International polo voices on the NAH committee sub-forum

Hey everyone,

Recently I asked Kev a bunch of questions about how NAH was making decisions that would indirectly but eventually end up affecting us. As a result he granted me and a series of other non americans access to their internal forum on League of Bike Polo. This e-mail is based on an original e-mail written by Kev, in response to my questions about how NAH would communicate with the rest of the world.

As yes I haven't had time to get into the forums and bring myself up to speed, I'll report back when I've had time to do this in the next few days and let you know what I learn.

Damon

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As you may know, North American Hardcourt (NAH) is now an incorporated body (actually, formally it's called NAHBPA), with a real board of directors. They have board of directors meetings and have created the committees and appointed committee chairs. One of Kev's roles is "external relations" for the Outreach committee, which means keeping lines of communication open with the rest of the polo universe.

There are lots of reasons why they want to keep these lines open, but perhaps the most important is for our Rules committee and the Tournaments committee. Both of these committees affect the international polo community at least in so far as people from around the world will using NAH rules at WHBPC this year. But they recognize that the ruleset used by NAH has also been adopted (sometimes with modifications) by others.

Continuing on from previous conversations that I and others have had with Kev, they have now added a series of non Americans to their internal communication forum (a subforum on LOBP) so we can keep on top of various discussions, and contribute where relevant to the Rules discussions. It also means Kev, as external relations for outreach committee, don't have to write emails to tell the rest of the world what we're up to all the time, we can just read it yourself.

Just to be clear, the NAH subforum is not a decision making body, it's an informal communication structure for getting shit done and building consensus, which is closed to all the banter of the rest of LOBP. Rules (and other) decisions will be taken by the NAH board of directors at their monthly meetings, and the board may vote on certain matters. But generally international opinions will be respected in this and kev will make it my job as a board member to advocate for opinions from the rest of the polo universe.

Clément--EHBPC 2010
Alejandro--EHBPC 2011
Stefan--WHBPC 2010
Jono--chairs the LHBPA, organized London open, and stubbed out a european organizing body last year.
Riki--Japan
Damon--Promoting the formation of an Australian governing body (and recently approached NAH asking for access to the NAH reps subforum, thus this email/process)
Lewis--Reffed a lot of big games at WHBPC and major North American tournaments, and informally appointed "int'l liaison" (not to mention "vegan-at-large") for australia

We realize this is somewhat arbitrary a list, but with any luck, these positions can become more formalized once there's a european body, an Australian body forming, etc. Each of these people have made decisions on things like rules and qualifications for their respective communities, and that's exactly what NAH is about.

(based on an e-mail by Kev and adapted/edited for posting)