NAQT vice president for communication

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NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

I am pleased to announce that effective immediately I will be serving as NAQT's vice president for communication.

From R.:

"Jeff will serve as NAQT's liaison to the quiz bowl community; his duties will include providing official answers to questions about NAQT's ideals and policies."

So, if you have questions about NAQT, please feel free to post your comments on this board or send me email. jthoppes [at] berkeley [dot] edu
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by AKKOLADE »

This is good stuff.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Awehrman »

While this is certainly an important office, I wonder if NAQT will consider expanding the position or creating another one to communicate with people outside of the quizbowl community. While NAQT certainly needs to appease its core, its marketing, especially to non-circuit colleges and universities, is minimal at best and perhaps detrimental to the growth of quizbowl at worst.

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but this seems a good opportunity to receive some official feedback. I posted last year about the possibility of NAQT filling the void left by CBI by working more closely with university administrators than it has done in the past. I suggested that NAQT align with NACA (National Association for Campus Activities) as opposed to CBI's long relationship with ACUI (Association of College Unions International). I sent a long email to this effect to NAQT and suggested that NAQT contact my wife Ellen, who is student activity coordinator at Loyola University Chicago, about how best to appeal to higher education administrators, but I received no response from NAQT.

In January Ellen received an unsolicited flyer in the mail from NAQT about Sectionals. It was a folded plain white sheet of paper addressed to the "College Bowl Coordinator." Since that position doesn't exist at Loyola (nor anywhere else at this time), it nearly got thrown away before my wife recognized the NAQT name. She receives at least a couple dozen flyers in addition to about 50 emails each week from various organizations. She said NAQT's flyer was the least effective of any that she has seen. Not only did it not stand out in any way, the flyer did not explain what NAQT is nor what quizbowl is. The header reads "Get your team ready for NAQT Sectionals," but the flyer does not provide any information about how to go about doing this. The flyer simply lists the locations and contact person for each sectional. It lists community colleges next to four-year colleges, which might throw up red flags for administrators at both types of institution. It does not mention how much the tournament will cost (one of the best arguments NAQT has regarding why colleges should prefer NAQT over CBI). In sum, the flyer does nothing to attract new schools, and I'm sure it ended up a waste of money for NAQT and perhaps turned campus activities people and funding boards off rather than bringing them into the fray. Did anyone new sign up for NAQT Sectionals after seeing this letter? How many were sent?

I'm sure my wife could provide more details about how this letter should be arranged to be a better attention grabber and catch the eye of student activities personnel (in addition to providing information about how NAQT could better appeal to administrators and funding boards), but certainly a little color, some graphics (perhaps a photo of quizbowl being played), general information about the activity, testimonials, and pricing structures would be a start.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Awehrman »

I tracked down the flyer and scanned it, so people can see what I'm talking about and perhaps make suggestions about how to improve it in the future.

Front

Back

I would also like to ask Jeff and NAQT more broadly about the goals of the company. What are NAQT's plans for expansion, if any? How does NAQT view its role on college campuses (or high schools)? What would an ideal nation-wide scenario for NAQT look like? What is NAQT doing to achieve those goals?
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

Dwight Kidder informs me that the flyer indicated was the third in a series of mailings to ex-CBI schools. It was intended to be a reminder to teams, not a stand-alone summary of NAQT's product, and we know that it probably didn't work as the latter.

More on that last series of questions after I get some feedback from R.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Awehrman »

The fact that it's the third in a series doesn't really make it any better. Why doesn't it mention that it is the third letter sent, so that if the first were missed, forgotten, or thrown away (as is probably the case with Loyola), the individual receiving it might contact NAQT to receive the first two? It doesn't explain why there's no logo, color, or pricing or why so much pertinent information is missing (that schools compete in different divisions and that schools can bring multiple teams, for instance). Ellen said that her office receives spam faxes that look more legitimate than this letter from NAQT. It also was sent out too late (postmarked 12/26) for student activities to place it on the spring semester budget. If the letter(s) happened to find their way to the right person, and if that person were unusually under-worked, patient, and curious, they might look to the NAQT website for more information. Once there he or she would likely click "Start a College Quiz Bowl Team." This page, however, is meant for students looking to create teams not for administrators who may want to start one. It is not organized with a higher education administrator in mind and many of the links are out of date. For instance the link about funding the club takes you to an antiquated webpage from 2000 in a garish red font. Written by Tom Michaels, it contains some decent information, but much is outdated information about CBI, and perhaps more troubling is that it treats student activities departments derisively. If NAQT wants to court student activities people, and it must since it sent out three separate mailings to them, it needs to do many things differently to achieve significant results. This leads me to the questions I asked above about the future and mission of NAQT.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by First Chairman »

