Happy New Year to all

We've been struggling with re-installing some details of the WCF web site after the attack on our service provider 10 days ago - especially the News section on the home page, which eventually Brian Storey had to re-load from scratch (thanks Brian for all your work on this).  If you find any nooks or crannies that don't work properly, please let me know - though I've still got a long list of information updates to make.

I'm hoping that I can now get back to working with the Management Committee to progress some of the many items we're currently wrestling with.  The largest single item is a 10 Year Schedule of future events - we hope to publish this early in the New Year and then call for bids to host events for the next couple of years.  We've done a lot of work on this but still need to pin down exactly which options we're going to recommend to the Member associations.  There's lots of other interesting topics to get to grips with too, so I'm looking forward to a productive year ahead with the WCF MC.

I hope you have a great New Year and have many enjoyable and successful croquet games in the coming season (or rest of the current season if you're in the Southern Hemisphere).

Martin French

WCF website back up

It seems our service provider was attacked and many of its servers were compromised, not just the WCF website.  I have deleted and re-loaded the website from my local copy.  I have not yet been able to copy back up all the videos and photos (as they are huge and take 10s of hours) - I'll add them over the next few days.

For some reason the News feed currently doesn't work.  This is linked from another service provider, and as I can't access their login page either, I wonder if they are having problems too.

Anyway, apologies for the service interruption.

WCF website hacked

Just a quick post - we have detected that a lot of the files on the WCF website were altered at 04.51 this morning, and finding the site via a Google search yields a malwear warning.  I suggest you do not access the web site for the rest of the day while I re-load it.  In particular, check any link before you click it.  I will post another blog entry when I've fixed it.  Thanks.

It pays to plan ahead....

....apparently.  I knew we were very close to finalising and announcing that the 2011 Women's GC World Championship would be staged by Croquet New Zealand in the Bay of Plenty region - but I hadn't prepared the web pages so they were ready to go as soon as the agreement was in place.  Doh!

As a result, I've spent 2 or 3 hours today wrestling with a placeholder entry on the 2011 Championships page of the WCF website, trying to add the relevant information about the New Zealand plans.  If it was just HTML, I could probably have copied and pasted in the text from the CNZ plan or their press release quite quickly.  But the combination of Dreamweaver, PHP and something called Spry Widgets made it less than obvious how to alter the placeholder to incorporate the new information.  Still, managed it eventually after several cups of tea and some swearing. 

The event will soon have its own website, run by CNZ, which will be linked from the WCF page.  But I think I need to learn a lot more about the technology behind our web site, as I came across some bits when making today's updates which were frankly baffling (bits that complained they couldn't be edited - after I'd edited them).   Amazingly, the web site is still running and shows the updated pages.

It's just over a month since I took on the role of Secretary-General to the WCF.  Impressions of the first month?

• it's easier to make group decisions in the Management Committee than I expected it to be - my role is to structure the discussions (all by email) to move things along
• we've had some good successes, such as agreeing with the English CA how best to stage the European Team Championships next year, announcing the Women's GC World Championships, and we're making good progress on a proposed U21 event for next year too.
• we're still in early days with Skype, but the 3 conference calls we've had so far have been useful additions to our email debates in the MC
• there's a lot of history and loose ends I'm still unaware of - and only find out by tripping over them (so it could be a long discovery period!)
• we need to spend a bit of time looking at how we're organised - the "50,000ft view"

This last point is interesting - we've already agreed how we're organising MC business, we're looking at a rolling 10 year schedule of future events (which will give hosts much more time to think about bids), we're just beginning to ask some questions about our financial model for events, and there's a lot of material from an earlier consultation on WCF structure which deserves careful consideration.  So we should have some interesting things to work through in the next month and I hope we can make a real difference in how we operate.  With the awful weather in the UK at present, at least there's not much competition for my attention!

A leap in the dark

...well, a step anyway.

