What would you like to see the AGA do in the next year?

vash3g · #1

We have lots of volunteers and not a ton of projects. Got any ideas for us?

Kirby · #2

The Official AGA YouTube Channel was a huge step in the right direction, and I would love to see this expanded into something even bigger.

For many years, go fans have known about BadukTV in Korea, which broadcasts go related material 24/7 in Korea (okay, minus the commercials related to prostate health). This has been a key factor to spreading the popularity of go in Korea. The programming provides a number of resources:

Live professional game commentary
Go-related news
Special tournaments and go events
Series lectures aimed at kyu players

The live commentary provided by Myungwan Kim 9d, Andrew Jackson, and the ever-so-mysterious "BadAtBaduk" have been very well received, sometimes reaching hundreds of live viewers.

I would love to see the AGA:

Continue to do the live commentary! Why stop a bad thing?
Introduce lecture series aimed at kyu players. We have AGA professionals now. Sometimes, I've seen AGA professional game commentary in the E-Journal, which is great. If an AGA pro is willing, why not sponsor someone to give a series of video lectures aimed at kyu players, and publish them on the Official AGA YouTube Channel? You can see examples of this already on BadukTV. A good example is the Becoming 5 Kyu series by 7-dan amateur Shim Wooseop. His lectures are aimed at kyu players, and practice basic fundamentals that higher level players already know. It'd be awesome to have this type of series provided by strong players in the AGA. Kyu players and dan players alike could benefit from lectures on go fundamentals.
Use the AGA website to organize video content from the Official AGA YouTube Channel. As content continues to grow on YouTube, it will be more difficult to find the material you're looking for. The AGA website could have a section providing the video content, organized into sections (e.g. Professional Game Commentary, US Go Congress 2016, Lecture Series: Andy Liu's ABC's of Go (okay, I made that one up :-p, etc.).

tl/dr: I think that the Official AGA YouTube channel is a great idea, and we should expand upon it by organizing the videos and making them accessible on the AGA website, and also push toward sponsoring strong players to provide video lectures aimed at kyu players. This last part is one content area that the current YouTube channel lacks, which is available from Asian Go broadcasts.

swannod · #3

Kirby wrote:

[*] Introduce lecture series aimed at kyu players. We have AGA professionals now. Sometimes, I've seen AGA professional game commentary in the E-Journal, which is great. If an AGA pro is willing, why not sponsor someone to give a series of video lectures aimed at kyu players, and publish them on the Official AGA YouTube Channel? You can see examples of this already on BadukTV. A good example is the Becoming 5 Kyu series by 7-dan amateur Shim Wooseop. His lectures are aimed at kyu players, and practice basic fundamentals that higher level players already know. It'd be awesome to have this type of series provided by strong players in the AGA. Kyu players and dan players alike could benefit from lectures on go fundamentals.
[*] Use the AGA website to organize video content from the Official AGA YouTube Channel. As content continues to grow on YouTube, it will be more difficult to find the material you're looking for. The AGA website could have a section providing the video content, organized into sections (e.g. Professional Game Commentary, US Go Congress 2016, Lecture Series: Andy Liu's ABC's of Go (okay, I made that one up :-p, etc.).[/list]

tl/dr: I think that the Official AGA YouTube channel is a great idea, and we should expand upon it by organizing the videos and making them accessible on the AGA website, and also push toward sponsoring strong players to provide video lectures aimed at kyu players. This last part is one content area that the current YouTube channel lacks, which is available from Asian Go broadcasts.

Wow, fantastic idea. For the AGA to have it's own high quality lecture content aimed at beginners would be HUGE.

DrStraw · #4

swannod wrote:

Kirby wrote:

[*] Introduce lecture series aimed at kyu players. We have AGA professionals now. Sometimes, I've seen AGA professional game commentary in the E-Journal, which is great. If an AGA pro is willing, why not sponsor someone to give a series of video lectures aimed at kyu players, and publish them on the Official AGA YouTube Channel? You can see examples of this already on BadukTV. A good example is the Becoming 5 Kyu series by 7-dan amateur Shim Wooseop. His lectures are aimed at kyu players, and practice basic fundamentals that higher level players already know. It'd be awesome to have this type of series provided by strong players in the AGA. Kyu players and dan players alike could benefit from lectures on go fundamentals.
[*] Use the AGA website to organize video content from the Official AGA YouTube Channel. As content continues to grow on YouTube, it will be more difficult to find the material you're looking for. The AGA website could have a section providing the video content, organized into sections (e.g. Professional Game Commentary, US Go Congress 2016, Lecture Series: Andy Liu's ABC's of Go (okay, I made that one up :-p, etc.).[/list]

tl/dr: I think that the Official AGA YouTube channel is a great idea, and we should expand upon it by organizing the videos and making them accessible on the AGA website, and also push toward sponsoring strong players to provide video lectures aimed at kyu players. This last part is one content area that the current YouTube channel lacks, which is available from Asian Go broadcasts.

Wow, fantastic idea. For the AGA to have it's own high quality lecture content aimed at beginners would be HUGE.

But it costs money. He said he had volunteers, not dollars.

Kirby · #5

I'd say that volunteers can do everything I've mentioned (I.e. Organizing videos in a new section on the usgo website) except for the actual pro commentary. I've seen pro commentary in the e-journal already, so I would imagine investigating a similar route for video commentary.

