Meet the candidates for the 2020 IAM Board

by | Dec 24, 2019 | News

Here are the candidates for the 2020 IAM Board election! Click on the candidates’ names to see their application.

 

Africa

America

Asia

Europe

Oceania

Open (regardless of continent)

Next Step: Question Round

The next step in the election process is a public question round. This step is a chance for the memory community to find out more about the candidates before casting votes.

You may ask questions:

Questions can be directed to one or more specific candidates, to all candidates in your region, or to all candidates from any region. When you ask a question, please state clearly which candidate(s) it is for.

The deadline for asking questions is the 28th of December at 23:59 GMT. At that time, the election committee will forward the questions to the candidates.

As questions come in, we will list them below this post for everyone to see.

The candidates will then have until the 5th of January at 23:59 GMT to answer the questions in writing. Candidates should send their answers to the election committee at elections@iam-memory.org, who will publish all the answers at the same time.

We look forward to seeing your questions!

Questions

Question for European candidates from Gordon Cowell:

Numbers at competitions are often very small. What would you do to try to increase the popularity of memory competitions in Europe?

Questions for all candidates from Sylvain Arvidieu:

  1. What can be done and is it in your opinion necessary to make it possible for athletes from different continents to compete together? It happens too seldom at the moment, possibly because of travel costs and lack of incentives (financial or others). What do you think?
  2. Is it the IAM’s goal to help spread the memory techniques to the masses (I.e. making resources available for free, I guess) ? How is it then possible to coexist and collaborate with professional memory trainers?
  3. Should the current 10-event formats be kept? Why?

Questions for all candidates from Boris Konrad:

  1. How would you like to see the IAM interact with other memory sports organizations in the (near) future?
  2. Is it a goal for you that memory sports gets an official sport?
  3. How will you help making memory sports more appealing for beginners and media?

Question for Darren Michalczuk from Akash Rupela:

What are your ambitions to improve the number of IAM Competitions in your region?

Question for Sven Wetzel from Akash Rupela:

Can you provide a Bio in English before the actual voting? It might be more helpful to everyone voting.

Questions for Johannes Mallow from Akash Rupela:

  1. What are your thoughts on changing the system of 10 disciplines and making room for some new disciplines?
  2. Do you have some ideas on more spectator friendly formats of the sport?

Question for Oceania candidates from Akash Rupela:

There was no IAM competition in Oceania in 2019. Do you have some ideas on how to bring this back in 2020?

Questions for all candidates from Florian Minges:

  1. In your opinion, what are the two most important things the IAM has to work on in the next two years (so basically during your mandate, if you should get elected)?
  2. What is something that the IAM could learn from AMSA/GAMA (ie what is something they are doing very well)?
  3. There are many things and projects that volunteers within the IAM need to work on to operate, manage and develop the organisation. If you had to pick one thing among all of these that you were the most passionate about, which one would it be? (For example: maintaining the website/database, developing the competition software, working on an arbiting certification system, establishing national organisations, developing new competition formats etc)
  4. This is kind of an expansion on a question by Sylvain: AMSA/GAMA have developed and proposed some new potential memory disciplines (spoken flash numbers, fantasy map, flight plan). At the same time, we also have the Memory League format. How do you think the IAM should go about integrating new disciplines and competition formats into memory sports, or is that something that you think should be avoided?
  5. Same question as last year: The IAM is currently looking for a host for the next World Memory Championship (application deadline is 15th of January, 2020). What do you think about the feasibility of organising a World Memory Championship in your country, either next year or sometime in the future? What are the biggest obstacles? Is there anything that could be done or changed to make it easier / more convenient in order for someone to host it in your country?
  6. Same question as last year: The memory sports community has many dedicated volunteers who are contributing to it in many different ways, both internationally and nationally. If you could highlight one such person today (who is not also running for the IAM International Board right now), who would it be, and why?

Question for all previous board members (Simon, Mohamed, Charifa, Sanchit, Nathalie, Akash, Corinna) from Florian Minges:

Working in a volunteer organisation with people from many different time zones and backgrounds is bound to be tricky. In terms of working together, what is something that didn’t work quite as well as you expected, and what would you suggest to the next Board to make it better?

Question for Akash Rupela from Florian Minges:

You have been quite heavily involved with the World Cubing Association. If you had to name one thing that the IAM could learn from them, in how they operate or manage their organisation and sport, what would it be?

Question for Johannes Mallow from Florian Minges:

I think you made a great point about how digitalisation can help make the sport more equal (which I hadn’t even considered). To kind of expand on that: you mentioned that you “would love to think about how to make the sport even more accessible to other people with different disabilities”. If you had to think about something right now (:P), could you give an example of a disability and one thing that we could do to make competing easier for people with that disability (apart from the current state of digitalisation)?

Question for African candidates:

Could you mention your contributions to IAM Board last year other than the work you did as an organizer/arbiter?