NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

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NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Important Bird Area »

naqt.com wrote:NAQT has recently received a number of suggestions, questions, and concerns related to quiz bowl, outreach, and social media. We are grateful for the feedback and have the following comments and responses.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

One thing I suspect is that many quizbowlers do have interesting stories relating to NAQT that they would like to share, but either feel that they are not worthwhile stories, not interesting stories, not public relations safe, don't want to come off as self-aggrandizing, etc.; but at the same time, the general excitement in the player poll threads makes me feel like QBers do want to lift up and praise the accomplishments of their peers.

In addition to offering a general contact email, does NAQT have an open list of criteria for topics/stories it would be interested to hear about, and a list of how such content might be used for public relations? (This question is inspired by the number of apparent outreach efforts made by NAQT last year, that nevertheless had dismaying response rates.) In addition to letting interested parties know what they want to contact NAQT about is an OK subject, it would also be cool if it happened to inspire QBers with NAQT-related stories that they've long forgotten about.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by cchiego »

I'm very glad that NAQT posted this. PR is definitely a place where collaboration between NAQT and the community is essential. I'm also thrilled to hear that there will be major improvements in the video/audio recorded at tournaments this year and hope that this continues in the future. Some specific thoughts in response to NAQT's post:
NAQT wrote:On a typical day, we find 250 to 300 new search results about quiz bowl-related search terms. While a majority of these are the same Twitter threads being retweeted and liked, this is still a lot to dig through.
NAQT should be ready to respond to mentions of quizbowl, academic bowl, academic challenge, academic competition, knowledge bowl, scholars bowl, etc. quickly and substantively across Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc. There are tools to do this efficiently and on multiple platforms, though a simple search a few times a day works too. But the response needs to be substantive and geared towards what content is being responded to. A simple "congratulations, hope you enjoyed the event and hope to see you at __insert next tournament in the area!__" might suffice for some, in other cases just liking the tweet might be fine. If it's, say, someone on Reddit asking for advice on starting a team, a much more detailed post and links to info on how to start a team plus a DM would probably be appropriate. Remember, you're not just posting for that immediate audience but also someone who comes across that post in a search later.

NAQT should try to avoid non-substantive, spam-ish tweets that don't stand on their own. Tweets that simply link to Instagram or Facebook posts or articles by themselves aren't that useful. Make the tweets so that you don't need to click through to Instagram/Spotify/Facebook/whatever to get a fully formed thought. Social media engagement should not just be for the sake of posting something, but should also provide a service in terms of useful or interesting information to the community and others outside of it.

This is particularly relevant when engaging with the many non-pyramidal teams or teams who aren't part of the larger community but who will happily tweet or insta lots of pictures of their events, results from their events, their practices, etc. Providing information (advice, practice material, potential events to attend, etc.) is one of the best ways to do outreach well in response to these kinds of tweets and NAQT has a pretty solid website with articles to link to for things like getting better (though I do think some of the articles could be broken-down better and NAQT may want to consider more how-to stories from the vast network of coaches, players, and alumni).

Furthermore, NAQT may not need to respond directly to everything on social media (if, for instance, the result is posted by someone who has no affiliation with the schools like a local newspaper), but should take note of information that could prove valuable in other contexts. A tweet with, say, the results of a county quizbowl competition could then lead to an invitation for those teams to participate more in a direct email that references their performance at the county (and is thus much more likely to be read/appreciated than a generic form email). I also don't think that, by itself, tweeting to principals and schools will be effective; but if you have, say, a cool photo of a team or an impressive result from a tournament and tweet at the principal or school, then that might be much more effective.
Some of the stories we’ve featured this year are a player who break three records in a tournament, a player who participates in quiz bowl while also being the lead in a school play, a player who has played quiz bowl on multiple continents, and a player who also lettered in football and track.
Title and frame content around the story, not a name. NAQT is very good about listing winners, top scorers, players of the week, etc. But why do we care about these people besides their high PPG or the fact that they won? Make the headline the angle here and frame the content around that. I didn't know that the Players of the Week had these stories because NAQT just tweets out "X is our Team/Player of the Week!" with a link and there's no indication why I should click through to learn more about this team. This is frustrating to see again and again. I also would extend this to the interviews at nationals-just "visiting with team X" isn't nearly as good as a substantive title.
The 20for20 interviews leading up to the 2018 HSNCT wasn’t nearly as successful as we hoped in terms of social media response, so we don’t currently plan to do anything similar again.
This lack of context/framing was also one of the issues with the 20for20 interviews. If I didn't know so many of these community members directly, why would I want to click on interviews with them? Why is the coach of Danville High School a remarkable individual? (He IS, as the interview makes clear, but why would I click on it if I didn't know already?) Why is a statistician at HSNCT a remarkable person? I also think that framing the interviews primarily around NAQT members might not have been the best idea for reaching NAQT's core audience of teachers, school administrators, and parents. I think making more content geared specifically to educators and parents would be a good strategy in the future.
We sent out/will send out hundreds of press releases before and after the SSNCT and MSNCT.
If press releases aren't working very effectively (and you can go off past years to see this), then try another angle. Find someone on the editorial board to email. Send an updated press release with photos if you can. Find someone who has a connection to quizbowl on the staff (more on alumni below...). I get that it can be difficult to do this and your success rate is likely to be low, but I know it works because I've gotten the press to take notice in the past.

