The Quizbowl Resource Center

Quoting Dwight's post that got buried at the bottom of the other thread:

cvdwightw wrote:It may be productive to [start a new thread with] a "list of places you'd like to see 2011 HSNCT;" people in those areas could then possible approach reasonable sites in those places about the possibility of bidding for 2011 HSNCT.

As Jerry posted in this thread, the three major axes that should be considered are:
-staffing availability: how much trained local staff is around, and how much will it cost to bring the rest of the staff out there?
-room availability: can we run a ~200-team tournament at the site?
-cost to teams: how much are teams going to have to pay to get there and stay there for 2-4 nights?

I'll throw a fourth axis in there - non-quizbowl attractions: for the teams that show up a day early, leave a day late, or don't want to stay for consolation rounds, are there easily accessible attractions that would encourage these teams to choose HSNCT over another national? Obviously, this isn't really going to affect the ~30-40 top teams that are gunning for a trophy place or higher, but that's only ~15-20 percent of the expected field.

A prime site would be good to excellent on the first three axes and at least adequate on the last.

Of the three axes listed, room availability is obviously essential. Cost to teams is the next-most important; Chicago has worked well for us because it's a major airline hub with good mass transit (that is: cheap flights for most and no need for car rental). Staffing availability is a rather more minor factor: Chicago is good at that, of course, but so many staff fly into HSNCT anyway that anywhere with decent airfares would probably be fine.

So, if you're sick and tired of O'Hare-area hotels, now would be a good time to send us alternative suggestions.

Perhaps I am biased, but DC has plenty of hotels equipped to deal with this sort of thing and good airfare and airports.

I think Atlanta would be a great place to host it. It has a large airport; it's close to many attractions; there are tons of good hotels and convention centers there; the food's great; and public transit is pretty good. Other than that, I think Dallas, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. are also excellent choices.

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Dallas

Eh, I'm remembering all the fuss over the ICT being held at Dallas.

NYC sounds good but I'm not sure how feasible it is cost-wise

Huang wrote:NYC sounds good but I'm not sure how feasible it is cost-wise

I'm not sure we want to hold both nationals on the east coast.

Pittsburgh.

NYC also has pretty ridiculous hotel prices.

I'd love to see it in Louisville, but I doubt that'll ever happen.

But I'm thinking that Atlanta, Tampa, New Orleans (we're coming to YOU, ), Houston, Las Vegas, LA, or Seattle would all be good sites.

I've had different events at Nashville, and that city always seems to work out well for the conferences I've attended. I've also had another similar event in Dallas, which was a great city for a conference/convention. If I recall correctly, the public transportation system was amazing. I think the people there were even boasting that it was rated the best Public Transportation in the world by some study(?). I can't cite facts, only what I recall hearing, but it was still nevertheless a great city for visitors. If it is not going to be in Chicago, my vote is for Dallas, which is still relatively centrally located in the country.

Also, I don't think there are enough teams in the West to justify nationals being on the West Coast.

LA would be nice but it may be spendy and Trey makes a good point regarding holding it on the West Coast (though I'd LOVE to go to Portland for this). If PACE stays in the DC area, I don't think it would be a good idea to host HSNCT here as well. I think the Twin Cities, St. Louis and Memphis would be near the top of my list as well as the aforementioned Nashville, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Chicago.

Minneapoil and St. Paul sound like pretty good locations. Geographically, it looks sensible. It has a large airport. There's probably enough good hosting sites. In addition, there is probably a good number of moderators we could pull from UMinnesota and perhaps UChicago or somewhere. I can't think of any really fun places to go there, but I'm sure there isn't a dearth of fun to be had.

In regards to Nashville, I have no idea of the pricing (it can't be cheap) but The Gaylord Opryland is one awesome venue.

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Minneapoil and St. Paul sound like pretty good locations. Geographically, it looks sensible. It has a large airport. There's probably enough good hosting sites. In addition, there is probably a good number of moderators we could pull from UMinnesota and perhaps UChicago or somewhere. I can't think of any really fun places to go there, but I'm sure there isn't a dearth of fun to be had.