With Brian Storey's help, I've managed to make my first faltering updates to the WCF web site.  Brian created the site in its current form when he was S-G.  I'd mugged-up on Dreamweaver and created simple "Hello World" pages, but the full splendor of the WCF site rather took me aback.  We've copied it all to my PC so I can work on it with Dreamweaver.  It's huge!  3.8Gb of data and 6,911 separate files.

I was warned it could take 30 hours to download it all. In the end, it took about 3 hours - maybe my broadband connection isn't too bad after all.  With Brian's help over the phone, I've made the first small updates - such as to the placeholder for the 2011 Womens GC Championships, which had been showing duff information for a little while.  I've removed the wrong info and put a temporary notice there for now.  We are close to completing the agreement for this event, which we expect will be in late November 2011.  More details will be announced as soon as the deal is confirmed.

Having seen just how complex the inner workings of the web site are, it's going to be some time till I work through the long "To Do" list for the web site.  I'll do the simple changes to information first, before I do anything that involves changing the structure or mechanics of the web site.

On a different topic, I was really pleased to be able to reach an agreement quickly to move the planned 2011 European Team Championship from WCF to CA control.  The English CA have agreed to take the event on, which has been arranged for Cheltenham in England from 23rd to 26th June, 2011. More details will be published in due course by the Croquet Association.  My thanks to Jonathan Kirby and colleagues at the CA for a speedy and positive decision.

The next challenge is to propose to our Members an outline schedule for all WCF events for the next 10 years, so we can plan further ahead.  It's a big task so that will keep us busy!

Making decisions at a distance

I've worked with international bodies, and for a global corporation before, so I knew decision making was going to be a slow process in the WCF Management Committee.  Don't get me wrong, this is NOT because we're trying to be slow.  It's just the reality - to explain:

• there are 9 of us
• in 5 time zones that span 21 hours
• it's always the croquet season for half of us at any time - so there are always going to be people away
• face-to-face meetings are at best, annual, and usually only some of the members can get there
• everything is done by email (we're trying a little Skype conferencing too).

This means we give a topic a reference, so we can each track the numbered email threads.  Part of my job is to manage the process, so I kick off the topic, give it a number and some initial outline or proposal.  Then I give the discussion some structure - we start with a discussion stage (1 week) and if we're lucky, by the end of the week I can update the proposal to make it much more complete and likely to be accepted.  The improved proposal is circulated for formal comment (another week).  Occasionally, there is such close agreement after this stage that we can close the topic off then - we've agreed it "by consensus".  More often, we may need to iterate, revising the proposal again, taking further comments, and so on (another week or more) until we have a clear proposal we can vote on.  We then have a final week voting cycle.

All this means many topics will take about 4 weeks to reach a decision.  A few things may be agreed more quickly - and others may take longer.  A particular problem I'm finding is that I know so little of what went on previously - and we could do with more continuity so we avoid chewing over stuff that was discussed a couple of years ago.  To help this, I'm starting a rolling log of what we've agreed, with an index - so at least from now on, it is possible to easily trace what has already been covered.

We have made really good progress in sorting out the 100 or so "To Do" tasks we started with 3 weeks ago, and have created specific groups to tackle Development, the Regulations, and Tournament Development.  We've also nominated specific MC members to take the lead for each of the championships being run or planned in 2011 and 2012.

One of the big improvements I hope we can make very soon is to publish a 10 year rolling schedule of when we'd like to hold each type of championship - and then start asking for bids for the next couple of years. Thereafter, we can hold an annual round of requesting bids for a few years ahead.  This will give us more opportunity to manage the process and to advertise in better time what events are being staged.

And finally, a bit of movement on the web site front.  I've been filling up my head with Dreamweaver tutorials so I can drive the software to update the site, and tomorrow Brian Storey (the S-G before last) is kindly talking me through connecting to the live site and grabbing a copy of all the pages.  So if it all goes dark tomorrow, you'll know I did someting wrong!

What a good thing it's snowed!

Here in England, we're having our heaviest early-winter snow fall since the last ice age.  This looks very pretty...

