Colin Retires

Today Colin Porch is leaving the EBU after over 15 years of service. We asked him a few questions:

1. What have you done at the EBU? Your various jobs, etc! Before coming to work full time at the EBU, I ran the "beginners" events at the Brighton meeting each weekend. I was also heavily involved in writing a computer program for "Current Assignment" Swiss Pairs which was used for the "Great Northern" event for many years. My first job as a full time employee was as Bridge Shop Manager. After some stressful years in that job, I moved on to the Master Points department in 2001.
2. How long have you worked at the EBU? I joined the full time staff in May 1994.
3. Any funny stories of your time here? During the first of my "Beginner's Weekends" at the Brighton meeting, a few expected players had failed to arrive by the appointed time, and my assistant went off to see if she could find them. We were not in the most accessible part of the Grand Hotel, and it was quite likely that they had gone astray. She eventually found a gentleman who appeared to be lost, and enquired if he was, in fact, looking for the beginner's event. Upon being told that he was, and sensing a certain nervousness, she attempted to put him at his ease and assured him that he would enjoy the experience. I was suitably embarrassed when she brought him in, and asked where he should sit. It was actually Gerard Faulkner, the then EBU Chairman, who had simply wanted to see the beginners settled in and enjoying themselves, although, bless him, he laughed along with everybody else.
4. Do you play bridge? Whilst not the total addict that I used to be, I still play regularly, and thoroughly enjoy it.
5. What do you do outside the EBU? I play golf (badly) and have just accepted the vice-captaincy of my local club. I still keep my hand in writing computer programs, usually on behalf of the same golf club to score events like their Charity Day, etc.
6. What are you going to do once you retire? Former colleagues have pressed me to complete a computer game that I started nearly 20 years ago, and, if I can still remember how to use the equipment, (currently gathering dust in the attic) I shall give that a go.
7. How would you encourage more people to take up bridge?
   It has always been a mystery to me why those who take up bridge don’t make the effort to become really good players. Most are quite happy with whatever standard they happen to be, and display little interest in improving themselves. Trying to explain the "buzz" they would get if they planned, and executed, a double squeeze seems to fall on deaf ears. I have always equated Bridge with Chess. If you like Chess then you will like Bridge. Both are easy games to play, but both are extremely difficult to play WELL.
8. What are your other hobbies/interests? I am a self-taught organist, and can spend hours at a time playing. Luckily, I can use ear-phones so the neighbours don’t tend to complain. I usually start practicing Christmas Carols about September of each year. I enjoy reading, (thrillers mostly) and Agatha Christie and Desmond Bagley are among my favourite authors. I tackle the Times Crossword and Sudoku every day, play Bridge usually twice a week and represent the County against other counties.
9. What is your favourite CD/music/band of the moment? I’m afraid that my music tastes are fixed in the 60s and 70s. Today’s music leaves me cold. Favourites include The Hollies, Abba, Simon and Garfunkle and Queen.
10. What are your favourite films? Top place has to go to The Sting with Capricorn One close behind. I enjoyed the Indiana Jones movies, but don’t feel the urge to keep watching them.
11. What are you reading? The Money Changers by Arthur Hailey. I’ve read it several times before, but I do tend to re-read books that I like.

Tournament Focus - Issue III

The third issue of Tournament Focus, written especially for our tournament player, is now available to read on-line.In each issue, we hope to provide you with information on our future events, updates from the Tournament Committee, and articles of interest to our many tournament players.

Since the past two editions, members have commented that the newsletter was very hard to read as a PDF, so we have worked on creating a new on-line version for you to enjoy. We hope you enjoy the new look!

We look forward to your feedback and ideas for future contributions and articles in our next newsletter which will be hitting your inboxes in February 2010.

Read here

Minibridge in Norwich

The EBU Minibridge initiative has started very well in the North West of England (particularly in Manchester), and it was now time to work on other areas in England. After some initial contact in East Anglia, Mr Tony O’Rourke, Deputy Head Teacher of Tuckswood Community Primary School in Norwich was very interested in the Minibridge initiative and asked if the EBU could come along and introduce the game to his teachers. He also opened up the day to any other primary school teachers in the area.

We started the day with an interview on Radio Norfolk (not Radio Norwich, which was Alan Partidge’s old stomping ground). Two of Tuckswood’s children: Katelin and Lewis joined Tony O’Rourke and myself in the interview, and were brilliant – true naturals.

