Proposal for Fall 2011 schedule

[theMoMA]

9/3: Labor Day Weekend
9/10: Collegiate Novice
9/17: Collegiate Novice
9/24: Collegiate Novice

10/1: Michigan/UVA
10/8: Michigan/UVA
10/15: MAGNI
10/22: MAGNI
10/29:

11/5: ACF Fall
11/12: Delta Burke
11/19: MN/Penn Open | Delta Burke mirrors?
11/24: Thanksgiving Weekend

12/3: Chris Ray's tournament
12/10:
12/17:
12/24: Christmas Eve
12/31: New Years' Eve

[theMoMA]

Does anyone running the above events object? Does anyone else feel excluded?

[RyuAqua]

Does anyone running the above events object? Does anyone else feel excluded?

Delta Burke?

[bt_green_warbler]

Paired with Minnesota Open, I thought?

[Mike Bentley]

Does anyone running the above events object? Does anyone else feel excluded?

I don't classes at UW have even started by 9/24.

[Alliance in the Alps]

Ohio State would have to scrap together teams in less than a week (i.e. 2 days) for the last mirror of Collegiate Novice.

edit: clarity

[cornfused]

Ohio State would have to scrap together teams in less than a week (i.e. 2 days) for the last mirror of Collegiate Novice.

edit: clarity

Yeah, same here.

[Bartleby]

Likewise at UWO; in fact, I suspect our clubs week will be the week of 9/24.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

Collegiate Novice should allow for October mirrors to attract colleges that are on the quarter system or that don't start till the last week of September for some other reason. I know that we hosted one last year.

[theMoMA]

Collegiate Novice should allow for October mirrors to attract colleges that are on the quarter system or that don't start till the last week of September for some other reason. I know that we hosted one last year.

I'm planning to have a couple of October mirrors if the October events are amenable to such a thing. I figured I wouldn't put it on this because it's somewhat ancillary to the overall idea.

[grapesmoker]

We should turn this into a Google Calendar doc.

[Sun Devil Student]

ACF Fall and Delta Burke back-to-back makes it very difficult for ASU novice teams (and probably U of A's as well) to attend both of them. (Veteran team members probably wouldn't mind, but they're not the main audience of those tournaments.) Historically the Arizona/California region has never actually run Delta Burke anyways, so it may not really change anything, but if we're ever supposed to play that tournament, it probably needs to be the week after. Regular difficulty tournaments, on the other hand, can be in September because only the small group of returning/veteran members would want to go to those. (Note that earlier dates which work for ASU might not work for Univ. of California, which is on the quarter system I believe. So if those schools can't put together teams before school starts, ASU can spend September building the high school circuit and basically sit and wait for tournaments later in the semester.)

My successors at ASU were considering trying to host CollegiateNovice sometime in October, probably early part. 9/24, 10/1 or 10/8 might all be possible dates. They'll probably want to play ACF Fall and some kind of EFT/MUT-like slightly-harder tournament in California, but if those don't get mirrored in SoCal for some reason, ASU could probably host for the region.

Otherwise, looks like a good schedule. Thanks for putting it together!

[ValenciaQBowl]

I'd have no problem with DB being mirrored later in November or early December out West if someone wants to run it. But if y'all have to choose, I'd recommend doing ACF Fall. I should remind everyone that DB is written with the specific intent of being an introductory tournament for CC players, the main difference then with ACF Fall being that I fully expect DB to be among the first couple tournaments ever played by its field in Orlando. Thus, it should be even easier than Fall, which, though novice, I think is aimed more for a majority of players who do have some QB experience from HS or college.

[tiwonge]

Is EFT happening this year?

[Papa's in the House]

Is EFT happening this year?

Members of the Illinois ABT are collaborating on a housewrite for the coming year. This tournament will be along the difficulty lines of MUT (and Delta Burke) from the last couple of years. We plan to have this tournament written and edited by the end of the summer, so it can be run pretty much whenever. If Brown doesn't mind, we'd like to make this the next incarnation of EFT. If they do, we'll find some other name.

We are operating under the assumption that our tournament will be called EFT. I won't take over someone else's date, but my preference is to run this tournament at the main site in October.

[cvdwightw]

So, um, is Andrew announcing this schedule (with the addition that College Novice mirrors can happen up to the end of October) or are we waiting on someone else to do something? It would be nice to actually have this fall scheduling thing completed so schools that are now all out for the summer can start planning their fall hosting/traveling schedules.

