ANNOUNCEMENT: 2021 WORKSHOP

[vinteuil]

I'm excited to announce the return of WORKSHOP, to be played in Spring 2021.

Building on the successes of last year, we aim to produce a high-quality regular-difficulty (3 dots on Ophir's scale) written by newer writers. As with last year, the goal is to provide an annual opportunity for newer writers to get experience with and detailed feedback on regular-difficulty questions, and for quizbowlers to get experience working on administration, logistics and finances.

We learned a lot from working on last year's set, getting a huge amount of great feedback from everybody involved—we think that with this team and what we've learned, the experience can be even better and certainly smoother.

We welcome participants in high school and above. Writers should expect to contribute a minimum of 5 tossups and 5 bonuses to the set.

Applications are now closed.

The Team
Logistics: Will Grossman
Literature: Caroline Mao, WORKSHOP '20
History: Zachary Knecht, WORKSHOP '20 (American, world), Christopher Sims, WORKSHOP '20 (European, other)
Science: Adam Fine (chem, physics), Kevin Wang (bio, other)
Arts: Wonyoung Jang
RMPSS: Jacob Reed (RPSS), with Kevin Wang ("Legends")
Other Academic: Will Holub-Moorman

The Set
14 packets plus tiebreakers
Length caps: 7 line tossups (before powermark), 8 line bonuses (not including answerlines)

Distribution
4/4 Literature: American, British, European, World
4/4 History: American, European, World, Ancient/Archaeology/Other
4/4 Science: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Other
3/3 Arts: visual, audio, other
1/1 “Legends” including at least .5/.5 traditional “religion”
1/1 Philosophy
.5/.5 Other Religion
1.5/1.5 Social Science
1/1 Other (roughly two-thirds geography and current events

Payment Structure
We will set aside 25% of all proceeds for set-wide work: dealing with mirrors, keeping track of payments, billing hosts, proofreading, packetizing, wrangling writers (enforcing deadlines) etc.

For questions, we'll again be using a “points system”:

5 points given out per tossup, 4 points per bonus
2 point to the writer for writing a tossup, 1 point for a bonus
1 point to the writer if the question needs minimal editing (roughly: “25% or less of question text needs replacement” with some discretion)
1 point per question to the writer if they consistently make life easier for the editors (writing a lot, writing on time)
The remaining points will go to the editor of that question

The 75% of non-set-wide revenue will then be divided up based exclusively on the percentage of total points a writer or editor receives.

Our pay estimates for last year were badly derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we anticipate that there may be similar hurdles next season. Suffice it to say that we are trying our best to pay everybody on board a fair rate, and to get as many people as possible to play the set.

Planned Timeline
We anticipate having all question-writing done by Thanksgiving, and the set completed by SCT. We will accept writer applications until all question slots are claimed.

Questions? Concerns?
You can reach us at [email protected]

[vinteuil]

We've gotten an amazing response so far—I'll leave the application open until noon tomorrow, so please fill out the form soon if you'd like to participate!