Tuckswood Community Primary School planned the whole day around various card games, which meant that the pupils were psyched up to the new game that we were introducing. We had allotted two hour long sessions for the teachers to learn about the game and the interactive CD from David Adelman. At first the teachers were a little confused about the it all, but they soon picked up the details. After the lunch break, the teachers tried out some Minibridge and enjoyed it thoroughly.

From 2pm we invited twenty pupils from the school to try their hand at the game with a teacher on each table, and David overseeing. The teachers really enjoyed this part of the day, because they were able to utilise what they had learnt previously. The importance of this work was to give the teachers a chance to interact and learn the game with their pupils.

It was a really great day and one that will see the beginning of Minibridge at local Norwich primary schools.

Matt Betts

Improvements to the Knockout Pages

If you've looked at the Knockout Draw pages on the website in the last couple of days, you'll notice some cosmetic and navigation changes which we hope will make those pages look and feel better. As always, if you disagree or have any suggestions then leave a comment or email me.

One addition which I especially want to highlight is the introduction of an RSS feed. If you look at the top of the right-hand menu you'll see an orange icon.



This is a link to an RSS feed containing all the knockout draws. If you open this in your feed reader (see this blog if you don't know what I'm talking about) you'll initially have over a hundred draws appear, but in future you'll receive prompt updates whenever we make a new one. Doing this means you won't have to check back continually for any new draws; you can instead sit back and wait to be notified automatically!

As this is a relatively new feature, there may be some teething problems so I'd be interested to hear if anybody has any difficulties getting it to work.

EBU tree planting

On 27 November, on behalf of the EBU, I was invited to take part in some tree planting near Bedford. This initiative was set up by our paper recycling company - Paper Planet to represent our successful year in recycling paper at EBU HQ. The company has pledged to plant a tree for every 50 bags of waste paper that is recycled by their customers and this tree planting took place at the Forest of Marston Vale, near Bedford.

The Forest of Marston Vale is an evolving community forest in Marston Vale, which runs south west towards the M1 motorway from the towns of Bedford and Kempston. It is operated by a registered charity called the Marston Vale Trust.

The vale is traditionally a brick making area, but the brick making industry has been running down since the 1970s. It has left a large amount of spoiled countryside containing several large empty pits some of which have now been converted into lakes. The Forest of Marston Vale is one of twelve community forest projects in the United Kingdom. The total area covered is 61 square miles (158 km²), but most of this land is in private ownership. Since 1990, they have planted around 1 million trees and by 2030 they will have planted 5 million more, working with local communities, government and businesses, to create new woods and other wild places for everyone to enjoy.

Last Thursday over 100 Paper Planet customers came along to help the charity, by planting trees in one of the many new forest areas. November is a very good time to plant trees, as the cold forces them to grow and develop their roots. Like everyone else, I was provided with a shovel and some Oak and Elm trees and asked to plant as many trees as I could! The ground was very icy, plus it was very clammy and clay based, so it did prove very difficult to plant these trees. However, together with a co-worker, we did manage to plant 29 trees on behalf of the EBU. Have a look at some of the photos below.

We can feel justifiably proud that there are charities trying to help the UK’s environment with this initiative. For more information please have a look at: http://www.marstonvale.org/index.html

EBU Map Improvements

The map on our website, showing the locations of all our clubs and teachers, launched in August and was very well received. Newcomers could now find clubs in their local area without having to know anything about the sometimes unusual county boundaries. Students could see quickly what teaching was on offer in their region. Information was presented in a much clearer and more accessible fashion. And there was a lot less clicking to do all round.

But it wasn't perfect and, as one of the most popular functions of our website, we wanted it to be better. So today we've updated it with some new features.

We've made it look a little neater in places. The club and teacher markers on the map are smaller and look slicker. The old markers occasionally overlapped each other, obscuring the one underneath, and this problem is slightly lessened.

You can now do local google searches within the map by clicking on the control at the bottom left. So you can look up things like the chippies in the Bedford area, for that pre-bridge dinner.

Some people have expressed concern that the map runs slowly on older computers or computers without broadband. For those people, we provide a simple text version of all the map's information. Just click the golden link at the top of the page. You'll see a list of counties and clicking one will give a list of the clubs affiliated to that county.