There are also teams at Carleton and Macalester who could cough up some mods. If you want fun, there's some good art galleries(Minneapolis Institute of Art,Walker Art Center, probably other places I don't know about) the Guthrie Theater, probably some other good theaters, and all the lakes.

St. Louis, Kansas City, Houston, Denver, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati/Cleveland/Columbus, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, and Milwaukee seem to be other reasonable, roughly centrally located venues for a tournament.

Although there are fewer teams on the west coast, the ratio is going up. I'm not asking for Anchorage or Honolulu (which, cost aside, would be AWESOME), but I think one of Phoenix, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area could and should see a national tournament soon.

Despite being pretty darn close to NOLA, I'm not sure I would really want to go. It wasn't a really nice city before Katrina, and it's kinda trashy now. It's actually kinda scary to be honest.

Inkana7 wrote:Pittsburgh.

I will support this, and I think Matt will be behind me here. You can get from the airport to two college campuses for under two dollars. Hotels are convenient and can be gotten to by bus. Parking exists throughout. Restaurants are varied. If you want to get a non-tech job and wear a white collar (or actually any sort of collar at all), don't come to Pittsburgh. If you want to play a conveniently located tournament, do.

It's also very well located, near the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, yet not too far from Illinois and Ohio.

I've heard great things about Pittsburgh, but I've never had a chance to visit. I think it'd be an excellent place for an HSNCT.

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:I will support this, and I think Matt will be behind me here. You can get from the airport to two college campuses for under two dollars. Hotels are convenient and can be gotten to by bus. Parking exists throughout. Restaurants are varied. If you want to get a non-tech job and wear a white collar (or actually any sort of collar at all), don't come to Pittsburgh. If you want to play a conveniently located tournament, do.

In the abstract, I think if NAQT were looking for a new place to host an enormous tournament, Pittsburgh would be a great place to consider (drivable from half the country, air travel hub, nice public transportation, etc). But I think having the HSNCT perpetually in Chicago isn't the worst thing. Clearly NAQT is doing something right if 200 teams want to go there, and there's no reason to make a major change until the system starts to break.

Yeah; that's an important caveat, actually: Chicago seems to be a successful location thus far.

Yeah, this brings up a good point. Chicago is really an excellent place to hold the tournament in my opinion. It fits pretty much all the criteria that we listed pretty well. Also, having it in Chicago every year gives it a sense of consistency. Hm, maybe we should just try to make the Chicago tournament more fun for all the participants. Unless of course there is something wrong with the Chicago location... Hm... I know Intel ISEF switches locations every year, but that's because the cities actually make a bid for them to come to their city. Then again, going to Chicago over and over again might not be that fun for some teams, and the concept of going somewhere new each year sounds cool. Hm... I don't really know where I stand on this issue. I guess leaning towards the stay in Chicago side.

Doink the Clown wrote:

Arsonists Get All the Girls wrote:Minneapoil and St. Paul sound like pretty good locations. Geographically, it looks sensible. It has a large airport. There's probably enough good hosting sites. In addition, there is probably a good number of moderators we could pull from UMinnesota and perhaps UChicago or somewhere. I can't think of any really fun places to go there, but I'm sure there isn't a dearth of fun to be had.

There are also teams at Carleton and Macalester who could cough up some mods. If you want fun, there's some good art galleries(Minneapolis Institute of Art,Walker Art Center, probably other places I don't know about) the Guthrie Theater, probably some other good theaters, and all the lakes.

Plus, there's the Mall of America, easily accessible from downtown on the light rail. It's a giant mall! What's not to love?

soaringeagle22 wrote:I've heard great things about Pittsburgh, but I've never had a chance to visit. I think it'd be an excellent place for an HSNCT.

It's a great city. Very pretty architecturally what with all the Bridges and how it's all laid out next to the rivers. It's also very clean(even moreso thanks to the recent G20) and has great restaurants and things to do. Great city. Especially in May/June.

