The Quizbowl Resource Center

The University of Michigan is pleased to announce that we will be hosting Cal's Mid-Spring Tournament, an open tournament which is intended to be nationals-minus in difficulty, on March 17, 2018. We also plan on hosting three or four side events that weekend. As is usual for our tournaments, it will be held in Mason Hall, and will begin at 9AM, with registration beginning at 8:15 AM. The tournament will likely be directed by one or both of me and Collin Parks.

Fees
$120 base fee per team
$5 discount per functional buzzer system
$15 discount per approved, competent staffer
$10 discount per 200 miles travelled one-way to the tournament

Registration
Please fill out this form in order to register for the tournament. Emailing me or Collin to register will result in your being told to fill out the form.

Side Events
We plan to play Will Nediger's Scattergories 2 on Saturday evening. On Sunday, we plan to hold either two or three side events. If you would like to suggest side events to be played then, or would like us to run your side event, PM or email me. Once we've determined what we're running on Sunday (hopefully within the next couple weeks or so), we'll open up a signup spreadsheet for side events.

Miscellaneous
Many of you had a negative experience at our EFT mirror due to our failure to provide enough competent staff, so we would like to make it clear that we will not consider playing house teams until we know we have two staffers for each room, including at least one competent moderator per room.

We will not be providing meals (except to staffers), but there is a plethora of excellent food-serving establishments close by to Mason Hall.

We hope to see you all in Ann Arbor in March for a great weekend of quizbowl!

Current Field (teams/buzzers/staffers)

The idea of a second Midwest mirror of this tournament, which will inevitably and seriously wreck the field at the long-preexisting Minnesota site, is extremely irritating to me. Please remedy this unacceptable situation, editors.

CPiGuy wrote: Miscellaneous
Many of you had a negative experience at our EFT mirror due to our failure to provide enough competent staff, so we would like to make it clear that we will not consider playing house teams until we know we have two staffers for each room, including at least one competent moderator per room.

Perhaps the editors should have taken this into consideration when assigning mirrors, especially with another Midwest mirror already in existence.

To be clear, this isn't really Michigan's fault (there's nothing wrong with wanting to host a tournament, though continuing to pursue a mirror when your region already has one is perhaps somewhat inadvisable); the responsibility lies with the editors of the tournament to place their mirrors such that they won't eat into each other's fields. Mirrors of an average regular-season tournament at Minnesota and Michigan would be perfectly acceptable, but the regions that need exclusivity for the sake of healthy mirrors are much larger for hard open tournaments.

The existence of this site is bad for the Spring Open, which has become a cornerstone of the schedule for the collegiate circuit. I would strongly advise the editors to cancel this mirror or the hosts to renege on hosting, or we're going to end up with two extremely diluted Midwest sites.

Yeah I agree.

To be completely honest, I would be more comfortable if I got some reassurances from U-M that they have learned from their past mistakes hosting. Not to try to shame any one at U-M, but I staffed the Michigan Fall high school tournament last year, and it felt incredibly disorganized and slow. People were going through boxes of packets right before games, the TD didn't know how to use SQBS, etc. I am sure they improved, but the MSU team didn't give me a glowing review of the state of affairs after EFT. At the very least, I would hope U-M only make house teams after each room has one reader and one scoreskeeper (especially if there are advanced stats for CMST).

Echoing what others have said: having only one Midwest site makes the most sense, and given past hosting performances, as well as Minnesota folks' willingness to travel to the Great Lakes for past opens, that site should be at Minnesota.

Auks Ran Ova wrote:The idea of a second Midwest mirror of this tournament, which will inevitably and seriously wreck the field at the long-preexisting Minnesota site, is extremely irritating to me. Please remedy this unacceptable situation, editors.

naturalistic phallacy wrote:

CPiGuy wrote: Miscellaneous
Many of you had a negative experience at our EFT mirror due to our failure to provide enough competent staff, so we would like to make it clear that we will not consider playing house teams until we know we have two staffers for each room, including at least one competent moderator per room.

Perhaps the editors should have taken this into consideration when assigning mirrors, especially with another Midwest mirror already in existence.

