RexSueciae wrote:To be blunt on the geographic expansion principle, I don't see the value of IHBB and its work. At best, you've created islands in the metaphorical sea which might or might not grow a self-sustaining community (but limited by factors like extreme distance from the nearest quizbowl or NHBB region, a dependence on English unless you've got an army of reliable translators, need for an altered subject distribution to account for local concentrations of knowledge). At worst, you've found a way to go on vacation and make a show of expanding the great enterprise to, I dunno, the Mekong River Delta, while NHBB and the community at large foot the bill (in terms of operating costs, the demand for location-specific questions, the demand for international championship questions, and so forth). I think that, if History Bowl as an activity is looking to make the most impact on more participation, it would be far more effective to target high-population areas like those I mentioned instead of grabbing impressive-sounding accolades for being the first to do quizbowl someplace across the world.
Some values of IHBB and its work:
-Thousands of students internationally have gotten a chance to play a version of quiz bowl, and have enjoyed it (which is self-evident, given the amount of schools that are playing year after year, and the general increase in the number of competing teams). There's no compelling reason why quiz bowl / NHBB should be limited to solely students in the USA (which we haven't exactly ignored either in terms of outreach, growth, and creating new competition opportunities for age groups / geographic areas that don't have a full schedule of events already.)
-IHBB makes the International History Olympiad possible and a worthwhile event for many of the top US players - if it weren't for IHBB, there'd be no possibility of having a legitimate international championship level event that brings together the best students from both the US and around the world.
-Ultimately, IHBB will help bring all-subject quiz bowl and other subject specific competitions to students around the world by being a platform from which to build. As I've mentioned many times before, NHBB/IHBB has an advantage in that it's often easier for us to get an interested ear at a school by approaching its social studies dept. / history teachers than it would be if we were doing all-subject quiz bowl (since in that case, it's far less obvious to know who to reach out to at a school that isn't yet competing). This approach is already bearing fruit in Europe and Asia through our championship level tournaments there which feature the Geography Bee of Asia/Europe and the Academic Bowl of Asia/Europe.
-IHBB far from being a drain on resources, is itself sustainable, completely independent of NHBB at this point. This is due to the fact that we're getting solid turnouts at our championship level events, the Olympiad, and many of the larger regionals. NHBB helped IHBB get started in a sense, but IHBB is itself now self-sustaining, and in turn, the larger IHBB circuits (Hong Kong, Switzerland, Sweden, Tokyo, Toronto, Singapore, etc.) are now helping us continue to grow in new cities and countries.
Beyond that, your worst case scenarios are rather inaccurate. Neither my wife nor I have had a day off since last August - we worked a few hours on Christmas too. We do this because we love what we do and thousands of people around the world see the value in it and appreciate it even if you are unable to. When we're abroad, 95% of our time is spent at hotels, schools, and airports. I also don't buy the argument about there being a huge drain on community resources. What events aren't happening because people are writing for IHO / IHBB instead? There was a near-negligible number of location specific questions written this year, of which Brad Fischer and I probably wrote the bulk, except for the Canada-specific content, which Canadian quiz bowlers were happy to help with. The championship events in Asia and Europe were largely just drawn from US Nationals questions that Brad and I edited as needed. Meanwhile, the fact that people are able to get paid writing for IHBB / IHO (especially in a relatively down time in the calendar like right now) helps people fund their own participation in the coming year.
RexSueciae wrote:On recognition -- it's great, sure, but you're only bringing recognition to four high schoolers, one middle schooler, and two adults. The example of college admissions being something creating a demand for individual recognition in quizbowl therefore goes moot.
There are over two dozen people nominated above, and I tend to doubt any of them see this as a negative thing (nominations alone are a form of recognition, of course too). Also, college admissions is only one small part of this (and obviously a moot point for the coaches). It's rather a matter of recognizing individuals in an activity that's largely team based. Virtually every team sport has some version of a set of awards for individuals at the end of the year - there's no compelling reason why quiz bowl should somehow not have this.
RexSueciae wrote:If you think that awards for individual prowess are things that quizbowl needs, go ahead and declare that everybody who scores greater than 50 ppg is an "All-Star Player" so they can write that on their college applications. (When I applied to college, I wrote about the camaraderie and my responsibilities because that's the sort of things admissions officers go for, not so much about the awards I'd won or how high we'd placed.)
Admissions officers certainly care about academic competition accolades, and in my opinion and I'm sure this is widely shared, should care more about them. That and leadership positions are hardly at odds with each other - obviously leadership positions are important too, but isn't some zero sum game.
RexSueciae wrote:I have sincere doubts about the quality of USABB, given the base of writers that it draws from and the ever-increasing load that is being piled upon them.
Kristin already responded on this, but if you want to see for yourself, have a look at the USABB Regionals set at:
http://www.usacademicbowl.com/about/training-resources/
Like any set, I'm sure there are things that can be improved upon, but across 9 regional competitions, we got very few (if any) complaints, and many people indicated to us they liked the new format.
RexSueciae wrote:Every year, the NHBB machine comes out with a new side event, championship, or question set even in times of distress. I doubt I will be able to convince anybody to change this.
You're correct there.
RexSueciae wrote:
What? So it's a NHBB event, run on NHBB questions, but it's under ACE's "auspices," and the head of NHBB can't even comment on this event because of an "operating agreement"? What kind of operating agreement contains a non-disclosure clause?
It's not an NHBB event at the moment, it's an ACE event. It's not run on NHBB questions; ACE was fully responsible for question production. Many operating agreements and similar contracts contain clauses that limit the ability for one organization to comment on another, since otherwise that could be mutually harmful not to mention confusing, since it would lead to even greater confusion about who is speaking for whom.
RexSueciae wrote:Since you say that you had "no control over" these events after singing this agreement, I presume that the "team buzz" and "all buzz" change happened after you signed over control?
Yes, that is correct.
RexSueciae wrote:Also, since you have emphatically denied having anything to do with the middle and elementary school event with a tenacity that would have made Richard Nixon proud, why even have these events use the NHBB name?
They are called the National History Bee and National History Bowl because that is how people have always known them, and after 2019, whether or not the operating agreement is extended and/or modified, I wish to see them retain those names. It also helps ensure that students who begin competing in these events at the elementary and middle school level are aware of the existence of the Varsity and Junior Varsity division and can continue competing at that level too when they reach it (or earlier, if they so choose).