The latter article is particularly interesting because the reporter learned a lot about quizbowl and then followed Georgia's teams to HSNCT a few years later. This speaks to a larger opportunity for PR for quizbowl: if you want higher-quality stories, you need to create relationships with reporters. Yes, this will take time and involve a lot of dead-ends. But there are things that could be done that, I think, would make for more "reportable" stories too. "X school's team finishes XXth at national championship" is pretty much a "Dogs bites man" story. But what could create a "Man bites dog" story out of the same material? This, I think, is one of the best areas for quizbowl to think about in the future when doing PR.
On many occasions, Ken and Larissa have talked to media about what quiz bowl is and what it means to them. As a result, we’ve already gotten some exposure in prominent outlets, and we’re open to ideas for how we can do more to build on that.
This is definitely a good start, but I think NAQT could go further not so much by relying on "celebrities" but by bringing quizbowl to these publications, who are often filled with people who might enjoy quizbowl.

For instance: could NAQT sponsor a match between, say, the New York Times and The New Yorker (or __insert your favorite highbrow publication/NGO/think tank here__)? Maybe some kind of competition or exhibition could be run at a big festival/conference. I think corporate quizbowl competitions for exhibition purposes could be fantastic (and yes, they do exist and work; I've seen them run by some libraries in several parts of the country). This is not only good PR for the game, but lets reporters at these publications and public intellectuals know that quizbowl is a thing.

Finally, alumni may be quizbowl's greatest untapped asset. I don't have the time or space here to get into this in as much detail as I would like, but there have been thousands upon thousands of participants in pyramidal quizbowl (and many more if you include non-pyramidal quizbowl too) who could be an incredible resource for connections to the media, local communities, and educational institutions. There are many, many cases of people popping up on social media from time to time saying how much they enjoyed quizbowl (many of them are prominent reporters/writers/commentators!). Finding a way to make use of this (and not doing something like, say, a cheap cash grab for $$ that would likely turn people off) would be a great long-term goal.
Last edited by cchiego on Thu May 02, 2019 12:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Cheynem »

One thing I would like to see and piggy backing off of Chris' point about alumni is perhaps some acknowledgment of how quizbowl played some role in the lives of successful people. You see this a lot in other sports/activities--people who may not have been all-stars, but are now, like, I dunno, a scientist or a lawyer or something, and they speak about how the Boy Scouts/Punt, Pass, and Kick/spelling bees played a role in their lives or built character.

Judging by my Facebook feed, which is heavily dominated by former or current quizbowlers, a lot of quizbowlers have gone to do some pretty neat things in life, and that's just scratching the surface.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by cchiego »

In light of the SSNCT, a few additional, specific comments about social media during nationals.

First, the good: NAQT did a great job of providing lots of material. There were tons of pictures and tweets from the site as well as some good interviews with teams and coaches. The raw material was solid. The stats were also updated consistently and the playoff brackets were posted and ready to go early on. This is great to see and I hope that these things continue at future nationals. Now for some suggestions:

There needs to be a live social media host (ideally someone at the tournament with direct access to the TD and stats rooms) who runs a specific landing page (call it the "Tournament Hub") for that tournament to coordinate all the raw information and material out there. Such a page would ideally have links to the live stats (maybe a ticker for scores too?), have the embedded twitter/instafeeds from all the accounts, and have a live blog/feed from a host. The host would fill in the time between games with analysis, provide color commentary, and respond to questions from the public. Providing pictures and tweets as NAQT does now on a bunch of different accounts is good, but trying to navigate the many different social media accounts providing info is difficult even if you already know a lot about them. Part of the issue is Twitter being terrible about actually keeping tweets in chronological order, but NAQT could still make it much easier to follow along with the "tournament hub" landing page (which all the various accounts could keep linking back to as well) that could help make sense of the tournament, especially to not-in-the-know viewers. The hub could be especially useful in smoothing over the gaps between matches and score updates.

