The Quizbowl Resource Center

I'm writing a sequel to We Have Never Been Modern called A Culture of Improvement. It will use largely the same distribution as that tournament. It will be tossup only unless something changes radically. Distribution will look something like this:

History of science and technology - 6
Business, consumer and social history - 5
Computer-related things - 5
Academic stuff which doesn't fall into the other categories - 2
Trash stuff which doesn't fall into the other categories - 2

I have around 4 packets written at the moment. I'm shooting for 7 or 8 total.

Exact completion date TBA. There will likely be a Skype mirror, and hopefully it can be fitted into one of the summer open tournaments (perhaps this is the year to have an all side event summer weekend given the number of side event sets last year).

Oh man, awesome!

yesssssssssssssssssssssss

I'm very excited.

The previous iteration of this tournament was absurdly fun so this is pleasant news

This is good news

this is exciting and cool

I share the enthusiasm expressed thus far.

I'm also curious, given how well-received the last two "technology" tournaments have been, whether there's interest in incorporating more of this sort of content in regular-season tournaments, as difficulty and distributional concerns permit. It seems like many of the questions from QCT and We Have Never Been Modern are comprehensible as "business current events," "Your Choice," "General Knowledge," or even in some cases History or "Other Science"...

I agree with Matt; I think a lot of the stuff that Mike asked about in his last tournament would be effective questions in the Your Choice, Other, or even Current Events distribution. As I said at the time, I think they reward a particular set of knowledge bases that aren't always tapped into for quizbowl.

Adventure Temple Trail wrote:I share the enthusiasm expressed thus far.

I'm also curious, given how well-received the last two "technology" tournaments have been, whether there's interest in incorporating more of this sort of content in regular-season tournaments, as difficulty and distributional concerns permit. It seems like many of the questions from QCT and We Have Never Been Modern are comprehensible as "business current events," "Your Choice," "General Knowledge," or even in some cases History or "Other Science"...

On the one hand, I absolutely loved QCT. On the other hand, I don't think most of the questions in that set would really be appropriate for general quizbowl. On the third hand, there's a lot of current events that would be appropriate and in general I think should get larger play.

Perhaps, as Jerry says, some of the topics in and of themselves aren't appropriate for general quizbowl, but they can provide interesting ways to frame areas of the already-existing distribution. For example, the history of inventions of a particular place could be a good idea for a tossup or a bonus theme (i.e. a tossup on "France" that discusses the history of industry and invention of that country, or a history tossup on a particular industry, or a bonus on particularly innovative films from a technical standpoint, or a bonus part on a particular innovation that enabled a new artistic technique to arise, etc.). As people think of different thematic ways to attack the distribution, technology is clearly an area where people have untapped knowledge that can be used to add new depths to areas that we already cover.

theMoMA wrote:Perhaps, as Jerry says, some of the topics in and of themselves aren't appropriate for general quizbowl, but they can provide interesting ways to frame areas of the already-existing distribution. For example, the history of inventions of a particular place could be a good idea for a tossup or a bonus theme (i.e. a tossup on "France" that discusses the history of industry and invention of that country, or a history tossup on a particular industry, or a bonus on particularly innovative films from a technical standpoint, or a bonus part on a particular innovation that enabled a new artistic technique to arise, etc.). As people think of different thematic ways to attack the distribution, technology is clearly an area where people have untapped knowledge that can be used to add new depths to areas that we already cover.

Yeah, this is what I meant, and yeah, QCT was definitely more "out-there" and less suitable for emulation in regular sets than We Have Never Been Modern if this is the way to go about it.

What is the pricing for this tournament?

The tournament is free to play.

By the way, I'll probably start some playtesting for this soon. If you're interested in taking part, shoot me an e-mail at [email protected]. My preference is to do the playtesting over Skype.

FYI there will be 9 packets for this tournament.

I've mailed the set to the Columbia, VCU and California mirrors of this tournament. I'll have it with me for the Michigan mirror. If you think you should have received it and haven't yet, please let me know ASAP.

As expected this tournament was amazing and almost certainly not to be surpassed by any other event this weekend. Mike's technology tournaments are a true quizbowl treasure.

At Michigan, the team of Rob Carson, Mike Cheyne, Andrew Hart, and Tejas Raje won this event.

Stats for the Michigan site are available here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... nal_stats/

If a moderator can set up a private discussion forum that would be much appreciated.

Like its predecessor, this tournament was a delight. Thank you, Mike, for putting it together.

Yeah, this tournament was characteristically awesome. Highlight of the quizbowl calendar, for sure.

This was most excellent. My only regret is that we only got to play five rounds of it.

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote:This was most excellent. My only regret is that we only got to play five rounds of it.

People who only played part of this are welcome to play the rounds they didn't hear in the Skype mirror on Sunday.

This was super fun, thanks for writing it.

I'm glad I got roped into playing this set last minute. it was really worth experiencing this kind of refreshing material at the tail end of my qb career.

Thank you for writing this tournament. As someone who spent a year being a more-or-less solid B-team humanities generalist, I did not realize that history of science and tech was my niche until I ended up top scorer at the Michigan mirror.

Although I would like to play on a larger team in the next iteration, I consider it even more important than my individual enjoyment that tournaments of this type continue for the community. So, Mike, if you're in a situation where you need co-writers for the next iteration, please feel free to contact me and I will be happy to help out writing and take editorial guidance.

A private forum has been created to discuss this tournament.

We played five rounds of this today at UCSD as a shootout. Here are the stats to the best of my scorekeeping ability:

Rd. 1
Michel Chen 0/0/0
Kevin Wang 1/3/3
Corry Wang 1/1/1
Griffin Stamp 0/1/1
Jason Cheng 0/1/1
Jonathan Luck 1/5/0
Mik Larsen 1/6/0

Rd. 2
Michel Chen 1/1/1
Kevin Wang 0/4/5
Corry Wang 1/5/3
Griffin Stamp 0/0/1
Jason Cheng 0/2/1
Jonathan Luck 0/2/2
Mik Larsen 0/4/0

Rd. 3
Kevin Wang 1/5/2
Corry Wang 1/4/4
Griffin Stamp 0/0/0
Jason Cheng 1/4/0
Jonathan Luck 0/0/1
Mik Larsen 0/3/2

Rd. 4
Kevin Wang 1/1/2
Corry Wang 0/6/2
Griffin Stamp 0/0/1
Jason Cheng 1/4/1
Jonathan Luck 0/4/1

Rd. 5
Kevin Wang 0/0/2
Corry Wang 1/6/2
Griffin Stamp 1/1/1
Grant Summers 0/1/0
Jason Cheng 1/4/1
Jonathan Luck 0/4/0
Mik Larsen 0/0/1

TOTAL
Michel Chen: 1/1/1 -- 20 points over 2 rounds; 10 ppg
Kevin Wang: 3/13/14 -- 105 points over 5 rounds; 21 ppg
Corry Wang: 4/22/12 -- 220 points over 5 rounds; 44 ppg
Griffin Stamp: 1/2/4 -- 15 points over 5 rounds; 3 ppg
Grant Summers: 0/1/0 -- 10 points over 1 round; 10 ppg
Jason Cheng: 3/15/4 -- 175 points over 5 rounds; 35 ppg
Jonathan Luck: 1/15/4 -- 145 points over 5 rounds; 29 ppg
Mik Larsen: 1/13/3 -- 130 points over 4 rounds; 32.5 ppg

NOTE: I actually didn't keep track of people who came and went, so some of the 0/0/0 statlines might actually be when they weren't there (in which case I sincerely apologize)

I've submitted the questions to quizbowlpackets.com.