Greetings from Asheboro!
I remember reading that one of the benefits to being an affiliate is one free TLA for rated events which occur only on weeknights.
Now that I am wanting to place such a TLA, I can’t seem to locate the
info about that.
Can someone point me in the right direction? Or has this been cancelled?
Sincerely,
William T. Hales
All free TLAs were dropped by the Delegates in August.
I encourage you to use the online TLA Service, those are free for ANY event.
An affiliate can enter TLAS (online or print) from the TD/Affiliate Support Area. You can download the TLA form from the ‘Brochures and Forms’ area of the website (look under Publications.) Or you can email them to the USCF office, tla@uschess.org.
I think the online TLA site could be a bit friendlier and easier to use if it automatically did its search for events in the next ,say, 3 months, rather than have one set certain parameters.
That is something we have thought about, Bob.
In a typical week we rate over 120 events. Of those, less than 25% are likely to have had a TLA in the magazine. I’d like to hope that we could get about half of those that didn’t have a printed TLA into the Online TLA Service over time.
Once we get all the TLAs from Chess Life into the Online TLA service and get more of the ones that arent in the magazine in it too, I think you’ll see that requiring you enter some search parameters is a necessity. It may be a somewhat annoying one, but I think it’s still necessary.
I could see changing the default search to something other than 4 weeks, but unfortunately there’s no way to know where a web user is coming from (to limit it geographically) unless the user selects a state.
Maybe down the road we can change it to display a map of the USA and have you click on a state?
Mike,I think 8 weeks might be good and continue to use the state search or state plus adjoining ones might be useful since that is what I look for in the magazine.X miles from a zip code is used by some searches for nearest “store” and that might work as well.
8 weeks might be good for you, maybe not for others. Maybe I’ll run a poll question on that
BTW, now you have me confused. When I look at the form:
uschess.org/directories/tnmtsearch/
I see two boxes labeled:
How is that different than what the magazine folks do? (Keep in mind that this is NOT in the members-only area of the website, so I don’t know who’s searching, where they live, what their zip code is, etc. Moreover, what if you want to search for events within 50 mile of some city you’re going to be visiting in next month?)
We may be able to set and retain your preferences using cookies, but we already get complaints from people that we use too many cookies on our website.
Sorry,I did not remember seeing the zip and # of miles.
You might want to mention that to the USCF. The only National Event listed is the US Masters - and that appears to be organized locally.
And only a total of 58 on-line tlas. And of those 15 are mine! How are we going to get USCF members to use this if nobody posts their events. You would think that the USCF itself and the members of the EB at the very least would post their events.
I’ve been working on the Online TLA Service idea for well over 2 years, I first showed a prototype of it to the Delegates in 2004. Proof positive of the old adage about things changing as slowly as the game of chess.
Currently, the overwhelming majority of the TLAs in the Online TLA Service are those that affiliates have entered.
We’d like more affiliates to enter their own TLAs, you’d have to ask the big organizers why they aren’t doing it yet. Perhaps this is an idea whose time has still not yet come? Maybe it never will.
However, the current plan is still to use that interface for all TLAs, including the ones sent to the office by mail, email or fax. That would mean that all TLAs would be in the Online TLA Service, even those not entered by the sponsoring affiliate. That would then enable us to retire the old Access program the office has used for the past several years to enter and manage TLAS. That program has a history of crashing and losing events after they’re entered.
However, that conversion has both gotten bogged down due to some software development issues (including insufficent attention) and also fallen victim to the fact that the publications department always seems to be just a few days away from the next deadline of one kind or another:
The deadline to send TLAs to the office is the 10th, those TLAs have to be entered so that someone can proof them, and all that has to happen in time for Daniel to allocate space and get the magazine ready to go on press early in the next month, by which time the next submission deadline is here again!
In the mean time, we’re trying to get people in Crossville in the habit of reviewing the TLAs that have been submitted online frequently, preferably more than once a day. That hasn’t happened yet, not sure why. We haven’t gotten anyone to take ‘ownership’ of making sure all national events are in the Online TLA Service yet, either. :sigh:
But, hey, I’m just a consultant and most of the time I’m 850 miles away from the office, so if I thump on my desk all I do is wake up my cat.
Free TLAs were not eliminated by the delegates! There was a motion to rescind delegate or board motions mandating TLAs. I don’t remember if it passed, but even if it did, it would have no effect on the free TLAs listed in “Activity Means Members,” as those are not the result of delegate or board action.
In each issue of Chess Life, see the half page TLA box headed “Activity Means Members” for info regarding free TLAs. The one in question is available once per affiliate per month for “a tournament playing only on one or more weekday evenings.”
Bill Goichberg
I stand corrected. Such TLAs would probably have to be submitted to the office, not entered online.
Holiday Greetings from Asheboro, NC!
Thank you, Bill Goichberg! It is GREAT to see our USCF President
get involved like this.
I am glad to see you at the helm!
Sincerely,
William “Tom” Hales
I sent an email to Joe Wright about two weeks ago asking how to submit a TLA under the “Activity Means Members” program and to this day I still have not gotten a response.
It’s hard to take advantage of a program if no one knows how it works.
Joe S.
I just took advantage of the program. I entered the TLA online. I then called Joe Wright in the office (ext 130), and paid for my one TLA that didn’t qualify and he set up the other 2 that did as free (one on weeknights, one RBO).