Duplicate Bridge Association of Atlanta

Board of Directors – Meeting Minutes

February 25, 2009

 

 

Present:  Jack Feagin, Judy Fendrick, Barbara Heller, Dick Browne, Kevin Collins, Bob Heller, Marty Nathan and Dan Papineau

Absent:  Allison Milhem, Ralph Folkerts, Susan Wolfe and Richard Holland

 

The meeting was called to order at 5:45 p.m. by President Jack Feagin.

 

Prior Minutes

 

MOTION:  Marty moved to approve the January 21 meeting minutes.  Motion approved.

 

Treasurer’s Report

 

MOTION:  Judy moved to approve the Treasurer’s Report sent by Allison on e-mail.  Motion approved.

 

DBAA Sponsored Bridge Classes

 

The board discussed plans for future classes and how to get players interested in playing duplicate.  Marty and Mary Jo will hold an end-of-session game at the Benson Center and the following week conduct a field trip to the Atlanta Duplicate Club to acquaint the players with a club game.

 

The Benson Center would like us to continue holding classes there.  One option would be to continue the classes, holding 8 lessons with participants paying for half of the lessons.  Mary Jo plans to continue lessons on her own with some of the students.

 

Easy Bridge is a good option to consider for new players to transition into duplicate faster.  Priscilla teaches this course.  In addition, Marty recommends Karen Walker’s book for teaching new players.

 

We want to provide free plays to all new players taking lessons who have never played duplicate.  The same free play format that Dick used for the River Club students will be used.

 

ACTION ITEM:  Jack will talk to Priscilla to get her thoughts on providing the Easy Bridge certification course. 

 

ACTION ITEM:    Marty will inform the teachers of the free play availability and provide the free plays to the teachers.  The teachers can write the players’ names on the free plays and turn in to DBAA for reimbursement.

 

Sources for New Bridge Players

 

The board discussed possibilities for attracting new bridge players into duplicate.  Sources for new players could be country clubs and newcomer clubs.

 

Another possible idea discussed was to hold a social bridge game at the Regional.  In the past, this was a very successful game.

 

DBAA Directory

 

Jack confirmed with Jan Word that she will put the directory data together in final form to give to the vendor.  Jan asked if we want a smaller book.  No decision was made on this.  We will have the directory available during the tournament in the front lobby for players to make updates.

 

Bidding Boxes

 

The board is considering the purchase of bidding boxes for future classes.  If we can get a deal on purchasing in bulk, Barbara would like to participate in this for her bridge classes at school.

 

Sectional Tournament – December 9-13, 2009

 

The contract offer from the Holiday Inn near I-285 at Buford Highway is $1,500.00 less than the Doubletree Hotel for food and beverage.  This appears to be our best option at this time.

 

Goodwill Committee Nominations

 

Unit 114 will be making a decision tomorrow on nominations for the District 7 Goodwill Committee.  Nominees must be a Unit 114 member.  Nominations are still being accepted and may be given to Barbara.

 

DBAA Yahoo Group Code

 

Barbara volunteered to be the group code administrator and will contact Nicolas Hammond for further information.

 

Election Process

 

There is apparently a problem with the absentee ballot process.  People have complained that the ballots are not readily available.  Some players do not know how to obtain the ballots through e-mail.  The Atlanta Duplicate Bridge Club manager asked for absentee ballots but did not receive them, while the Alpharetta Club had ballots available.

 

One option proposed was to allow DBAA to run all future elections of DBAA officers and Unit 114 representatives.  A suggestion was made that the board should prepare and submit a concise description of how DBAA would run future elections.

 

Meeting Closure

 

Jack closed the meeting by thanking all board members for their volunteer work in support of the DBAA.

 

Meeting adjourned at 7:15 p.m.

Next meeting:  TBD. 

 

Respectfully submitted,

Judy Fendrick

Judy Fendrick, DBAA Secretary

Return to Minutes Index