IGF Director's Report 2006

Report of the European IGF-directors for the EGF AGM 2006, Rome 4th Aug

In the last twelve months a lot of activities of the IGF have been supported by the European members of the IGF directors board.

1. IGF

On the way to have the IGF more visual as an independent powerful organisation some activities have been set up, mainly initiated from Europe. This is a prerequisite for the upcoming events and planned activities. We now have a new IGF-Webpage, setup and managed by Tony Atkins. The main point is that this site runs now under an own IGF-domain, so the IGF-Website is no longer a site under the roof of the Nihon Kiin. There's a close cooperation between Tony and Yuki for getting this site running fine.

Second interesting step under European view is the additional IGF-office at Amstelveen, mainly installed for Go-activities related with GAISF and IMSA. Erik Puyt is the acting manager of this office, while Yuki Shigeno works as General Secretary of the IGF in the office on Tokyo. Of course it's a great help for any work of the IGF-directors having Yuki with her knowledge of the European Go-scene in the IGF-office in Tokyo.

We both attended the yearly IGF-meeting in Japan in May during the WAGC where we were elected again for the next two years as IGF-directors. During and after this meeting we had a lot of talks about future projects. For example Kansai Kiin is thinking about a great new tournament - together with a sponsor - and asked IGF for help on the tournament-organisation. European members of the IGF board promised to give this support.

JAL WAGC 2007 will happen again in Japan (city not yet decided). Till now this tournament is the only tournament for which the IGF and their directors have some responsibility. But this might change in the future.

2. GAISF

At the GAISF General Assembly in Seoul in April 2006 the IGF application for full membership has been approved. That's a great success because full membership is a prerequisite for the chance that Go is accepted as an Olympic sport. To be successful in this international meeting required a lot of work especially from Erik Puyt and Yuki Shigeno. Besides a thick folder (history, objectives, structure, priorities for the future, members, etc of the IGF) also a DVD was produced and presented with a view over many countries and aspects of the Go-world. With this membership any country gets a new chance for contacts with their national sports-organisation. A check-list for starting these national steps is available from the (European) IGF Office.

3. IMSA

Within 2005 the original founded WMSC (World Mind Sports Confederation) with the four members Bridge, Chess, Go and Draughts was renamed to IMSA. Erik as General Secretary of IMSA joined the IMSA-meeting at Estoril in autumn 2005 where he set up some actions and invested a lot of time, for example an IMSA-flyer. Main aim for IMSA is the project to organise Intellympiads, an Olympic like competition in Beijing in 2008, after the Paralympics. This idea is supported by GAISF and the IOC.

At the second IMSA-meeting (July 2006 in Paris) we both attended and explained a first draft for the planned Go-competitions in Paris. Of course at the IGF-directors meeting in Japan Intellympiads were a main point on the agenda. We got important informations by the IGF-director from China who has very good contacts to the Beijing- Olympic Organisation-team for our planned event (venue, size, support of the city, accommodation, etc). Intellympiads won't work without a sponsor. The president of IMSA, Mr Jose Damiani, is in charge to find sponsors.

As for the (Go)-work for IMSA takes a lot of Erik's time we found an arrangement of different working fields on the IGF-level for the next period.

Martin Stiassny (IGF Director)
Erik Puyt (IGF Vice-President)