrabble alive. We're still learning how to
do this, having been on the phone with John Williams and John Chew. Talking to
the Hasbro people, they're not looking to get rid of us...just to not fund us
anymore. I see Hasbro as indirectly funding our membership program, since
they're continuing to fund School Scrabble, and the kids eventually are too old
to be part of that. We want to develop a transitional scheme for bringing these
kids into NASPA. We're also looking at what might happen after the Williams'
decide they want to retire. We might hope to see a future where this ends up in
the NASPA fold, or things might go quite differently. NASPA is a 501(c)(4)
not-for-profit corporation. Many players have made donations which we really
appreciate, but you can't yet write off those donations. We have applied to the
IRS, and it takes many months. After that's done, the idea is to form an arm to
the corporation, a 501(c)(3) foundation, which would be able to accept
deductible donations.

JC: I've always thought of CC as the kind of person who would be great to
advocating for and leading our community. Also here are John Roberts, who wrote
the Scrabble code of ethics, and Andy Saunders, the head of the Tournament
Committee (the "new Joe Edley"). Also, Mad Palazzo has helped greatly with the
membership. We have online mechanism for paying for and submitting tournament
results, but we don't have online membership signup, yet. That will come next
week. The prize fund was late being posted because of the enormous amount of
work to do, and thanks to everyone who trusted their money with us without even
knowing what the prizes were.

CC: I thought it was amazing that, come the first of July, there was no farewell
to NSA, no fanfare, simply four tournaments that needed to get rated and got
rated. Thanks to JC.

Steph Steele, MN: What are your plans for including the members of the
organization into the decision-making processes in the future? Right now, the
decision-making seems like a closed process.

JC: If you go to our website and click on committees, you see that all of the
work we do is being delegated to committees. These committees include people
who are energetic and enthusiastic about performing these functions. Most
committees have open membership, although a few committees are full. If there's
something you'd like to do for NASPA, send email directly to the committee
chair. If you want to influence policy, the policy is coming from the
committees. For example, suppose you're a director and you don't like the
existing rules about scheduling tournaments. The Tournament Committee is making
those decisions, not Chris, Carla, Mary, or me.

AS: The committee has been cut at nine people, but the Yahoo group is open to
anyone who wants to send opinions on any tournament-related issues.

JC: Each committee has been formed on the basis of who volunteered fastest. At
least one committee, the Canadian committee, has a succession policy.

CC: I want an American committee.

JC: You can have a Texan committee. The policy is to rotate members out and
bring new members in, either through an election or volunteer process. Chris
and I are making relatively few decisions about how clubs and tournaments are
actually being run. We're also open to other ideas about other forms of
representation, but we're leaving it up to individual boards and committees,
largely. If you want to figure out how to become a member of the AB, talk to
your AB representative and ask them about how to become a candidate. As for who
the "board members" are, we had to incorporate as a not-for-profit corporation
in Texas as the North American Word Game, Inc. (defensive in case Hasbro ever
changes it mind). There is a requirement that the corporation have a board of
trustees, which includes, Chris, Carla, and Mary. They were selected because
they must be U.S. (unlike me), and need easy access for signatures and such.
These positions have no decision-making authority, but they have a legal
responsibility.

SS: In terms of the brouhaha of where NSC would be held...it feels like the
decision-making is being held by a very small group, such as the potential for
placing an NSC in Reno.

JC: In order to book space at an affordable rate, we need a planning window of
1-3 years. Right now, for example, we are in the process of planning the 2012
championship. CC and I have been involved in preparing the point system for
rating venues, but we don't want to be the ones doing this. We want people who
have some experience in the community to be involved in this. If you want to be
a member of the 2012 championship location selection committee, we welcome you.
First on your agenda would be to determine how your successor should be chosen,
and second is determining the point system for rating venues.

Shelly Ubeika, ON: Where will Nationals be in 2010, 2011?

CC: The simple answer is Dallas, TX. I definitely did not want to pick Dallas.
I contacted people in places such as Kansas City, Louisville, some place in
Virginia. Jane recommended using a search company, which I contacted.
Literally, every day for 60 days, I got emails and faxes with 10-30 proposals
for locations everywhere. Important for me was the cost of the facility,
hotels, availability of emergency facilities, food/beverage requirements, square
feet. For example, got 12 hotels in Vegas, 8 hotels in Reno. These proposals
required commitments for food/beverage, $25,000 for the space, and so on. I
refused to make commitments for food/beverage. A hotel in Dallas, the
Intercontinental, wanted a commitment for the number of hotel rooms. I made a
commitment of 200 rooms in Dayton. The Intercontinental offered the meeting
space for free if the room commitment is met. I didn't want to do this because
it would look like "home cookin'". The search company guy as an incentive
offered 10% of his fee to NASPA to take this place. I had dinner with the hotel
representative to sign the contract, and he pulled out two contracts...one for
2010 and one for 2011. The deal was too good to pass up. I heard from John
Williams that they're back in Orlando looking for a site for School Scrabble,
and the Orlando people are saying that Las Vegas are kicking their butts because
they've dropped prices. I'm wondering where were those lower prices in
February? Now that I've heard about Vegas dropping their prices, we're
interested in talking to them. Concerning requests about moving the NSC around
the country, that seems like it would be a good part of the selection process,
but we really want to look for a deal. One major issue has been the hospital
situation. New Orleans wanted us to come back, but we didn't want to go because
of the hospital situation there. The other thing to remember is that when you
make the deal, it depends upon how hungry the people you're dealing with are.
18 months ago, Dayton was a wonderful deal. It doesn't look quite as good today
because of the down economy.