...but even better, it means I can really get stuck into the WCF Management Committee work and learning about our web site.  One of the MC members complained he'd been away for 3 days and come back to 75 emails from the MC.  And these are not quick, short little emails, they are often quite lengthy and arguing complex points about complicated issues.  Well, that will teach him to go away!

We had our first attempt at a Skype conference yesterday.  It's so difficult to find any day or time when nine people spread all around the world could possibly all meet up on Skype.  This time, we only had a couple of us on the call, but 6 of the 9 members are now using Skype so we hope to make this into a useful weekly supplement to the many email threads which will remain our main way of working.

The Dreamweaver software arrived on Monday, so I have started the tutorials.  We need this software to update our web site.  It's a very sophisticated piece of software, because we have a very complex web site that blends pre-prepared web pages with ever-changing information to produce the finished pages "on the fly".  So it's going to be a bit tricky to get to grips with.  Having looked at Dreamweaver, I'm confident I could knock out new web pages fairly easily - but of course, the main thing I need to do is go and grab the existing web pages, make small changes and re-publish them.  Without breaking them.  So I will be proceeding with caution and asking a friend does this stuff for a living for assistance at crucial moments.  The upshot of this is that, as I thought, it's going to take me a few weeks to begin to correct the out-of-date information currently on our site.  I am sorry about that and hope to fix it very soon.  Thanks.

What's on the MC's agenda

It's now 10 days since I took over as S-G, and I've spent a lot of that time trying to get my head round what's to do, what's urgent, and how to get organised. 

The previous S-G, Chris Clarke, has been very helpful and answered a steady stream of my dumb questions, sent me a huge number of files, and given me a long list of tasks to pick up.  But it's still been hard work compared to previous handovers in the several job changes in my past - I guess being on the other side of the world (13 hours difference) and not being able to just spend a few days working side by side on the handover is a real impediment.  I'm sure I'll still be finding things where I don't understand the context, history or significance for some months!

However, after 10 days it does mean I've worked up Chris's To Do list into a list of over 100 tasks and topics for the MC to get on with.  This is essentially the "agenda" for the Management Committee for the part of the year when we're between formal face-to-face meetings, when most of the work happens by email.

Here's a list of the main topics we're currently focused on:
> preparations for the 2011 Womens GC Championships in New Zealand - Gordon Smith is leading on this
> prep for the European Team Championships in June in England - Ian Burridge is leading
> prep for the World GC Championships in July in England - Stephen Mulliner is the lead
> early prep for the World AC Championships in Adelaide in April/ May 2012 - Stephen Meatheringham to lead
> a Development group led by Stephen Mulliner are looking at how to help a number of countries develop the sport, establishing a WCF Coaching Committee, and considering a grant request from one country to help set up a national croquet centre
> a Tournament Development group led by Ian Burridge.  There are a number of events either proposed or approved in principle that need to be set up, and there are also some changes to event formats that need to be bottomed out.  For example, we're trying at quite short notice to see if we could set up an Under 21 World GC Championships immediately before the main World GC Championships - it may not come off, but it's worth a try
> Updating the WCF Regulations.  Quite a few ideas have been discussed over the past year or so, but they need to be pulled together into a consistent update.  Keith Aiton is leading on this.
> and finally, there are a whole bunch of nitty gritty tasks for Ian to do as Treasurer and me to do as Secretary-General - either general admin, or tasks that don't fit anywhere else, or to do with updating the web site.

I'll be tracking progress of this list of 100+ tasks and trying to spot the the biggies that will bite us if we don't attend to them.  Once I can update the WCF web site (see the earlier post on this), I intend to maintain a list similar to the above under the WCF MC Agenda page.

Mail me at secretary@wcfcroquet.org  if you have any queries.  Thanks.

For those new to blogs

I don't know about you, but I'm quite new to blogging. So when Bob Alman suggested I post a few notes on how to get the most out of it, this seemed a great idea.

Apologies if this is 'teaching your grandmother to suck eggs' - if you're an experienced blogger (or blogee?), you might like to look away now, or go and make a cup of tea.

