Holiday Party and Business Meeting

Don Carrelli Steps Down as KCC President

For any who missed this year's Holiday Party and Business Meeting, the most important news was that Don Carrelli stepped down as club president after an excellent year of service; and  John Moldovan was elected president and Dr. Ian Mangion was elected vice president by general acclamation.  See Business Meeting Minutes for complete details.  The club championship will be unrated this year -- see Kenilworth Championship Starts January 13th for complete details.  I will be playing in the club championship myself and on a team with Carrelli and Mangion at the US Amateur Teams.

2007 Holiday Party

There were over 20 members in attendance for the annual Holiday Party (including NM Scott Massey, founding member Andy Wolman, and past president Mike Stallings), so we held the Annual Business Meeting as well, postponed from last time due to weather. Joe Demetrick, who did a great job this past year organizing inter-club team play and lectures, said that he did not wish to run again for president due to family and work commitments. Three candidates were nominated to take his place -- John Moldovan, Joe Renna, and Howard Osterman -- which necessitated the first secret ballot that I can recall in one of our elections.

Joe Demetrick and Greg Tomkovich
count the secret ballot for president.

John Moldovan, a.k.a. The Chess Coroner, carried the vote (though Howard received a significant percentage), making him our new club president. The other officers elected were: VP Greg Tomkovich, Treasurer and TD Geoff McAuliffe, Secretary Joe Renna, and Webmaster Mike Goeller.

President John Moldovan

The other important business of the evening was discussion of the Annual Club Championship, set to begin January 17. It was decided that, for the first time in many years, the event should be rated. Otherwise, the event will be the same as last year but with fewer trophies to make up for the rating fee.

I had to leave a little early to pick up a holiday visitor at the airport, but I was able to get in two 5-Minute games with NM Mark Kernighan. They were rather messy affairs but interesting, if only because in both of them Black's king steps out for a walk via d7.

KCC Website Stats for 2007

I'm not sure that the Kenilworth Chess Club's Annual Business Meeting will be held tonight (even if The Chess Coroner is optimistic) given that the expected snow significantly lowers the likelihood of a quorum. But in case that meeting is held, I thought I'd issue a report on the state of the club's website, which has continued to grow in popularity, serving its function as a web portal for many chess fans.

We do not keep extensive web stats for the main Kenilworth site since I've never bothered to install a tracker (it's not like we are selling ads, after all). Our host gives us some useful stats -- though they are confined to page view traffic and do not tell you how many individuals visited the site. The following statistics reflect the state of things as of December 12, 2007. Since we have half of a month left to the year, our numbers will likely be 1/24th higher.

The website has continued to grow in popularity since I started it back in 2005. We have had 642,370 page views this year, as of this writing, which projects to about 670,000 for the year, or nearly double our numbers last year.

The monthly views as of December 12, 2007, suggest that (but for a dip around
September) site traffic is trending upward.

Daily views for November 2007 suggest wide fluctuations from day to day, with weekends showing low numbers and weekdays (especially Mondays and Wednesdays in my experience) seeing significantly higher numbers.

The Kenilworthian weblog tracks more information about its visitors. It has been ranked by Blogshares in the top ten of chess blogs for most of the year and rose as high as #6 recently. The blog accounts for only about 20% of the page views for our site as a whole, but is likely one of the main engines driving site traffic.

More detailed blog stats can be seen by clicking on "View My Stats" beneath the StatCounter icon near the bottom of the right-hand nav bar of this blog.

The Chess Coroner also tracks visitors through StatCounter, and John Moldovan reflected on his "Blog Stats" extensively in a September posting. No specific stats are kept for The Center Square or KCC Minutes blogs.

Overall, I think our site is doing great and is probably among the better chess portals on the web. Not bad for an annual investment of $130 or so. Whether or not the website is encouraging attendance or improving membership is tough to judge. My own feeling is that the site helps to stabilize membership but may even lower attendance, especially since members can learn so much about what's happening at the club without showing up. But I'll leave such speculation to others...