JC: As much as this tournament looks like past NSC, it's not. We are missing a
huge amount of cash from Hasbro. This makes us much more careful about how we
use money because we're relying only on your entry fees.

Phyllis Hale, Tipp City, OH: I read in the newspaper about how there would be a
room where you could watch the tourney on TV, but this didn't happen. What
happened?

JC: Last time, we tried this and we got a streaming video system which was fuzzy
and low resolution. We did it because the guy who did it cut us a really good
deal, $500 for the entire tournament. If we'd gotten the same deal this year,
we would have done it. I apologize that we didn't get that out of the press
release information until too late.

MR: I'd like to apologize for the newspaper article. I was interviewed by the
paper during the 12 hour drive from Texas, and I wasn't yet aware that this had
fallen through.

JC: What's exciting is that if you go to the website, we show the same game that
we had shown using video streaming, but it's a very clear graphic. If you go to
our website, you can see the most exciting game, and get Sherrie St. John's
color commentary. If we had super-large tournaments like they do in Thailand,
we might be able to afford something like that.

JW: For example, the last time we produced the broadcast for ESPN, it was about
$40,000, although there was a lot of money hidden in other areas, so it might
have been 1.5 times that. Although technology is changing, so the costs may
drop.

Sam Kantiamathi: I think the Intercontinental is a great choice. Is that near
the Addison Convention Center, or the one far away from it?

CC: It's the one near the Addison with 200 restaurants nearby.

Sam Kantiamathi: One of the mainstays of this tournament is the after-hours
room.

CC: I made arrangements for the after hours room, lobby, and bar to be open all
night.

Sam Kantiamathi, CA: We who are representing America and Canada in the Worlds
would really appreciate your support.

CC: One of the major issues with worlds is joining WESPA (Worlds
Engllish-language Scrabble Players Association). I've gotten requests for NASPA
to join, which only costs $150 for the entire organization. For the moment, we
told them no, principally because we have too much on our plate right now.
SOWPODS is not the dictionary of choice. We don't want the first act of NASPA
to align ourselves with an organization which espouses a dictionary the majority
of our players don't support, and whose major corporate sponsor, Mattel, is a
competitor of Hasbro's. So we're puttiing off discussion of this until later.

Sam: Look to Thailand as an example, where most players play OSPD, but they
support their world players.

CC: One big advantage that Thailand has is that the game there is owned by no
one, and they also have government support.

Sam: Since we have an organization, now, can we make progress on the issue of
liability for forums for the large scale tournaments?

CC: Liabililty insurance for Dallas is being covered by the hotel. We're
looking into liability organization-wide. We're talking to people who have
promised information about insurance, that we haven't yet gotten. They've never
dealt with a group quite like ours, so some confusion has ensued. I'll be able
to answer the question better once I've gone through this process, hopefully in
a week or so.

JW: A reminder that when I landed in this job to begin with, Selchow & Righter
ahd just gone under, we were dealing with Coleco which had no experience with
games and cared more about Trivial Pursuite, the NSC in San Francisco had been
promised and was pulled at the last minute, the newsletter was irregular, and
the entire organization was run by executives with no player input. Through the
hard work of a lot of people, we've come a long way. Now we're at a similar
juncture, but with far more talent and the Internet. It takes a little time for
this to come together. We do have limits in that there will always be a
commercial aspect to this, and going forward we should be realistic about that.
Thanks to everyone who has helped. I got to the point where, in the same day, I
had a Scrabble player call me a corporate schill and Hasbro people telling me
that I wasn't thinking of corporate interests, and I knew I was doing something
right.


Barbara Drinkwine, Wisconsin: Our club is very small. We want to know what the
$30 fee is for, and how it would be used?

JC: You should know that the club fee is waived if you sign up 10 members. This
has to be sent by the director as one check for ten membership fees together,
and tell us at that time that they want the membership fee waived.

MR: Some clubs have put out tip jars to collect the fee.

Steve Pellinen, MN: We're interested in a bylaws and governance committee. We
know that there's a need for patience. We need to spread this out and have lots
of openness. Not only from the standpoint of accountability, but to spread out
the workload. People want to feel their voice is heard, and that's part of what
the proposed governance committee should address. Can we have a governance
committee? I've chaired the budget committee, but we feel that there's plenty
to do, but the governance issues get in the way, sometimes.

JC: We need to talk about this in the steering committee tomorrow night. I
appreciate very much Steve's views. I think we need to decide exactly what will
happen with these issues and whether the steering committee will evolve into a
governance committee, or whether it will be a separate group. I can't give you
a definite answer because we haven't finished discussing this because the
steering committee as a whole needs to answer the issue. How many people feel
too many decisions are being made by a small group of people?

[About 1/3-1/2 people raise their hands]

Steve: I think that all committees should be taking minutes which are public.

AS: It was so simple for me to end up being in the Tournament Committee. I was
willing to do the work.

Gene Tyszka, ON: Our history in the NSA was beholden to Hasbro. I would like to
see NASPA not become another NSA.

JC: There is no danger of this happening because we literally can't afford to.
We won't pay somebody to make autocratic decisions. We need volunteers.

Allen Pengelly, Cambridge, Ontario: In American Contract Bridge League, there is
total transparency, with minutes and budgetary information available online.
Can NASPA aim to do this?

JC: I have no problem with this. Are you volunteering to take minutes?

Allen: Sure.

CC: Some people seem to be concerned that I sit in my office in NASPA and make
decisions for the entire organization. There are lots of people who are
contacting NASPA looking for answers, and if they write me for answers, they get
answers. I understand where you're coming from. I've had 33 days; give me time
and we'll get it right. This is important.

MR: We're all working out of our homes right now. We've been very busy, but
it's been a joy.