[theMoMA]

So, um, is Andrew announcing this schedule (with the addition that College Novice mirrors can happen up to the end of October) or are we waiting on someone else to do something? It would be nice to actually have this fall scheduling thing completed so schools that are now all out for the summer can start planning their fall hosting/traveling schedules.

The only wrinkle in the schedule right now is the recent Illinois announcement about its "EFT" plans. My hope is that Illinois can roll those plans into either the UVA/Michigan tournament or MAGNI, and that the writers of those events would be amenable to such a thing. I don't think the quizbowl market can bear three tournaments in October, and it goes against our agreed-upon scheduling principles, but I also don't want to discourage teams that want to write from doing so. Ideally we would be able to come to some kind of collaboration agreement to keep everything in balance.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

I was under the impression that we wanted to prevent 3 packet sub events on consecutive weekends, not necessarily 3 housewriten tournaments of different difficulties, from which teams can elect to choose 2.

[Papa's in the House]

So, um, is Andrew announcing this schedule (with the addition that College Novice mirrors can happen up to the end of October) or are we waiting on someone else to do something? It would be nice to actually have this fall scheduling thing completed so schools that are now all out for the summer can start planning their fall hosting/traveling schedules.

The only wrinkle in the schedule right now is the recent Illinois announcement about its "EFT" plans. My hope is that Illinois can roll those plans into either the UVA/Michigan tournament or MAGNI, and that the writers of those events would be amenable to such a thing. I don't think the quizbowl market can bear three tournaments in October, and it goes against our agreed-upon scheduling principles, but I also don't want to discourage teams that want to write from doing so. Ideally we would be able to come to some kind of collaboration agreement to keep everything in balance.

From what I can tell, here's what's happening in the Spring:
ACF Regionals (Feb.)
ACF Nationals (Apr.)
ICT (Apr.)
SCT (Feb.)
MUT (don't know when it'll be run, but it might be paired with IO)
Chicago hard tournament (Mar.)
Illinois Open (likely Mar., it might be paired with MUT)
Penn Bowl (? - I haven't actually heard anything about this)
TIT (?)

This leaves open January (presuming Penn Bowl and TIT aren't both running) for another tournament, which could be EFT. For various reasons, I would prefer to have EFT as a standalone tournament written by players at Illinois, but I am not opposed to collaborating with others. Would everyone prefer to have this tournament run in the last two weekends of January instead? I don't know how all school schedules work, so some mirrors might be held at a later date to accommodate for different spring semester start dates.

[RyuAqua]

If IO might be paired with MUT, some writers of MUT want to play IO, and Illinois is hosting IO anyway, why not combine this E"F"T project with MUT in the spring? Both Minnesota and Illinois seem to want to write a whole easier-than-regular tournament by themselves, which isn't ideal from a workload or scheduling perspective.

[theMoMA]

If IO might be paired with MUT, some writers of MUT want to play IO, and Illinois is hosting IO anyway, why not combine this E"F"T project with MUT in the spring? Both Minnesota and Illinois seem to want to write a whole easier-than-regular tournament by themselves, which isn't ideal from a workload or scheduling perspective.

If Illinois is amenable to working with us on MUT, I think we can arrange something. We've actually almost worked with Illinois in the past on such a venture. If Illinois wants to do something in the fall semester for sure, then obviously that can't be the solution.

[theMoMA]

I was under the impression that we wanted to prevent 3 packet sub events on consecutive weekends, not necessarily 3 housewriten tournaments of different difficulties, from which teams can elect to choose 2.

I think that the original intent was to keep tournaments on a more or less strict every-other schedule in order to allow teams to attend tournaments and to keep tournament fields large. The principles we agreed to must reflect what people actually want, so we can certainly debate whether a third October event would be beneficial. In my mind, it wouldn't be. October is not traditionally a time when teams are itching to go to three events, and adding a third event that is similar to the already-existing offerings makes little sense to me at this time of year.

[theMoMA]

I believe that we are mostly settled on the Fall 2011 schedule, but I still need to talk with Charles Martin to make sure that Illinois is satisfied with the possibility of collaborating on a regular-difficulty event this fall or potentially with Minnesota on MUT this spring. I will be creating a thread about the spring schedule soon.

[eliza.grames]

I believe that we are mostly settled on the Fall 2011 schedule, but I still need to talk with Charles Martin to make sure that Illinois is satisfied with the possibility of collaborating on a regular-difficulty event this fall or potentially with Minnesota on MUT this spring. I will be creating a thread about the spring schedule soon.

Illinois does not want to collaborate on MUT and is writing their own tournament.