Robert Williams Avenger wrote:The existence of this site is bad for the Spring Open, which has become a cornerstone of the schedule for the collegiate circuit. I would strongly advise the editors to cancel this mirror or the hosts to renege on hosting, or we're going to end up with two extremely diluted Midwest sites.

Granny Soberer wrote:Echoing what others have said: having only one Midwest site makes the most sense, and given past hosting performances, as well as Minnesota folks' willingness to travel to the Great Lakes for past opens, that site should be at Minnesota.

Wow, this was absolutely not the response I expected, given that Michigan is an 8 hour drive away from the nearest site of this tournament otherwise -- however, given the strong response, it looks like I probably failed to expect it due to not having been involved in quizbowl for very long.

Regardless, if the editors would prefer that we not host in order to preserve the field at Minnesota, I completely understand. I also understand if any of you have already made plans to attend the tournament at Minnesota and therefore won't be coming here.

Progcon wrote:Yeah I agree.

To be completely honest, I would be more comfortable if I got some reassurances from U-M that they have learned from their past mistakes hosting. Not to try to shame any one at U-M, but I staffed the Michigan Fall high school tournament last year, and it felt incredibly disorganized and slow. People were going through boxes of packets right before games, the TD didn't know how to use SQBS, etc. I am sure they improved, but the MSU team didn't give me a glowing review of the state of affairs after EFT. At the very least, I would hope U-M only make house teams after each room has one reader and one scoreskeeper (especially if there are advanced stats for CMST).

This was our plan, as I stated in our announcement. I'm also not sure what people mean by "past hosting performances" -- obviously EFT had its issues, but aside from that Michigan has a strong track record of hosting tournaments, including last year's spring open and side event weekend, that ran very well. Regardless, we have certainly learned from our mistakes, and we feel confident that we'll be able to host a smooth tournament using advanced stats now that we know how to work with them -- for example, we would have staffers come early on the day of the tournament so that we could spend 15-20 minutes training them in how to use the advanced stats system. I also certainly know how to use SQBS, and I'm sure that multiple other people do as well.

Auks Ran Ova wrote:To be clear, this isn't really Michigan's fault (there's nothing wrong with wanting to host a tournament, though continuing to pursue a mirror when your region already has one is perhaps somewhat inadvisable); the responsibility lies with the editors of the tournament to place their mirrors such that they won't eat into each other's fields. Mirrors of an average regular-season tournament at Minnesota and Michigan would be perfectly acceptable, but the regions that need exclusivity for the sake of healthy mirrors are much larger for hard open tournaments.

Thanks, Rob -- although I'll be honest, upon seeing that there was a site in Minnesota my response was not "oh, I guess our region already has one" -- but I understand if that's just caused by my lack of experience with how quizbowl works.

I got this site approved by the CMST editors almost a month ago, and they assured me that it would be added to the list of mirrors shortly afterwards. It seems that it was not, so I'm sorry if this post caught anyone (especially the people planning the site at Minnesota) off guard. If you would rather this site not exist, then you are welcome to contact the editors with your concerns -- I have also just contacted them, and if they decide that they'd rather not have this tournament mirrored here, we understand and will cancel the CMST mirror.

Incidentally, since this will be held on a different weekend from Minnesota's mirror, we invite anyone going to that one to come up to Ann Arbor on Sunday to play side events; in the event that we don't end up hosting CMST, we will perhaps run a full weekend of ACRONYM and side events which we hope you will come to.

Granny Soberer wrote:as well as Minnesota folks' willingness to travel to the Great Lakes for past opens

I really, really appreciate hearing this point made by someone other than, uh, me.

Having just talked to the editors, we are going to drop the site. Thanks to everyone who brought up their concerns in an extremely timely manner. (Forum moderators, feel free to archive this thread if you so desire.) We look forward to seeing you at one of the other sites of CMST.

We would still like to host some sort of collegiate quizbowl thing in the spring, so stay tuned for an announcement about an ACRONYM/side events day/weekend for the same dates.

Thanks for the quick and understanding response, Conor! I'll lock the thread.