Congratulations!
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

Awehrman wrote:I would also like to ask Jeff and NAQT more broadly about the goals of the company. What are NAQT's plans for expansion, if any?
Just to clarify: from context, you mean the expansion of NAQT's existing products such as the SCT to new schools, not expansion in the sense of producing more questions/sets?
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Awehrman »

I think people might be interested in both of those things, but I was referring to expansion of the existing products to new schools and/or to campus activities personnel.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

Awehrman wrote:I would also like to ask Jeff and NAQT more broadly about the goals of the company. What are NAQT's plans for expansion, if any? How does NAQT view its role on college campuses (or high schools)? What would an ideal nation-wide scenario for NAQT look like? What is NAQT doing to achieve those goals?
R. wrote:NAQT would like to see every high school, middle school, college, and community college in the U.S. and Canada fielding a quiz bowl team, making the activity as ubiquitous as sports like football and baseball. We would like to see those schools' varsity teams competing regularly (and at a high level) as well as running more casual intramural competitions. We would also like to see quiz bowl become part of the "national consciousness": something that everybody is "aware of" and instantly recognizes when they see it.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Awehrman »

Thanks for the replies, Jeff. I don't want to come off too forcefully, and I know you only started in this communicative role. I like what R. says about the goals of NAQT, I feel much the same way. If NAQT wants to discuss how to better appeal and market to colleges, we are willing to advise and help.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by mujason »

My idea for a marketing poster would be the Uncle Sam "I WANT YOU" poster with NAQT lit editor :kenj: with a buzzer in his hand instead of Uncle Sam and have "FOR THE SMARTEST CONTEST IN SCHOOL" and NAQT's contact info at the bottom.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Thank god you aren't in charge of these things.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by vandyhawk »

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:Thank god you aren't in charge of these things.
While this is true, I do wonder if dropping Ken's name (provided he would be ok with such a thing) would be a useful marketing ploy...
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by grapesmoker »

vandyhawk wrote:While this is true, I do wonder if dropping Ken's name (provided he would be ok with such a thing) would be a useful marketing ploy...
Quizbowl and Jeopardy! are similar only in the sense that they involve questions, answers, and buzzers. Maybe dropping Ken's name is going to get a few more people to show up once or twice, but I doubt it would have any effect on team formation.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by AKKOLADE »

I'm going to take the possibly (probably) (definitely) unwise position of disagreeing with Jerry here. Name dropping Jennings/Jeopardy! is a quick way to get peoples' attention. If you start out by saying, "Well, it's a knowledge competition, where we have pyramidal questions, which are questions set up where people who know the most about the subject hypothetically get first shot" blah blah blah I'm already thinking about other things and I'm the one typing this crap.

When you try to introduce someone to an activity, you want to grab their attention, and you can do so much more quickly by going to what they know about first. When someone asks you what quiz( )bowl is, I find that saying something like "Team Jeopardy!"* gets the point across much more quickly. After that, you can go into the differences.

*I'm not really that excited about it, FYI
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Captain Sinico »

Yeah, I disagree with Jerry, too. It take a lot of focused work to get good at the game, but the kernel of interest that gets new players in the door can be surprisingly small and insignificant. NAQT and quizbowl generally would be foolish not to leverage the fame and success of its associates at whatever (certainly not to the exclusion of other things, understand.)

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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Captain Sinico wrote:Yeah, I disagree with Jerry, too. It take a lot of focused work to get good at the game, but the kernel of interest that gets them in the door can be surprisingly small and insignificant. NAQT and quizbowl generally would be foolish not to leverage the fame and success of its associates at whatever (certainly not to the exclusion of other things, understand.)
Right. And "team Jeopardy!" (though a characterization that becomes pretty wrong pretty quickly) is a useful way to package information for complete newcomers. At the freshman club fair this year, at one point Julia and I were manning the table. She was quite comfortable immediately explaining quizbowl to people as team Jeopardy, then qualifying that description. She got lots of signatures. Initially, I described what quizbowl was more directly: since it took longer and wasn't as exciting-sounding, I got fewer.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