We're now marking National Pairs heats on the map (and there's a menu item to show them as a list on the text version). They show up with a black corner rather than the usual white and the date of the heat is given below the sessions information. It might be a little hard to pick out black-cornered markers from white-cornered ones, so one of the checkbox options is to hide everything but the clubs with heats. This should make it very easy to find heats in your local area. If you're organising a heat and it's not on the map then let us know.

There are one or two other minor feature changes which I'm sure you'll notice as you go along.

A lot of these changes were made because some of you took the time to give me feedback and tell me about the things you didn't like or felt could be improved. I'm very grateful for that. Please keep doing so, either by email or by leaving a comment.

Bridging the gap to TV: Part Deux

Television Pilots can normally take up to a year to complete, but we have been very quick and managed to edit, add music, add very cool graphics, edit some more, and then finally finish our bridge pilot in just five months. In this blog, I am going to write a bit about what happened next. See part 1 here.

The concept of the television pilot is to get bridge on TV. This wasn’t a simple thing to do. Bridge is not an easy game to pick up, and to do this in a 30 minute show is no easy task However, Matthew Baylis – the deviser and host – came to us with an excellent idea of how we could manage it. As Matthew says, “…I wanted something that shows bridge in a really positive light and had happy, smiling people enjoying themselves. My own view is that previous attempts at television programmes have tended to be a bit stuffy and formal. The other thing I wanted was to draw in as big an audience as possible. It needed to be clear enough so that new players would be able to follow it and yet interesting enough for more experienced players to enjoy.”

To make sure we managed this, we have a commentary by Andrew Robson, professional graphics and a tone that is light, friendly and welcoming. However, there is still an air of tension in the play – just like you get in a club. Mostly it was important to see the players’ faces, which means the viewer gets to share in that smug moment when things go well and the anxious looks when things are going horribly wrong….

Our editor and director of photography, John-Martin White was in-charge of the post production. As he says, “Exercising both brain and will power whilst exploring silent communication with other people through the random element of the cards. How exciting! And, as a film maker, how difficult! You see, film thrives on dynamic actions and loud noises. But, with this pilot we have proved that it’s not always the case – the immense focus and clarity of activity was revealed time and time again as our four players battled. All for the pleasure of making their bids come to life. I was amazed.”

“We kept the feel of the bridge club. The silence of the pilot is only broken by the sound of crisp cards moving across and being flicked onto the table, with the occasional instructions to dummy from the players”. Added to these sounds was the excellent commentary from Andrew Robson and Matthew Baylis.

The post production was in two parts: firstly, we needed to get the commentary to be in line with the three games. We also needed to make sure that the pilot was crisp and well edited. John-Martin worked on this with a small team over a few weeks of summer and completed his work in September. Secondly, we needed good graphics, so that viewers (experts and beginners) could understand what was going on. We brought in graphics designer, Dylan Byrne from Bog Standard, who John-Martin had worked with before to create the various graphics required for the bridge games and the show. Over the four weeks of October with the guidance of Matthew Baylis and me, Dylan has painstakingly created the various graphics required for our show.

Happily we are now complete and we will be having a premier for our players and staff at EBU HQ on Thursday. So far, we have had good feedback from various people we have shown it to, so we’re quietly confident.

Our next step is much more complicated and I have already started to put out feelers to UK television channels about our pilot. We have to be very careful and it must be a drip drip process of which media sees the finished product. However, we have high hopes and I will update you with our progress as soon as we can.

Matthew concludes: “Now the pilot is done. Huge amounts of work from all involved – particularly the highly practical Matt Betts who made it happen – whilst letting all us arty sorts be well, ……. arty. We have learned lots more about how to make it work, which will help make the process of production very smooth. When producing it commercially the editing and vision mixing can be done on the day so the costs will be low. The graphics and the personnel are all in place and we now have the chance to make some inexpensive television that looks good and is all about…bridge! Now there are just two questions.

1) Does the pilot really appeal to the majority of new players (well, my 10 year old likes it!) as well as more experienced players (so does my mum!).
2) Can we sell it to a broadcaster during the credit crunch?

I think it could be two resounding yes’s”

Thank you to Matthew Baylis, John-Martin White, Dylan Byrne, Andrew Robson and Caz Stewart.

At the moment it won't be possible to view our TV pilot, because we need to send it to various media outlets first. However, at some point we will add a little teaser, so you can all have a look.