Roster, Vital or How Do You Spell Microsoft.xls?

(Double click image to enlarge)

John has asked the editor to ask all of you, if anyone is available to keep the club roster going forward? Our Secretary not only can do it with his eye's closed--as he calls it--BUT positively LOVES spreadsheets the way some men love Corvettes, cigarette's, or wine, or some specific genders like Italian shoes and hand crafted leather handbags, really its true, but:

he soon won't be able to do it for the club. It is not a sheet with formula's, but lots of data entry, phone numbers. For example, Roger and us have been up to date for a long time, but his had a deletion of a previously perfectly good number. His contact is vital to John, Doran, our club. But phone numbers change, get phased out. All that. It is rigorous. The volume of work there is scant, but it is ongoing...

So the task is one of immediacy. We had visits last night, one filled out our sheet. Good. James is obviously on a tear, playing well, and back from hiatus, and I asked John to make sure he got the sheet. We needed his email and phone number.

It is very bad practice to write phone numbers on little pieces of paper, think Bliss's GTD or Getting Things Done (link in red at L) or Franklin-Covey Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Franklin Day Planner. Another classic is Lakein's 'How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life'. Think having to learn to allocate tasks, identify, retain, and complete them before the age of Smart-Phones. Think remember and pay attention. Think mental construct.

So anyway, there is no catching up. The editor, if he does not do it the next day, does it the day after that, then saves the file to the gmail, as a draft. Then John or Doran can be in Jakarta and its there. Smiles.

What is this all about? It is important. We don't seek more money, bigger names, more class players, no. We seek to always see more good persons. Think of the walk in's--Reiska, Mr. Messing now, some of the youth, Rob now, Jason, one by one build it and they will come.

The blog supports it, the gmail is fed by the list. The list feeds the blog. Folks show up, new email. In sales, a few referrals alone will not make your business. Well, OK, they do help. But the real kicker is referrals of REFERRALS. That is power.



Speaking of power. Make that the triumphate of Fischer, Kasparov, and Carlsen. This is another good one. Really good. Part one of four.

[Part two for above, part three, and part four, linked in red. Start of video one here, 1:19 to 2:24 mark+. Just try sitting across from this guy, before you hit the clock... intimidation.]

Power is the club gifting scholarships, it is more youth, it is more clocks, it is a new notebook, it is more capable TD's (as in quantity only), it is several, not just one candidate VP's. A VP is more than a VP. A VP is a President in development. A VP is a President in absentia when needed

So this list is the editors parting gift. Please help the club, someone. It is taking the emails and adding them to the roster, when the email is wrong, calling someone, or asking them to confirm. One brick at a time. One day, you look up, and you have a hundred names.

Four persons results in 24 possible combinations of conversations (editor looks to our esteemed club Treasurer, who teaches Statistcs at Seton Hall University to obviously correct me). Five is 120 conversations. Six persons results in 720. 8!=40,320. As it goes exponential, the creative, social, economic, and spiritual richness expands. Try fifty or sixty persons taken exponentially. It's a network. Bob West calls Mohan. Ian runs into Mark who talks to Glen. Glen talks to Goeller. Goeller runs into Yacovin, who tells a student, try to play more weekly tournaments. A new student seeks out a serious GM. On and on. Think network.

The club is a body of like minded persons, in civil conduct, open (usually) to the public, connected, in our era, by rapid electronic communication, of email and the internet. This gives wide access. Access gives growth, growth gives more quality. Blogs can mean, for example, a strikingly poignant video of the greatest chess player of all time, on Sixty Minutes, it means his counterpart, Magnus Carlsen on same, and sharing it. Some of these things, while in popular media, can be hard to find [1].

The roster. Very basic, but constant. The club crankshaft. Not the legs or the wheels, but the hub.

If John or Ken or Harry all went at once, in whatever form, where is the club? Is it on slips of paper, is it Charlie or John B having a key? This roster is secure on the web, an existence system (red at left).

Lastly, this is not a request for a blogger. Roger can fill in there. And the blog is not the matter, nor emails. Those are tools of communication, coordination, plans, decisions, and implementation, it is really project management, of which the blog is a major tool for attracting and distributing incentive and determination. Wew.

[1] It is four persons telling the editor he is long winded.