grapesmoker wrote:
vandyhawk wrote:While this is true, I do wonder if dropping Ken's name (provided he would be ok with such a thing) would be a useful marketing ploy...
Quizbowl and Jeopardy! are similar only in the sense that they involve questions, answers, and buzzers. Maybe dropping Ken's name is going to get a few more people to show up once or twice, but I doubt it would have any effect on team formation.
I would tend to agree with this assertion, that any sort of recruiting measure outside of presenting the most basic form of quizbowl do not greatly affect team recruitment in the long run.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

tetragrammatology wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:
vandyhawk wrote:While this is true, I do wonder if dropping Ken's name (provided he would be ok with such a thing) would be a useful marketing ploy...
Quizbowl and Jeopardy! are similar only in the sense that they involve questions, answers, and buzzers. Maybe dropping Ken's name is going to get a few more people to show up once or twice, but I doubt it would have any effect on team formation.
I would tend to agree with this assertion, that any sort of recruiting measure outside of presenting the most basic form of quizbowl do not greatly affect team recruitment in the long run.
How do you "present the most basic form of quizbowl" in the five words before people stop reading your flyers? I say, approximate it roughly and generate some interest, then weed out from whoever comes to meetings. While perhaps you'd have a better conversion rate if you showed people tossups on The Will to Believe and all three who came to your meeting stuck with it, I'd prefer attracting fifty and netting five.

EDIT: writing antonyms is bad for conveying your meaning
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

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everyday847 wrote:
Captain Sinico wrote:Yeah, I disagree with Jerry, too. It take a lot of focused work to get good at the game, but the kernel of interest that gets them in the door can be surprisingly small and insignificant. NAQT and quizbowl generally would be foolish not to leverage the fame and success of its associates at whatever (certainly not to the exclusion of other things, understand.)
Right. And "team Jeopardy!" (though a characterization that becomes pretty wrong pretty quickly) is a useful way to package information for complete newcomers. At the freshman club fair this year, at one point Julia and I were manning the table. She was quite comfortable immediately explaining quizbowl to people as team Jeopardy, then qualifying that description. She got lots of signatures. Initially, I described what quizbowl was more directly: since it took longer and wasn't as exciting-sounding, I got fewer.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by grapesmoker »

Yeah, I've used the "it's like Jeopardy" line before too. I'm not sure it attracted anyone who didn't already have some idea of what quizbowl looks like, but I've used it. I'm not saying NAQT shouldn't trade on Ken's image if they can, but just telling people that quizbowl is like Jeopardy! is inaccurate at best. I think it's useful as a heuristic for explaining to people who don't know the game what it's kind of like, but I wouldn't base a recruiting strategy around it.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by mujason »

What I meant was to use :kenj: (as someone who has a high recognition value among people somewhat familiar with knowledge-based activities but not necessarily quiz bowl, such as student activity coordinators) to get people interested in joining at first, and then explain that although quiz bowl and J! are somewhat alike in using buzzers and brainpower, quiz bowl is better in that pyramid-style questions that allow buzzing in at any point in the question is a better test of knowledge. Also, :chip: uses game show folks (such as Brad Rutter and Dave Madden) in his recruiting and moderating and he is great at marketing, otherwise, how else would he get teams to pay such exorbitant costs to play so few games on so horrific questions?
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Awehrman »

Looks like I got out of this thread at the right time, and here I go getting back into it. Jason has a bit of point about using Jennings, but I think it would have worked better a few years ago. I'm not sure how recognizable he is 5 years after his long Jeopardy! run. On a brochure or flyer, he would probably help market NAQT best by having a small photo with a short testimonial alongside testimonials from students, professors, administrators, or whoever NAQT wants to appeal to. I doubt that NAQT wants to be closely associated with Jeopardy! or vice versa. CBI and Chip Beall do know how to market, it's true. They've been in the quizbowl business for decades, but have not bothered changing their product suit the times. NAQT seems much more responsive to consumer demands, but they seem to be reticent to do the same sorts of marketing. I think NAQT should bolster its print marketing with a short video that explains their product(s), shows quizbowl in play, and has brief interviews with quizbowl advocates. They could mail a cd with a video nearly as cheaply as multiple mailings, and they could also post in on their website as a quick primer for new schools rather than having people wade through a lot of confusing text.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Awehrman wrote:Looks like I got out of this thread at the right time, and here I go getting back into it. Jason has a bit of point about using Jennings, but I think it would have worked better a few years ago. I'm not sure how recognizable he is 5 years after his long Jeopardy! run.
He has a gameshow on GSN called "Stump the Master." I think he's still recognizable.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Ken Jennings »

vandyhawk wrote: While this is true, I do wonder if dropping Ken's name (provided he would be ok with such a thing) would be a useful marketing ploy...
I'd be willing, but I'm not optimistic that it would work very well as marketing. Even back in 2004, when I was getting asked about quiz bowl in national interviews, and NAQT tried to leverage that a bit on their website, R. tells me he didn't notice any bump in inquiries whatsoever.