[Horned Screamer]

Am I the only person who finds it rather, uh, unusual that people were posting in this thread because they supposedly wanted to follow along with what we agreed on as guidelines to help make the quizbowl calendar better, except can't be bothered to actually do just that when it interferes with their plans to write a tournament? When on earth would this supposed EFT fit into the new calendar?

[RyuAqua]

One possible solution would be to have the easier event serve as an eligibility-restricted "Division II" to Illinois Open, using something similar to the NAQT guidelines, which could also let people try out their NAQT DII teams on something before ICT. (Or perhaps to Chris Ray Open.) It definitely doesn't seem to me like there's room for a standalone event elsewhere in the calendar.

[Cheynem]

I am also concerned about the new "EFT" or "Illinois Novice" tournament. This is not because I don't think such a tournament is a bad idea, but because I'm just not sure where it will go. I think it would have worked very well in a partnership with MUT (although I suppose if teams wish to earn money or get tons of writing experience, that could be a reason not to collaborate), as by my reasoning, both teams would be in similar circumstances of not having a ton of super experienced people around to edit or write.

Matt Jackson's idea has some merit, although I'm really not crazy about too many tournaments to use the "Division II" setup in a year (which is an argument for another time and reflective of my CRAZY views).

[eliza.grames]

Charles Martin said that "The responses I received from other writers indicated a strong desire that we write the tournament ourselves for two primary reasons: 1) we can learn more this way; and 2) the younger writers really want to be able to play MUT because it is one of the few easier events in the spring semester." Apparently they have already finished Religion, Mythology, Social Sciences, Chemistry, and Physics as of July 2, so it sounds like this tournament is going to happen.

[The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus]

Charles M, could you please call it something other than EFT?

[Papa's in the House]

I didn't realize that an easy spring tournament would cause quite as much controversy as the tournament we are planning to write, especially since I remember many people wondering why there weren't more easy spring tournaments this past year. Here are the responses to several of the comments and concerns people have raised.

Am I the only person who finds it rather, uh, unusual that people were posting in this thread because they supposedly wanted to follow along with what we agreed on as guidelines to help make the quizbowl calendar better, except can't be bothered to actually do just that when it interferes with their plans to write a tournament? When on earth would this supposed EFT fit into the new calendar?

Would everyone prefer to have this tournament run in the last two weekends of January instead?

That was the question I asked when other people wanted this tournament to be moved from October to another date. I apologize if I didn't make it explicitly clear later that this tournament would be moved to the last two weekends of January when we moved it from being held in October. At the time the decision was made to move the tournament date, the last two weekends of January were still unclaimed and it did not look like Penn Bowl would happen.

One possible solution would be to have the easier event serve as an eligibility-restricted "Division II" to Illinois Open, using something similar to the NAQT guidelines, which could also let people try out their NAQT DII teams on something before ICT. (Or perhaps to Chris Ray Open.) It definitely doesn't seem to me like there's room for a standalone event elsewhere in the calendar.

This is a possibility, but not an ideal one from a logistics standpoint on our end. We could easily attract 32 teams to the easier tournament we're writing just like we attracted 32 teams for EFT this past year. A tournament of this size requires our school to not only use every member we have (even if they don't play often or at all anymore) and try to attract staffers from other schools. This would leave no members available to staff IO (unless you limit the number of teams that can attend either or both tournaments, which is a less than ideal solution).

I am also concerned about the new "EFT" or "Illinois Novice" tournament. This is not because I don't think such a tournament is a bad idea, but because I'm just not sure where it will go. I think it would have worked very well in a partnership with MUT (although I suppose if teams wish to earn money or get tons of writing experience, that could be a reason not to collaborate), as by my reasoning, both teams would be in similar circumstances of not having a ton of super experienced people around to edit or write.

There will be an announcement out by early next week giving more of the details of this tournament, including a description what we want to accomplish with the tournament. While earning money is nice, one of the primary reasons we are writing this tournament is to gain more writing experience and improve as players. Ike Jose has volunteered to edit this tournament, so that should provide some assurance about question quality. I will go through and do spelling and grammar checks before sending packets out so those things do not become an issue while moderators are reading.

Charles M, could you please call it something other than EFT?

Yes. I was waiting until the formal announcement, but here goes. This tournament will use an acronym like most of the other new tournaments this year. The acronym we (well, I) have chosen is GAAP (Generally Accepted Academic Principles).

If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns, you can always email them to me and I'll respond to you when possible.

[Edward Elric]

Yes. I was waiting until the formal announcement, but here goes. This tournament will use an acronym like most of the other new tournaments this year. The acronym we (well, I) have chosen is GAAP (Generally Accepted Academic Principles).

I approve of said acronym.