Firstly, anyone on the internet can see the blog.  It's just like any other web page, with its own web address.  If you bookmark ("Add to Favourites") the web address at the top of this screen now, then you can find it again later.  You can also easily see all previous postings by checking the Blog Archive area on the right hand side - newest is on the top.

But there are two more things you can do, if you have a Google Mail or gmail account.  These are free and very simple to set-up - see the Mail link at the top of the Google search page (or try to do either of the things below, which then prompts you to create an account).

The first thing you can do is to become a Follower.  Why might you want to do this?  Well, not because it enroles you in some odd religious sect, but because then you get an email alert each time there's a new blog post!  So you never miss a thing.

The second thing you can do is post a Comment to any blog entry.  You can see there have already been a few Comments on my earlier postings.

And finally, if you don't particularly want to check the Google mail/ gmail account for new messages, it's very simple to "autoforward" new emails to your regular email account.  Just log into Google mail/ gmail, go to Settings, then "Forwarding and POP/IMAP".  First entry is Forwarding.  Click on the button to set up a forward to your everyday account and enter your usual email address.

Simples! (sorry, reference to irritating advert running on UK TV at the moment!).  Hope all that helps.  My next post will be back to the real topic of the WCF Management Committee - I'll write about my first couple of weeks and how the hand-over process is going.

Thanks for your interest.

What to do about the WCF web site?

One of my key tasks as Secretary-General is to maintain the web site.  And it certainly needs it.

I'm very conscious that the web site, at present, has some information that is out of date and some missing.  Parts of it work very well but a few other parts are a bit clunky.  Then there's a few bits that I don't quite know what they're for.  So I'd like to fix it.

I've built one or two simple web sites before, and I know how some of the technology fits together.  In fact, I used to run a business called "Internet Designers Ltd" some years ago, which employed lots of clever people - and a little of their knowledge inevitably rubbed off.

Even so, the WCF site is written using very powerful technology - Dreamweaver and the LAMP platform, for those who are into this stuff.  Which to me looks quite tricky to learn!

So it will likely take me some weeks to get hold of the right software and learn how to use it to drive the web site.  Until then, I can only apologise that parts of our web site are not up-to-date.

Rest assured, the WCF Management Committee is very keen to improve the site.

Hello from Martin French

Greetings!

I have just taken over from Chris Clarke as Secretary-General of the WCF.  This means you can send any questions or emails regarding the WCF to me at secretary@wcfcroquet.org. 

This is me....

...I live in Ipswich in the UK, played croquet a lot in the 80s and early 90s, then stopped for 12 years (family) and started again a few years ago.  I'm back to -1.5, mainly play Association Croquet, and am still trying to improve.  I'm on the CA's Council, and also an Examining and Championship Ref.

I'd like to thank Chris for all his hard work earlier this year as the S-G.  Chris has been doing a great job this week of sending me a zillion files and emails as handover - it'll take me a while to work through them all though!

My intention is to make the workings of the WCF and its Management Committee more transparent - this blog is just one aspect and I'll do my best to write once or twice a week about what I've been doing or what is the latest topic being discussed by the WCF MC.  While there are occasional actual meetings, and I'm hoping to get Skype conferencing in use too, the bulk of the work of the MC is done by email.  A key part of my job, as Secretary-General, will be to keep track of these email discussions and manage them towards decisions and implementation.  So I intend to use the blog to tell you what's currently on the WCF MC's mind.

There is quite a backlog of tasks to catch up with, so this first week, I've mainly been working with the rest of the MC on how we organise ourselves to get through the workload more effectively.  The work will be shared around a bit more too, with for example, specific members of the MC taking the lead for arranging particular forthcoming championships - rather than the S-G being the bottleneck in everything!

It's going to take me some time to get up to speed with everything - a particular problem being the WCF website.  I'm well aware it needs a refresh, and I've been looking into how best we go forward from here.  The site is quite complex, so it may take me a few weeks to get to grips with this.  In the meantime, I can only apologise that some data on the site is not up-to-date.

Enough for a first post.  I always welcome feedback - let me know what you thought of it.
Thanks,
Martin