But I do think "team Jeopardy!" is a reasonable shorthand for quiz bowl first contact. Obviously, it's not perfectly "team Jeopardy!" But it's closer to team Jeopardy! than other kinds of organized quiz games that laypeople might be imagining: Trivial Pursuit, pub quiz, etc.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Matt Weiner »

If this is now the thread about ideas for marketing to new teams, then I have some meta-suggestions. The first one is this: Wasn't one of the longstanding issues with College Bowl that it was a product for activities departments, treated non-quizbowl people as its customers, and put the players in the backseat? Speaking as someone who played College Bowl for two years, I will answer my own question: yes, it was. It's great when clubs have an ally with access to funding and so on, and certainly a lot of people who work in student unions or club offices are good people who can bring a lot to quizbowl. At the same time, a thriving club has to be student-based; the era of the coach is just about entirely over, and the few large clubs that do have coaches (like Carleton and Valencia) have coaches who got involved because they were former players, not because they were working in a supervisory office. The emphasis should be on getting interested university representatives to pass information along to students who can form clubs, not on re-creating the College Bowl structure that we all knew was inherently flawed, and which proved us right when it collapsed, in no small part due to that flaw.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

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Andy, I think the effort you've put in to encourage NAQT to expand to new schools (not to mention your own efforts to expand good questions to middle school tournaments) is extraordinarily commendable, and I think the latter is already having some great benefits in the quality of discussion in the middle school forum. I also think you're right on the money that there is an opportunity to expand to these former CBI schools and we should try to make the best of it. And while I agree with your assessment that NAQT is in the best position to do this, I do share Matt's concern about attempting to adopt the CBI business model of primarily targeting business people. Dan Puma will probably be blessed with the most supportive activities person in quizbowl history next year, but I suppose I feel like activities coordinators not married to quizbowl people would be able to do much more than simply restart the CBI intramural/CBI regionals only track with NAQT intramural/SCT-only. Obviously NAQT cares much more about these clubs becoming actual quizbowl teams than did CBI, but I don't think the way the circuit is set up, as a mainly peer-based community, lends itself to activities office-targeted expansion - to merely understand the structure of the circuit takes a rather non-negligible amount of time, and as you said, time is something in which people in those positions aren't exactly swimming.

I do think you're right that NAQT could improve their marketing to those CBI schools, and I think you have some good ideas about how to do that (perhaps NAQT could benefit from designating someone to head up such an effort). But I do not think it would be very successful without also encouraging the student-driven side of team formation, as Matt says. Obviously this is more difficult to do, and I'm not sure how to best go about it. While targeting the activities departments of former CBI schools has the flaws Matt outlined above, it's somewhat easier than targeting the student bodies of those schools. If we could find a way to do both of those things in a slightly better way, we might have more luck getting the teams onto the circuit.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Awehrman »

Absolutely, Matt. But I think there are ways to maximize the benefit of student activities departments to help teams and players. I think it's important to realize that student activities people didn't particularly like CBI either. It was a tremendous burden on them. They had to provide all the staff, know-how, recruiting, etc. for very little return. CBI only benefited 6 students per school, so it was hard to justify the money given to it. It should still be student-centered, but if NAQT wants to achieve the total saturation that R. mentioned, they are going to have to work from both the top down and bottom up in universities.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Awehrman »

Responding to Chris, I don't want NAQT to follow CBI's business model. I think they should recognize the things that CBI did well (out-reach, marketing, corporate sponsorship), but do away with the way they treated students. My goal is to see NAQT (as I think they're the only ones capable of doing it at this point) reach out to student activities offices and help them loosen the purse strings to quizbowl clubs and help form clubs at schools that don't have them. They shouldn't stifle outside competition or more peer to peer forms of quizbowl. There are ways to reach out to these people that no one has tried. NAQT could go for a big campaign to get schools on board (NACA affiliation, sponsorship, etc.) or they can reach out more slowly by making their product more friendly to administrators (I mean the website, payment system, organizational materials not questions or gameplay). As far as I can tell, they are not really doing either of those things well.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by grapesmoker »