Pittsburgh is indeed a great place to visit and stuff. I have no problem with perpetually hosting HSNCT in Chicago, but, if it had to move, Pittsburgh wouldn't be a bad place at all.

Carleton tends to have finals either right before or during HSNCT, so don't count on anyone coming up from Northfield to help out at a theoretical Twin Cities HSNCT, but, beyond that, the Cities would be a really good place to host HSNCT.

The Twin Cities are also home to the historic Southdale Mall, the first indoor mall in the United States, created by the important mall designer Victor Gruen (soon to become a tossup answer!).

That said, I don't really have a problem with Chicago. It's a major transit hub, teams seam to get there all right, and it's very centrally located to a lot of major quizbowl hubs (Chicago, Minneapolis, Illinois, etc.).

Inkana7 wrote:

soaringeagle22 wrote:I've heard great things about Pittsburgh, but I've never had a chance to visit. I think it'd be an excellent place for an HSNCT.

It's a great city. Very pretty architecturally what with all the Bridges and how it's all laid out next to the rivers. It's also very clean(even moreso thanks to the recent G20) and has great restaurants and things to do. Great city. Especially in May/June.

Now I want to go there in May/June instead during quizbowl season! But I'd like to have it there or somewhere else in the midwest. The Twin Cities, St. Louis, or some Tennessee city wouldn't be so bad.

I think Atlanta or Charlotte would be the best cities to have NAQT nationals. Charlotte has a big airline hub (US Airways), is a rather large city, and you could have it at one of several hotels downtown. A problem is if you held it the same weekend as the Coca-Cola 600, you'd have a lot of traffic.

It gets very expensive for all but Midwestern teams to head to Chicago every year, and some teams might skip this year.

We all know about how big Atlanta is, with two airline hubs, lots of places to put it, and a great quiz bowl tradition.

Cincinnati would also be interesting. The tournament wasn't really that big when it was in Myrtle Beach, but you could hold it in a good coastal city like Savannah or Charleston.

How would flying to Savannah be in any way fiscally possible for most teams? I think Atlanta or Nashville make the most sense if HSNCT were to be held in the Southeast, but why is it so pressing to move it away from Chicago? Economically it makes a lot of sense to keep it there. Personally, I went to Chicago for HSNCT three times (and also later in 2008 for the Chicago Open) and did not get tired of the city at all. There's just so much to do there.

Cincinatti's airport is in Northern Kentucky, which might present a bit of a problem for the Queen City's chances. If you wanted to do HSNCT in the Cincy area, it might actually be more advantageous to look into the south side of the river.

I like Chicago and all. But, I'd like to visit some other places. Sadly, this is one of the only chances my students (and I for that matter) get to travel at all. I've been to Chicago all five years that I've been teaching. It would be nice to see some new places.

Convenience-wise, the following would be best (though I have been to these places plenty of times):

Atlanta
Nashville
Memphis
St. Louis
Cincinatti

These are places I would like to visit and that would be ideal for hosting such a huge event:

New York
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Denver
Houston
New Orleans
Orlando
Cleveland (I'd like to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
Phoenix
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Minneapolis

These are just some ideas I brainstormed.

Los Angeles has major issues with public transportation (1 bus as far as I know that goes from the airport to UCLA, and I'm not sure there's public transportation anywhere else), though this may be less of a factor among high school teams whose coaches often rent cars anyway, and NAQT has held HSNCT in places without great public transportation before (Austin, Myrtle Beach). It also has relatively high costs to fly in and out of. That said, there are a number of other attractive features (plenty of local clubs to help moderate, for some reason (hint: tourism) teams would like to visit LA, etc.) that would make an LA bid reasonable.

