Sunday 14 June 2009

Doing the little things right

Often the secret to success isn't waiting for the big rewards to come, it is doing the little things right. While the Australian chess community worries about the lack of chess 'culture' and publicity in this country, there seems to be less enthusiasm for actually remedying the situation.
As an example, earlier this week IM David Smerdon fulfilled the requirements to become GM David Smerdon. Knowing that the ACT Chess Association doesn't have a publicity officer (although it probably should have one), I quickly sent out a press release about David's achievements as Caberra's first Grandmaster. Within 6 minutes of me sending it, the first request for an interview came through, from ABC Radio. Within 2 hours there were more requests for radio and print interviews, and a further request the following day. Now while Australian chess isn't going to get a new GM every week, there probably is enough chess news to send out a weekly press release. Certainly in Canberra, the ACT Junior Chess League (which does have a publicity officer) is usually able to get all the results of its junior events published in the junior sports section of the Canberra Times, by simply sending them the results.
The underlying point of this post is that if organising bodies put there energies into the small stuff (publicity, membership management etc) then the big rewards will be easier to catch.

2 comments:

Libby said...

If you haven't caught it yet, David has almost half of page 3 of today's Canberra Times devoted to a photo & story about the GM title. And all of Sunday's Primary Allegro results are in the Junior Sport section.

Anonymous said...

Now that the NSW Open has now been FIDE rated is the GM title now formal or must it show up on July rating list first?