I think as part of their outreach package, NAQT should inform potential new clubs about all quizbowl events that are going on in their area, including ACF events and independent tournaments. A thriving independent circuit is certainly in NAQT's interest.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

grapesmoker wrote:I think as part of their outreach package, NAQT should inform potential new clubs about all quizbowl events that are going on in their area, including ACF events and independent tournaments. A thriving independent circuit is certainly in NAQT's interest.
Jerry: what do you think the best way to do this is? Ideally NAQT would much rather direct teams to an independent database of upcoming tournaments. (Of course we support a thriving circuit, but we think it's a better use of our limited time to improve the quality of our own tournaments rather than keep track of scheduled non-NAQT events.)

In related news, I'm about to add the ICT and HSNCT to the tournament database. Expect incoming posts in the tdb help thread.
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former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

bt_green_warbler wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:I think as part of their outreach package, NAQT should inform potential new clubs about all quizbowl events that are going on in their area, including ACF events and independent tournaments. A thriving independent circuit is certainly in NAQT's interest.
Jerry: what do you think the best way to do this is? Ideally NAQT would much rather direct teams to an independent database of upcoming tournaments. (Of course we support a thriving circuit, but we think it's a better use of our limited time to improve the quality of our own tournaments rather than keep track of scheduled non-NAQT events.)

In related news, I'm about to add the ICT and HSNCT to the tournament database. Expect incoming posts in the tdb help thread.
Directing folks to this here website would be simple and effective.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

bt_green_warbler wrote:In related news, I'm about to add the ICT and HSNCT to the tournament database. Expect incoming posts in the tdb help thread.
I can't post to the tdb help thread because it's locked and in the archives. This seems like a bad idea; mods, would you mind resurrecting and stickying it? (Or directing me to an open tdb help thread, if you've already done that?)

Edit: cross-posted my tdb question. Thanks, Matt and Fred.
Last edited by Important Bird Area on Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Matt Weiner »

I've moved the thread back to a live forum: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6216. Sorry for the error.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote:
bt_green_warbler wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:I think as part of their outreach package, NAQT should inform potential new clubs about all quizbowl events that are going on in their area, including ACF events and independent tournaments. A thriving independent circuit is certainly in NAQT's interest.
Jerry: what do you think the best way to do this is? Ideally NAQT would much rather direct teams to an independent database of upcoming tournaments. (Of course we support a thriving circuit, but we think it's a better use of our limited time to improve the quality of our own tournaments rather than keep track of scheduled non-NAQT events.)
Directing folks to this here website would be simple and effective.
Right. If you visit naqt.com and follow the prominent links at the top for "how to start a new college/high school team," you'll see that the first piece of advice is:
naqt.com wrote:1. Join the quiz bowl community. First and foremost, anybody interested in starting a team should get in touch with other active and nascent programs in their area and around the country. Other coaches (and their students) will be able to provide advice on every aspect of founding and coaching a team. The most active online forum devoted to high school quiz bowl is the World of High School Quiz Bowl.
What else should we be doing that might be more effective?
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former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

Matt Weiner wrote:I've moved the thread back to a live forum: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6216. Sorry for the error.
Thanks, Matt.

Edit: I still can't seem to post in that thread. Does it require mod powers to post in the Rules/Global Announcements section?
Last edited by Important Bird Area on Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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"I wish to make some kind of joke about Jeff's love of birds, but I always fear he'll turn them on me Hitchcock-style." -Fred
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by jonah »

It would probably be worth mentioning that despite its name, this site also is the center for collegiate stuff.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by AKKOLADE »

Officially, our name is now "The Quizbowl Resource Center."
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

jonah wrote:It would probably be worth mentioning that despite its name, this site also is the center for collegiate stuff.
That's why our how to start a college team page says:
naqt.com wrote:One should be sure to read the college sections of the most popular quiz bowl message board for discussion and tournament announcements.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

FredMorlan wrote:Officially, our name is now "The Quizbowl Resource Center."
I'll ask R. for an update, although since the links still work it's possible this will get filed under "things to do in June after ICT and HSNCT are over."
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former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Matt Weiner »

jonah wrote:It would probably be worth mentioning that despite its name, this site also is the center for collegiate stuff.
Hence the name change (which has been in effect for about two years now).

