2024/05/14 | James Story jm9st9@gmail.com
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Create an AGA Hall of Fame. This could be something simple, like just announcing it via email and/or a page on the AGA website.
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Create criteria for induction into the AGA Hall of Fame. Suggestions:
- over-the-board excellence
- lifetime of service
- important action helping to promote Go in the USA (like helping start the Manhattan Go club, etc.)
- Have a nice certificate printed for the inductees or, better, a nice plaque. Perhaps, announce the new inductees at the US Go Congress.
Suggested inductees:
- Michael Redmond, for excellence over the board.
- Edward Lasker, for helping form the Manhattan Go Club, the first Go club on the east coast of the USA.
- the Founders of the SF Go Club, for founding the first Go club on the west coast of the USA.
- Daniel Barry, for being the first American to play Go in space.
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Increase AGA Membership by 10% annually. Suggestion: Have an Annual Membership Drive. Perhaps, choose one or two months out of the year (perhaps, a winter month, like January or February, and a summer month, like July or August) and encourage every club member to bring one new potential player to the club. Communicate this through emails to members and emails to AGA chapter organizers. Have a friendly competition between AGA chapters to see who can add the most AGA members to their chapter and who can increase their membership the most as a function of the percentage of their membership. That way, less-populated areas can compete on an equal basis. People, Go is a fascinating and fun game. We should be excited to share it with others! What would help Go players to invite others to come play? I’ve done a free-drink month at the coffee shop where we meet. Any new players receive a free non-alcoholic beverage. Would something that they could print out, like an invitation, help? IDK. What other ways can we create Go awareness and recruit new players?
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Help Create more Scholastic Go clubs. Work with the AGF (American Go Foundation), AGA Chapters, and educators to create more Scholastic and Library Go clubs. Encourage local support. This may prove difficult, but I feel it is essential to our long-term growth. Once kids leave high school, they are busy with college, their careers, raising a family, etc. They will not have free time again until they retire and they will already be busy with other interests by then. The USCF (US Chess Federation) had a big push in the 1990’s to create scholastic Chess Clubs and it almost doubled their membership. They, currently, have 112,000 members. We have, what? 2,000 members? Chess is a fun game (I used to play in Chess tournaments), but Go is soooo much more interesting. Granted, Chess had the Fischer vs Spassky Chess championship match in the early 1970’s, during the Cold War, that helped push Chess into the national spotlight and that really boosted the USCF membership, but we simply must attract potential Go players while they are young. The younger people learn to play Go, the longer period of time they have to share it with others, because young people, on average, live longer than old people. 😊
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Create FREE Go materials to help support Scholastic Go clubs and help rank beginners. These could be videos and/or printable materials. I will attach some printable materials that I have created. I think we lose a lot of Go players as beginners, when they do not immediately improve. Some people figure it out fairly quickly and, so, stay with it. Others, like me, didn’t figure it out that quickly, but are just fascinated by it and, so, stick with it. And, others are drawn to it, but don’t immediately improve and, so, they feel lost and stop playing. I recently taught a high schooler who was pretty good at Chess. We played on a 9x9. He noted that the tactics were more complex than Chess. Well, true or not, everything is hard at first. We need to help get beginners over that initial learning “hump”.
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Determine AGA Membership Demographics. Do we even know who we are? Poll our members to determine our demographics (age, gender, profession, ethnicity, income bracket, what other hobbies/activities do they enjoy, etc. We already know their location). This will allow us to better target future recruitment efforts of potential AGA members. For example, I know a lot of IT professionals that are Go players. If it is determined that this group of individuals naturally enjoy Go, then it would make sense for us to use our resources to promote the game to them. We could gather this demographic information through an online membership survey (there are various websites that can help us with this) and communicate this to our members via email. For example, I would think MENSA members would flock to Go.
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Use the Annual Go Congress to promote Go awareness in the host city. I think the host city’s local media would be interested in any organization that held their annual congress in their city. Contact them months in advance and, also, just before the Go Congress. Do daily press releases. Have beginner Go classes for anyone who stops by (promote these in advance). Maybe, send groups of four Go players out into the community for half a day to play Go in public places, like coffee shops, libraries, parks, etc. Provide them Go-promotional material.
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Promote Go Awareness. I do this passively when we play Go in public, by having a sign that reads, “Come Play! Ask Questions. Beginners and Kids Welcome”. This allows people to feel free to interrupt us and ask about the game. People seem naturally fascinated by the black and white stones and are curious to learn about Go. I have business cards and other materials that tells when and where we meet, how to get free Go starter sets from the AGF, etc. I’ll attach some to this email. Question: How else can we promote Go awareness?
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Create an online “Promoters Forum” to help Go promoters share their ideas with each other. Maybe this already exists? Occasionally, communicate promotional ideas to AGA chapter organizers via email.