NAQT claimed the problem with video at ICT/IPNCT this year was a "miscommunication." Apparently that miscommunication issue continued at SSNCT: a link promising a livestream on the YouTube channel was spread, but the livestream never happened, for reasons that still aren't clear. As a parent pointed out on Twitter, "If you want to grow #quizbowl, better advance publicity and reliably livestreaming the national tournament finals would be a good start. Watching (anything) done well is great advertising." Furthermore, investing in a quality, reliable camera instead of an iPad seems like it would be a logical place to start (I'm sure there are lots of opportunities to use said camera to benefit quizbowl/NAQT during the school year too!).

There are also opportunities that may appear on social media in which it would really help to have a quick responder alert and ready to take advantage of those as they occur. A Twitter account with 184k followers of an alum (see my point about alumni in the previous posts!) of one of the schools in the traditional public schools final tweeted about the match during the tournament. Imagine what could have happened had said person been able to link to a high-quality livestream or even just a coherent liveblog (the NAQT_live account they retweeted ended up then talking about the 3rd place game instead of the final too). This was a missed opportunity.

Finally, I really, really want to emphasize that just tweeting out random pictures of teams or links to Instagram pics is missing a bunch of opportunities. Tell us about them! All these teams have a story. Some of the interviews with the teams got to that, but like I said in the above post, it helps to headline a post with what's going on and why someone who doesn't know about the teams should care. A good example of how to do this well was the post about the quizbowl team that decided to hold their own prom at SSNCT since they were missing their school's for quizbowl. This was an interesting story that made sense of the picture and provided some interesting background/color to the event.

Furthermore, though this is nitpicky, making sure that you accurately say which state or city a team is from would be ideal (maybe every social media person can be issued a full list of the teams with cities to double-check?).
Last edited by cchiego on Sun May 05, 2019 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Cheynem »

I think the "social media host" Chris is describing would be great to see, but that also does seem like a job that not just any person could do (and the amount of work in that job would also require probably a greater level of compensation than that of simple staff members). I'm assuming Chris is aware of this, but this would almost be like a "full-time" job that someone would train to do and maintain for a few tournaments, like a tournament director or statsmaster.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Whiter Hydra »

cchiego wrote: Sun May 05, 2019 4:31 pm Apparently that miscommunication issue continued at SSNCT: a link promising a livestream on the YouTube channel was spread, but the livestream never happened, for reasons that still aren't clear.
The livestream did not take place because the hotel WiFi was not good enough to upload live video.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Quantity of Books v. Kansas »

NAQT should have better social media “game”—more reactive tweeting when people tweet about quiz bowl, more emphasis on human-interest stories, more interviews, more things accessible to people not in quizbowl (family members, etc.), rather than an emphasis on statistics.
On a typical day, we find 250 to 300 new search results about quiz bowl-related search terms. While a majority of these are the same Twitter threads being retweeted and liked, this is still a lot to dig through. If you see a news article or public social media post about quiz bowl, let us know! If you see something we should see, tag us! The internet is a vast place and we can’t see everything as quickly as we want to.