Some other things that could be done:

*Work with non-NAQT people who see all sorts of teams at all sorts of tournaments. I maintain a monthly newsletter for Mid-Atlantic teams that I add everyone conceivable (former College Bowl teams, HCASC teams, etc) to, and I always mention SCT and every other tournament. I also have about 550 entries on my national mailing list for ACF events; I would be happy to trade contacts with NAQT. We want to see each other succeed.

*The Entering Freshman Contact List does a lot of good and could be expanded even further by updating the interface and encouraging people to have a live computer available at their high school tournaments (NAQT or not) for people to submit their info when it's fresh in their mind.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

Matt Weiner wrote:Some other things that could be done:
Those are both excellent ideas. I'll drop a line to R., since I'm not in charge of our contact database.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by AKKOLADE »

bt_green_warbler wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:I've moved the thread back to a live forum: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6216. Sorry for the error.
Thanks, Matt.

Edit: I still can't seem to post in that thread. Does it require mod powers to post in the Rules/Global Announcements section?
I've moved it to the miscellaneous forum and made it an announcement, which should make it available for postings.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by grapesmoker »

Jeff, I think the two most obvious things that NAQT should do is to direct teams to this site (with a specific address, since most new teams won't know which Internet forum is the place for quizbowl discussion) and also to send a list of tournaments in the team's area along with the flier.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by BuzzerZen »

grapesmoker wrote:send a list of tournaments in the team's area along with the flier.
If people would use the tournament database, this would be really easy to do using the "search nearby" feature! *cough cough everybody*
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

grapesmoker wrote:Jeff, I think the two most obvious things that NAQT should do is to direct teams to this site (with a specific address, since most new teams won't know which Internet forum is the place for quizbowl discussion) and also to send a list of tournaments in the team's area along with the flier.
Jerry, do you mean that teams need an address more specific than hsquizbowl.org?

I'm not convinced that "teams go the hsqb home page, but can't figure out how to get to the college section" is a recruitment problem.
Last edited by Important Bird Area on Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Important Bird Area »

BuzzerZen wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:send a list of tournaments in the team's area along with the flier.
If people would use the tournament database, this would be really easy to do using the "search nearby" feature! *cough cough everybody*
More soon over in the tdb thread*, but NAQT believes that having a widely used, unified, fully-functional tournament database would be of great benefit to both NAQT and the circuit as a whole.

*Edit: I decided tdb/naqt.com coordination technical stuff was probably best off in private email to Evan
Last edited by Important Bird Area on Wed Mar 11, 2009 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
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Editor emeritus, ACF

"I wish to make some kind of joke about Jeff's love of birds, but I always fear he'll turn them on me Hitchcock-style." -Fred
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Re: NAQT vice president for communication

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

It seems to me something that NAQT could benefit from is getting in contact with already active programs in an area and giving them fliers to hand out to these new programs wherever they do go. At the high school level, I know I've distributed fliers about upcoming NAQT, HSAPQ, and good housewritten sets that I'm fully convinced have gotten some teams to be more active simply because they already didn't know about the existence of these events. In talking to some new college players who aren't as active as me, many of them are simply unaware of many events that they could benefit from that are in nearby drives like Illinois novice, MUT, ACF Regionals, and the like, and when I tell them about them they seem interested, so perhaps these fringe teams are simply fringe because they don't know about tournaments because they aren't necessarily motivated enough to check this site constantly or whatever.
In other matters, it seems to me if NAQT wants to get programs off the ground that are real and active, it seems to me that using the entering freshman list to focus in on individuals who might be interested in starting the team will be infinitely more effective than bombarding student activities people. It is quite apparent to me that new modern programs that get off the ground are the brainchildren of the players, not the handiwork of elected university students who have to deal with hundreds of student organizations and in my personal experience, don't really care and can't do a lot of things efficiently (sure, there are going to be exceptions but in my experience the students who are running this stuff in particular are pretty worthless for getting things done helpfully). It is my impression that the way club-founding at universities works is that they need to be student instigated, student run, and having a number of students willing to sign off on saying they are currently active in the club. To me, given that set-up, it is going to be worthless to only go after student activities organizers and not have actual students at the ready to do the on-campus legwork to prove to student activities people the club needs to get approved (things like getting other players to sign on, setting up practices, writing club constitutions, etc.)
Can you name me one example of a team founded after 2000 that was not strictly CBI that was founded by student organizations people and not actual players?
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