One thing that we have to remember is that the top teams are pretty much going to travel anywhere as long as they can make the tournament and feel it's worthwhile to show up. As such, the question is where NAQT thinks that it can recruit the best "mid-to-bottom-level" "local" teams. Illinois' participation in HSNCT has spiked since NAQT moved the tournament to Chicago. Plenty of Texas/Oklahoma teams showed up to the two Texas HSNCTs, and the Atlanta/Myrtle Beach HSNCTs featured a high proportion of teams from the South. I think NAQT may look at "where can we do the most to expand our circuit" when deciding where to host future HSNCTs. Obviously Chicago is a good place, and I'd definitely be for having it in Chicago every other year or every three years or something. The other year/two years could be "expansionary" locations - places where NAQT wants to attract the mid-level national teams that don't otherwise travel a lot.

cvdwightw wrote:As such, the question is where NAQT thinks that it can recruit the best "mid-to-bottom-level" "local" teams. Illinois' participation in HSNCT has spiked since NAQT moved the tournament to Chicago. Plenty of Texas/Oklahoma teams showed up to the two Texas HSNCTs, and the Atlanta/Myrtle Beach HSNCTs featured a high proportion of teams from the South. I think NAQT may look at "where can we do the most to expand our circuit" when deciding where to host future HSNCTs. Obviously Chicago is a good place, and I'd definitely be for having it in Chicago every other year or every three years or something. The other year/two years could be "expansionary" locations - places where NAQT wants to attract the mid-level national teams that don't otherwise travel a lot.

This is an excellent point. One place that I really believe should host HSNCT in the next 3-5 years is Seattle. I really think the West is the next great frontier for the expansion of good quizbowl, and that hosting a national tournament would help kickstart that development.

cvdwightw wrote:Los Angeles has major issues with public transportation (1 bus as far as I know that goes from the airport to UCLA, and I'm not sure there's public transportation anywhere else)

Are you sure about that? http://www.metro.net/index.asp

cvdwightw wrote: One thing that we have to remember is that the top teams are pretty much going to travel anywhere as long as they can make the tournament and feel it's worthwhile to show up. As such, the question is where NAQT thinks that it can recruit the best "mid-to-bottom-level" "local" teams.

In that case, St. Louis would be a wonderful site--Missouri has a dozen or two of those mid to bottom level teams and a huge existing circuit which could send plenty of teams to HSNCT. Not only that, but St. Louis is centrally located for teams from all across the country to travel to, serving as a nice compromise between accessibility and circuit expansion.

As for its tourist attractions, while I do think they're fairly decent, I also don't think that's really an important factor. Let's be honest here--how many teams do you think hinge their attendance at Nationals on whether they can have a fun tourist experience? Some of the suggestions given so far (like Seattle, Los Angeles, and Phoenix) seem to be more of an example of "Name your favorite tourist destination" rather than plausible destinations that you could expect teams to travel to from, say, New York, Maryland, or Georgia.

cvdwightw wrote:this may be less of a factor among high school teams whose coaches often rent cars anyway, and NAQT has held HSNCT in places without great public transportation before (Austin, Myrtle Beach).

We would very much like to avoid making people rent cars if at all possible. Therefore: it is a safe bet that future HSNCTs will be somewhere with either 1. good public transportation or 2. large airport hotels with shuttles, such that teams have the option to rent cars or not to explore the surrounding area.

cvdwightw wrote:I think NAQT may look at "where can we do the most to expand our circuit" when deciding where to host future HSNCTs.

This is, in my opinion, the most persuasive argument for rotating host sites for nationals: that having fixed sites (Chicago-area and DC-area) hurts the development of programs in other parts of the country. In a hypothetical ideal world, we would be delighted to rotate among 3-4 sites scattered across the country, if they all offered the same advantages that Chicago does now. (And Atlanta, for instance, very well might.)

