I had a few ideas to talk about at the annual meeting last Saturday, unfortunately a rather sudden family emergency made it so I couldn't be there. I apologize to Fire, committee members and all of you who took time from your busy schedules to be there.

Since then I have read the minutes and saw there were some rather heated words about the arena "dying", and that one reason for that may be that new players were not being treated as friendly as they might have been. It was mentioned that people "like to belong" and I would go one step further and say that when invited to a new place people have the expectation of being welcomed. It always comes as quite a shock to find out you aren't welcome, and I agree that is the start of bad feelings. Word of mouth is still the best advertising and when as a newbee you feel faced by some awful behaviour that can lead to a lot of negative advertising.

I remember back in the very beginning of trivia arena there was about 24 different groups, and not different teams from the same group, but different groups. I kno MSN closing free chat made that change alot, but surely there must be some trivia fanatics still hanging around from those groups. Where did all the older players go from back then? We may have had their differences, but I always had respect for all the work they did. How can we get in touch with them again? I know that getting new players is not a committee responsibility, but still something to think about.

Here is an idea I have been tossing around and that is to make a booking system that could help lessen the load on coaches. When our room was fielding 6 teams it got to be too much work for one person to coach them all. We tried training coaches with not much success because most of them didn't like doing it, so they left too fast. I was thinking just have the teams and matches set at certain times and players show up. They would have a certain time and date like a world match for example.

Someone mentioned that grades should be introduced into world's and sexes matches. I have tried to play in those games and just a few months ago again, I got a big fat 0. My typing speed is something like minus 20 cpm. I agree that is frustrating and embarrassing. You have to have a healthy dose of self-esteem to come in last all the time. Maybe some kind of handicap system where top 3 players join in the game after some amount of questions have passed? Just a thought! Again not a committee responsibility but just a few thoughts I had wanted to share with the meeting.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Kissa

Ps: if anyone wants to know what my vote was going to be?...