Dear Members,

It hardly seems possible that two months have now passed 
since the AGM.  The period has been extremely busy;      
I will describe some of the things happening below. I was
so sorry not to have been with you in St Petersburg, but
as it turned out I was even busier than normal on EGF 
matters, whilst all of you were away enjoying yourself. The
retimed World Youth Go Championship entries had to be 
arranged and the invitations for the World Baduk Championships
and also the World Pair Go needed attention at that time. 
Also of course there were the briefing documents and 
emails connected with the AGM. Many thanks go to Martin
Finke for stepping into my shoes for a while!

1. AGM
It took the combined efforts of a large team to produce the 
AGM Minutes. These have gone through several drafts,
and it is the sixth version that was uploaded to the 
executive pages of the EGF site on 13th September. Please
check that your representative is correctly recorded as 
there is a little confusion (for instance was Slovenia
there and if so who was not). Although a income and 
expenditure statement was sent to you on 23rd June, it
is again regrettable that the fuller accounts were not 
available until the meeting. Thanks go to Peter Zandveld for
what he did on these, but it is unfortunate he did not 
start the audit in May when he could have collected the
extra information he needed to complete the Ing account 
audit. He is a busy man of course and is still busy
now, so has not had a chance to return to the matter. 

2. Future Events
Of course the players are now in Korea for the World 
Baduk Championships and it will be interesting to see how
it turns out. Four countries (Netherlands, Germany, Russia 
and UK) were invited to send guest officials to it
and I hope they will take the chance to explore sponsorship 
and friendship possibilities with the Koreans. 

The Pair Go teams were sorted out from 3 invited countries 
(ie, am, pt) and from 7 of the top 8 points holders
under the new system (de, cz, it, se, pl, hu, nl with ch 
not taking their place). Arranging the entry forms to
be in on time was its usual effort. The Pair Go Organisers 
were impressed by the encouragement that the championship 
causes, as one of the lady players has never played Pair 
Go before and was now clearly taking Go more seriously.  

The Toyota-Denso Oza is back for a second edition. Again 
it will be at the EGCC as requested by the sponsor,
and will be organised on the same basis as before (with 
a few minor adjustments to pairings and so on). Invites
will be issued shortly. 

Also at the EGCC is the first European Masters played by 
8 top players at the same time as the continuing
Fujitsu European Training. Places in the Masters will 
determine who is offered future places in professional
events. The World Ing place will be taken by Alexandr 
Dinerchtein and Alexei Lazarev will play the Seimitsu Cup
internet game against the US Champion. A third Russian, 
young Ilya Shishin, will get an internet game with
Kobayashi Satoru, a new kids' event that will hopefully 
continue. The last two people were selected based on
results in the EGC.

Looking ahead to next year, Romania are continuing to plan 
the European Pairs in Sinaia for March (this was forgotten 
about at the AGM) and Germany are hosting the European Youth 
in Koeln (Cologne) starting 29th April. And of course the 
congress in Tuchola Poland is getting ever nearer.

A web page describing each EGF event that can be run by a 
member country is now on the executive web pages (as requested 
at the AGM); volunteers are required for future years in 
several of the events.

3. Congress WIKI
At the EGF AGM at St Petersburg it was suggested that a do-it-yourself 
European Go Congress Organiser's handbook be setup on the internet.

This has now been done at
	http://senseis.xmp.net/tournament/
as a wiki website with the help of Sensei's Library.

Please advise all your national members about this site and invite 
them to visit, to read and in particular to add information to assist 
future EGC organisers.

In particular, would the teams who have recently organised an EGC 
please visit and add what things they have learnt from their 
experiences to the handbook.

Provision is made to discuss the progress and direction of the 
handbook on the website itself. However if there are any other 
specific queries about this, contact Steve Bailey at
	mailto:SGBailey@iee.org
who is administering it.

4. Exec Membership
Martin Stiassny from Germany replaced Marc Gonzalez at the AGM. 
Unfortunately there has again been delay in getting the web site 
updated to record this and other changes. There was also a mandate from
the AGM to enlarge the executive to 7, but it has not yet been resolved 
how to manage this increase. 

Another area where web information could be improved is tournament 
and calendar information; this really needs someone to collate information 
in the way Andre Engels used.

5. Conclusion
The EGF continues to be busy. There are many new projects around. 
An example is the idea from Harald Kroll to produce a multi-language 
Go glossary. I look forward to the results from the surveys you have
been submitting, to see how much Go activity and playing is growing.

Best Go Wishes to you all
AJAx
Tony Atkins
President European Go Federation 26/09/2003