Ashley to speak at World Forum
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National Master Glenn Bady of Challenging Heads Chess has noticed that GM Maurice Ashley (left) is scheduled to speak at the World Conference on Chess-in-Schools. The event will take place in Turin, Italy from February 25-27th and will be attended by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.
Ashley is best known as the first “African-American Grandmaster” and for his television chess commentary. Before gaining such notoriety, he was a successful chess coach and ran programs for the Harlem Educational Activities Fund (HEAF).
Ashley, author of Chess for Success,” is sharing the keynote address with Dr. Sulaiman Abul Kareem Mohammad Al-Fahim who organizes chess programs in Dubai and conducted a study titled, “The Development of Chess in Schools in Arabian Countries. The Role of Learning Chess for the Education of Arabian Girls.” The two will speak on “The role of chess in the development of personality.”
This conference will feature a number in interesting sessions and will perhaps spur more initiative in making chess a compulsory activity in the schools. Such an idea has already been implemented in several countries. There will be representatives from around the world however, there are no speakers from the African continent.
Daaim were you able to contact Ashley for an interview?
No sir. I probably need to do that since I haven’t interviewed him in a few years. I wish he’d post here sometimes. That would help too. If you’d like, you can be the one to interview him. 😉
I’d like to create more content for chess improvement and some analyses. However, I need to see more participation on the site before I can justify spending even more time than I do now.
Maybe something catchy, like, win $10,000 at world open by visiting your site will bring hits to your blog. Everyone like to win money and you or someone (not me) could give advise on positions, etc???? Yes chess is difficult to market. I really don’t have the skills to interview Ashley. I did see him at the K-12 Nationals in Florida, Dec 08, and spoke with him about tournaments. He was coaching a small team.
Well… lots of people visit, but they don’t participate or post comments.
How about guest lecturers or articles once monthly? Basically get
folks to commit to a month now so that the site can have a program
one year in advance. My recommendation is that lecturers include
experts and above (and including juniors).
Peace – – – Kimani A. Stancil
To execute any new projects, it all boils down to a few questions… which persons will help? Are they reliable? Are they passionate? People generally are well-meaning and I get lots of ideas from people, but I’m not short on ideas, only time and help. If you can give me actual names of reliable people who will commit, I will follow up. Some will want to be paid. Should I start charging people to defray the cost? That model doesn’t work on chess sites. You can only charge for specific services on chess sites. Well… eight years in, we’ll see what happens.
Test and pay no one. As far as I know, you don’t get paid so why pay anyone else? The chess drum is a clear and substantial resource. I can’t give any guarantee on reliable people. I will not
speak for others, especially those who have to date never contributed to the site. I presume that you and I must know at least 12 to make it work. A survey given to candidate contributors may be the easiest way to make progress on this. It is true that many give ideas but this idea as with others can be tested. I can
volunteer to contribute but I would dare say that other candidates
must include all who have benefited directly as I have by being written about on the site. Every drum major should be compelled
to contribute something!!!
Kimani A. Stancil
No… I don’t earn anything from The Chess Drum. It’s my contribution… I spend 20-30 hour weekly and monthly expenses for the server. That’s it. I think I’m going to switch hosting companies too.
I’ll have to reconstruct my mailing list. I somehow lost it which is why I haven’t done the mailings and haven’t had time to go through my address book and build the Drum mailing list again. It was pretty large… hundreds of addresses.
Change is a comin’.
Glenn and Daaim,
I wish I saw this article a bit earlier. I would have planned to swing by Turin and attend it on my way to Addis in about a week. We are trying to start school chess program in Ethiopia.
Cheers!
Kebadu
I heard from Gihan Sahhar of Egypt (Mona Khaled’s mother) who attended the World Chess Forum. She impressed upon me the good information in the sessions and stated that I should have been there. She was disappointed in not seeing more African nations participating. I haven’t heard about Ashley’s presentation nor did Gihan mention it.
As I have told you Daaim, neither Ashly nor Dr. Soliman attended the conference in Turin and I was so dissapointed to be the only African and Arabian one there although I think we are the one who would have benefited a lot from that conference as it didn’t only discuss the European, American, Turkish, Chineese … etc. experiences in promoting chess in schools but it also gave me a lot of ideas on how to implement it in our own Egyptian schools and the Scientific presentations on the relation between chess and brain developments and motion coordination ,,, all I can say is that you should all been there.
When you told me you were the only African participant, I thought you were referring to Africans on the continent and not in the Diaspora. That’s interesting since both were on the schedule to speak. I’m not sure what happened. I’ll have to call Ashley to find out. I would like to have attended, but it’s difficult to take away from my teaching while school is in session to attend chess events. Perhaps if I was giving a presentation I could get permission to travel to that event. Hopefully the proceedings are available to those who would like to read about the lectures. If you do a report, maybe I can link to it.
“and the Scientific presentations on the relation between chess and brain developments and motion coordination” , Gihan El Sahhar in a recent post. I would love to learn more concerning this subject, are there any references for this information, or studies that we can read. thanks.
Daaim, I am going to email you the english presentations and you can forward it to whoever wants it as I am sure the more people who reads it the more benefits we will get
Daaim,
Its good to hear from Gihan El Sahhar again concerning the conference in Turin. Could you forward me the information he sent you. thanks.
Sure… I’ll forward or post the information. I met her in Dresden at the African Continental meeting… very nice person. She is the mother of promising player, 14-year old WGM Mona Khaled.