I'm sure weaker players would be willing to do it for free, but while we're in the business of brainstorming, it sure would seem cool if AGA pros had the incentive to do this :-)

jeromie · #6

I think that running an online tournament would be a huge boon, even if the games did not count as actual AGA rated games. (If they did, all the better!) I think the AGA would have enough reach to make it a successful event, and it would also give people who don't have sponsored events near them a reason to enroll.

vash3g · #7

Kirby wrote:

I would love to see the AGA:

1. I love it too! No stopping!
2. I think this has been a wish list item for a number of years. I'll have to write something up for this. I think a lot of kyu players would love this.
3. This sounds like something that would be great to have once we build up #2 on the list. We have YouTube playlists now that handle some of that information.

DrStraw wrote:

But it costs money. He said he had volunteers, not dollars.

Luckily we do have some dollars we can use. We just need some ideas to pitch to get these things rolling.

jeromie wrote:

I think that running an online tournament would be a huge boon, even if the games did not count as actual AGA rated games.

Currently I run the Pandanet AGA City League and registration has just started. Check out some of the players and you'll see some of the best in the country play in this. The more teams we have the more awesome games we'll see.

Once the Online Ratings system is fully up and running I bet there will be a number of other regular tournaments online during the year.

Joaz Banbeck · #8

I'd like to see the AGA change its name to the American Baduk Association. The word 'go', the use of which is a purely historical accident, is no better than 'baduk' or 'wequi'.
But it has one serious defect on the net: it is too common a word, and therefore difficult to search.

emeraldemon · #9

+1 on the Myungwan Kim live commentaries. It's not so easy to stay up late into the night giving professional go commentary for hours. I really appreciate the resource.

vash3g · **#10**

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

I'd like to see the AGA change its name to the American Baduk Association. The word 'go', the use of which is a purely historical accident, is no better than 'baduk' or 'wequi'. But it has one serious defect on the net: it is too common a word, and therefore difficult to search.

Unfortunately after 80 years it is difficult to change a name like that. If you search for "american go" or "us go" the AGA is the top hit followed by the AGF.

DrStraw · **#11**

vash3g wrote:

Unfortunately after 80 years it is difficult to change a name like that. If you search for "american go" or "us go" the AGA is the top hit followed by the AGF.

ABA AKA AGA?

EdLee · **#12**

Quote:

the AGA change its name to the American Baduk Association.

I think this is a ridiculous idea.

Koosh · **#13**

EdLee wrote:

Quote:

the AGA change its name to the American Baduk Association.

I think this is a ridiculous idea.

Joaz brings up a good point. It's impossible to search for "Go" with any amount of accuracy on the internet unless you go to specialized sites or know how to dig. That'd be changed by using a unique name. Weiqi or Baduk are charged toward the country holding that term.

They'd work, but still... if only we had come up with our own name 80~ years ago. The game of Gkraaazant, perhaps? Mcgrazit? Surroundadoodle?

DrStraw · **#14**

Koosh wrote:

They'd work, but still... if only we had come up with our own name 80~ years ago. The game of Gkraaazant, perhaps? Mcgrazit? Surroundadoodle?

Or just simply called it Igo, like the Japanese do.

Kirby · **#15**

Koosh wrote:

They'd work, but still... if only we had come up with our own name 80~ years ago. The game of Gkraaazant, perhaps? Mcgrazit? Surroundadoodle?

I believe that the Ing Goe Foundation is named the way it is to disambiguate from the English verb. Anyway, homonyms aren't so bad, IMO.

DrStraw wrote:

Or just simply called it Igo, like the Japanese do.

Japanese speakers sometimes call it "go", too, but I agree that "igo" is less likely to cause confusion.

hyperpape · **#16**

Koosh wrote:

EdLee wrote:

Quote:

the AGA change its name to the American Baduk Association.

I think this is a ridiculous idea.

Joaz brings up a good point.

Gentlemen, let's all try and see both sides. It's a ridiculous solution to a real problem

hyperpape · **#17**

1. This may be too nerdy for anyone but me, but I've often been curious about the history of the game in the US. There's some material on the website, but I'm sure that there are people who have interesting stories from the period before internet go.

2. Wasn't there talk about digitizing the old copies of the journal and putting them online? This may fall under the category of things that need money, not just volunteers.

Koosh · **#18**

As to the inquiry - what would you like to see the AGA do in the next year? - I don't know to what extent the AGA supports local clubs and the creation of new local clubs, but I'd like to see more of that.

vash3g · **#19**

hyperpape wrote:

1. This may be too nerdy for anyone but me, but I've often been curious about the history of the game in the US. There's some material on the website, but I'm sure that there are people who have interesting stories from the period before internet go.

2. Wasn't there talk about digitizing the old copies of the journal and putting them online? This may fall under the category of things that need money, not just volunteers.

Well the AGA just got a new Archivist. She is recently trained and can help put some of that information online. There was talk of putting old journals online. That was partially my project. Its something that we're going to be working on in the future.

vash3g · **#20**

Koosh wrote:

As to the inquiry - what would you like to see the AGA do in the next year? - I don't know to what extent the AGA supports local clubs and the creation of new local clubs, but I'd like to see more of that.

This page is a bit out of date, but it includes some of the information you're looking for: http://www.usgo.org/your-chapter-and-you

What would you like to see the AGA do in the next year?

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