Hosting HSNCT on the west coast will be a disaster. The reason Chicago is such a success is because it's not ultra far north, and it has a large block of states from Minnesota down to Texas then straight over to the Atlantic that produces the vast majority of the field. If the HSNCT were to move further west than the Central timezone, this giant block of states that you were once right in the middle of now gets further and further away, making it harder for lots of teams to drive or cheaply fly there. Every state from the Great Plains through the Rockies until you reach the suburbs of Los Angeles (and even then, leaving SoCal there is only the Bay area circuit then the Seattle circuit, both of which are tiny at the moment) has no circuit whatsoever. Until it is possible to draw at least 50 teams from places like Nevada and Oregon, I think any HSNCT that is held west of Kansas City will see a significant drop off in attendance, which I think would hurt NAQT a lot financially. I think this will also limit a lot of HSNCT's ability to draw the kinds of teams that go 5-5. Whatever teams that do exist in the mountain timezone, at the current rate I would be shocked if they are the kinds of teams that are middle of the road for HSNCT, compared to the teams that go 5-5 and drive in from the midwest at Chicago. Thus, I think there would be both a decline in drawing power AND a decline in average skill if you were to move from Chicago to the much less densely populated California area. And don't even think about Seattle.

I am mostly in the camp of Matt Weiner. Chicago obviously works. It has obviously worked the best of anything anybody has done so far for a national tournament. If we had to move I would think it should stay in the midwest. Pittsburgh sounds good, as does Ohio. I wonder what kind of options there are in Kentucky, because that's rather central. I know Paul Nelson found a very profitable hotel proposal in St. Louis, and I would be interested in exploring that if Chicago really did lose its appeal (which I'm guessing it won't). Charles Hang is absolutely right that Missouri is in the middle of somewhat of an explosion of interest in Nationals - however, I think we are close enough to Chicago that most of our interested teams would just go there, like how 8 went to Chicago last year.

Does anyone else think that it would be fairer to teams if HSNCT moved around a bit more? I mean, every year, teams in other regions have to do extensive fundraising to pay for travel, lodging, etc., while Illinois teams don't. It would be nice to have HSNCT somewhere closer; if it rotated locations, everyone would be able to have it close to them after a certain period.

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Does anyone else think that it would be fairer to teams if HSNCT moved around a bit more? I mean, every year, teams in other regions have to do extensive fundraising to pay for travel, lodging, etc., while Illinois teams don't.

Not true; goodly number of them still do. Sure, some don't, but it happens that many of the ones that don't wouldn't have to even if the site moved.

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:It would be nice to have HSNCT somewhere closer; if it rotated locations, everyone would be able to have it close to them after a certain period.

Not true. There might be more teams who have it close to them, but I doubt it's ever going to be held in, say, Alabama or Idaho. Some teams are just always going to get screwed. We need to find the place that (among other criteria) screws the fewest teams. Chicago might not be the only solution to that, but it's clearly pretty good. I would be fine with places like Pittsburgh or St. Louis, even though for selfish reasons it's nonideal for me. I agree that the West Coast is a lousy idea.

While I doubt that Alabama will ever host, it wouldn't be that we couldn't host it. We do have both Huntsville and Birmingham as good cities for hosting with facilities while not Chicago would be adequate for the task..
I personally think that Nashville or Atlanta would be choices for hosting down south.

jonah wrote:

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Does anyone else think that it would be fairer to teams if HSNCT moved around a bit more? I mean, every year, teams in other regions have to do extensive fundraising to pay for travel, lodging, etc., while Illinois teams don't.

Not true; goodly number of them still do. Sure, some don't, but it happens that many of the ones that don't wouldn't have to even if the site moved.

I'm not sure what you're saying, maybe that some schools get funding without having to fundraise? Either way, I'm not sure you can deny the fact that it places a significantly greater financial burden on, say, a Georgia team to fly (or drive) to Chicago and pay for hotels every time it attends HSNCT, than for a Chicago-area school who has nationals right next to them every single year.

Just to be different: Las Vegas... nah. Memphis maybe?

Otherwise, I really do like Chicago as a venue.

As much as I would love to see HSNCT in my home state, I just took a quick glance at the hotels in Cleveland and the Convention Center itself. None have, on their own, the requisite number of meeting rooms -- and I would hate to move back to a situation where games are placed in converted regular hotel rooms.

(That said, I think Cleveland would be an excellent ICT host.)

