IContact 20130918

The following message went out to our iContact list on 2014-08-05:

September 2013 Message of the Month

September, 2013 Message

• Meeting With Hasbro
• 2013 Can-Am - Vancouver
• New Website Server
• Committee Activity Updates
• Committee Volunteers Wanted

There is a lot going on this month at NASPA!

NASPA Copresident, John Chew, is traveling as I type to Providence, Rhode Island to meet with Hasbro including Brand Development Management and US Marketing to discuss Hasbro’s plans relative to SCRABBLE for the coming year. Topics are to include support for next year’s National SCRABBLE Championship taking place August 9-14 at the Buffalo-Niagara Convention Center adjoining the Buffalo Hyatt in Buffalo, NY as well as next year’s plans for the National School SCRABBLE Championship and the School SCRABBLE program. I will report what I can after the meeting, but we are excited over the possibilities.

I am headed to Vancouver, British Columbia for the Can-Am SCRABBLE Challenge. 7 top players from the United States and Canada each play 14 games with the team winning the most games acquiring the prestigious Cup and bragging rights. Last year in New Jersey, the Canadian team manhandled the Americans as Hurricane Sandy bore down on the northeast. I got the last seat on the last flight allowed out of Newark that evening – whew!

Miriam Gregory, Chris Williams, Eric Tran, James Leong and Vancouver NASPA Club #545 are hosting this year’s event at the Blue Horizon Hotel. All of the players are looking forward to 14 games as well as the fun and camaraderie that accompany this great event. In addition to its magnificent vistas, Vancouver has a very large Chinatown and we are all looking forward to dining multiple times there. YUM!

We have moved NASPA’s website http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/ to a new server this month. The response time while navigating the site has significantly decreased.

We are now employing iContact to directly email the membership. As we learn more about this service, we hope to use it in many ways to benefit the membership.

The Rules Committee has completed its exhaustive work in updating our NASPA Official Tournament Rules which take effect September 24, 2013. Go to our website and enter “Rules” into the Search engine to see the updates as well as a viewable/printable copy of the entire Rules book.

Technology – NASPA’s Technology Committee has approved the iPhone app, Zarf, in its capacity as a chess clock for tournament play. The committee will be testing an Android “Scrabble Clock” app in the coming months. If one already owns a handheld phone/device, the cumulative savings to the community have the potential to be quite large.

Dictionary – NASPA’s Dictionary Committee remains hard at work with Merriam-Webster to update the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary and our Official Tournament Words List. These are due to be released either the 3rd or 4th Quarter of 2014.

Do You Want to Have an Impact on the Future of the Game? – Join one of NASPA’s many committees. The committee list with a brief description of each is on our website - http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/Committees Contact the committee chair for information as to how to join and make a difference!

Chris Cree