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:

jonah wrote:

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Does anyone else think that it would be fairer to teams if HSNCT moved around a bit more? I mean, every year, teams in other regions have to do extensive fundraising to pay for travel, lodging, etc., while Illinois teams don't.

Not true; goodly number of them still do. Sure, some don't, but it happens that many of the ones that don't wouldn't have to even if the site moved.

I'm not sure what you're saying, maybe that some schools get funding without having to fundraise? Either way, I'm not sure you can deny the fact that it places a significantly greater financial burden on, say, a Georgia team to fly (or drive) to Chicago and pay for hotels every time it attends HSNCT, than for a Chicago-area school who has nationals right next to them every single year.

I was saying what you suggested. I cannot deny that fact, and I advocate some variation in the HSNCT site. But I can't imagine that any site west of the Mississippi (except St. Louis, which is barely so) would be a good idea, so western teams are likely to just always get screwed for the forseeable future.

I would like to see HSNCT hosted somewhere in the Southeast as well. I remember that when I was in high school, our team did not receive enough sufficient funds to travel to Chicago. We did fundraising, but the fundraising only helped to pay the costs of tournament fees around the area. I think it would be a wonderful idea to host the tournament in cities like Atlanta (enormous airport, many hotels to fit people's needs, many tourist attractions), Nashville (only been there once, but it is a very lovely city), or Charlotte. I think that the tournament shouldn't always be held in Chicago because it does seem unjust to some of the teams in the Southeast who have to raise a large amount of money to go. Then, again. Moving the tournament to the Southeast would be unjust to some Northerners but why not give it a try? I'm sure a majority of the teams in the Southern areas would rush to attend the tournament held in the Southeast.

<derail>Yes, having HSNCT in LA (or Seattle, or San Francisco), so far from the concentration of good East Coast teams, probably isn't a great idea, but are there travel discounts for the tournament, and if not, why not?</derail>

When were we talking about travel discounts?

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:When were we talking about travel discounts?

Hence why he indicated that it was a derail. To address the point, though, I don't know if travel discounts large enough to convince teams to travel to the West coast from the East, rather than just to Chicago, exist.

Travel discounts are not typically applied to national tournaments, since everyone has to travel to them and these tournaments are not exactly cash cows as it is.

phuynh99 wrote:I would like to see HSNCT hosted somewhere in the Southeast as well. I remember that when I was in high school, our team did not receive enough sufficient funds to travel to Chicago. We did fundraising, but the fundraising only helped to pay the costs of tournament fees around the area. I think it would be a wonderful idea to host the tournament in cities like Atlanta (enormous airport, many hotels to fit people's needs, many tourist attractions), Nashville (only been there once, but it is a very lovely city), or Charlotte. I think that the tournament shouldn't always be held in Chicago because it does seem unjust to some of the teams in the Southeast who have to raise a large amount of money to go. Then, again. Moving the tournament to the Southeast would be unjust to some Northerners but why not give it a try? I'm sure a majority of the teams in the Southern areas would rush to attend the tournament held in the Southeast.

We went through similar circumstances at Brindlee Mountain. It seemed that we went to many tournaments, especially my senior year. We had to raise money for all of them because we lived in one of the poorest school systems in North Alabama if not the whole state. We started doing fund raisers for nationals it seems like before the first semester of school even ended. Freshman year we tried to do charter buses, which worked out but was stressful. Sophomore year we flew, which was quite fun except for a few events. Junior year they drove but I flew since my dad lives in Rockford (nice city) which is an hour or so from Chicago. Senior year we had to leave right after our graduation due to the not-so-good scheduling by our school. Every year it seemed like it got more stressful to make it to Chicago. As stated above by various people, Nashville would be a great place to have it, and I (and maybe other Brindlee alums) would probably offer to come up and help if it were to be held there because it's only a 2 hour drive for us. Other cities in the Southeast that may be good: Atlanta and possibly Charlotte. Rotation would be nice, as Chicago got somewhat less appealing after a while, but that was partially due to the fact I visited my dad 3-4 times a year and always flew into either Midway or O'Hare.