It’s 2019 people. Welcome to the internet age. Any company that deals with consumers directly and wants to be successful needs to have an effective social media page. Yes, I agree that the internet is a vast place, but it’s like, your job to search for stuff. Also, this reply does nothing to address what *you* stated people are asking for. Asking people to tag you in social media posts and news articles does not address the fact that NAQT should be making articles and public social media posts about quiz bowl. “More emphasis on human interest stories....” means that NAQT needs to make those stories instead of retweeting inane inside jokes. You need to have better original content, not just searching for other peoples’ and retweeting it.
LetterOne’s sponsorship has supported outreach to media and gathering of quiz bowl stories via their publicity firm (WEST). WEST wants to get interesting stories about quiz bowlers that go beyond the game, beyond buzzing speed and knowledge. WEST e-mailed all HSNCT participants in February asking for stories.
Can someone explain to me why using a different company’s publicity firm, in an email NOT COMING FROM NAQT, was expected to gain lots of responses? What real human being do you know would not just discard that email as spam. Also, why do you need a publicity firm for this? Is emailing all of the teams with a questionnaire or something not within NAQT’s capabilities?
For the six weeks or so between the 2019 HSNCT field opening and Christmas, we tweeted at each school, principal, and quiz bowl team congratulating them on qualifying for the HSNCT. We received a few dozen likes and a handful of responses, but the time it took to track these down was not worth the brevity of the responses from the actual schools.
Literally just look at what GPQB does on twitter and do that. I follow both accounts, and there’s so much more engagement with what GPQB does. Greg Bossick also does an incredible job of social media engagement. And before someone says “pooh pooh, it takes a really social media savvy person to do that, Emily”, the person who runs the GPQB account doesn’t have a facebook. You can be effective without being step for step with the youths. You can also be effective without trying to seem like a teenager is running the account. Less memes, more substance.
Fyi- tweeting a “You should join us at...” doesn’t really leave room for a detailed response. Ask them a question or something. Statements don’t breed discussion.
Our social media team will be doing more than just statistics updates at the 2019 SSNCT, MSNCT, and HSNCT.
Chris said it before, having hundreds of pictures of teams with (a substantial number of incorrect) states does nothing for social media engagement. The prom thing was cute, but what about teams who got to explore Chicago for the first time? Did any teams go to a museum? Guess what! Museums have stuff in them that comes up in quizbowl! That would be a substantive post. A lot of teams spend a lot of money to go to an XNCT and featuring that there’s time to explore the city and have educational opportunities where the tournament is being held might make splurging on a trip more palatable to coaches, administrators, and parents.
Also, was the livestream tested on Thursday or Friday during setup? This is the same hotel that most NAQT nationals take place in, that MSNCT will take place in next weekend, and in which previous matches had been filmed and streamed. Where was the backup plan for this?
Every week, we send e-mails to tournament directors asking them to highlight players who play well and are role models in the community. This has produced useful results three times in 25 weeks. Often we do not get responses to e-mails to coaches about honoring their players.
We try to choose teams we haven’t chosen before, with geographic diversity among the honorees chosen each week and overall.
Depending on the tournaments occurring, depth of results, responsiveness of hosts and potential honorees, and other factors, we are not able to choose a full slate of four honorees (middle school team and player, high school team and player) each week.
In general, responses have been muted outside honorees’ immediate communities.
Are those three results not worth it? Is getting national recognition going to hurt a school’s chances of supporting their quizbowl team? If the goal here is to expand the game and solidify existing programs, then those three results are most definitely worth it. Outreach isn’t about high yield, I think that much has been made clear to NAQT by brevity and lack of responses by teams. The recognition by an honoree’s immediate community, especially in rural areas, is so incredibly important in allocating funding. Just because a player of the week doesn’t receive national attention doesn’t mean they’re not worth it.
How can the quiz bowl community help?
Here’s where I’m going to get nitpicky. You guys make money off of us. And yes, you provide a public good, but you still make money off of us. Us retweeting and giving you more information is free advertisement and spreading your product, and in new programs makes NAQT synonymous with pyramidal quizbowl. Make a coaches/players council or something. Paid focus group? A paid intern? We already are helping. It’s time for you guys to start helping yourselves.

None of this is personally directed, and please do not take it as such.
Last edited by Quantity of Books v. Kansas on Mon May 06, 2019 12:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Rococo A Go Go »

cchiego wrote: Sun May 05, 2019 4:31 pm A Twitter account with 184k followers of an alum (see my point about alumni in the previous posts!) of one of the schools in the traditional public schools final tweeted about the match during the tournament.
For what it’s worth, this person doesn’t just have a big twitter following; he’s also runs a very popular website, hosts the most popular radio show in Kentucky, and hosts a television show. There’s a huge multimedia promotional opportunity here especially if Middlesboro continues being a top contender in future tournaments.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Wei la la. After this it gets deep. »

was told to crosspost this from discord:

Pretty much agree with the things posted above in this thread about SSNCT. Focusing on a couple teams’ stories would have been much better than talking to so many teams, I feel.

Things I think would be cool (utterly without consideration of feasibility):

Don’t mirror nationals sets after their corresponding nationals. Not being able to talk about question content really sucks. I feel that it legitimately hurts quizbowl’s social media presence when we can’t post about the actual content of the games, especially when a player firstlines something, feels really cool, and then can’t post about it.

Liveblogs are great for people already invested in qb, but in my opinion to a casual observer it’s really hard to become invested in a bunch of numbers. Suggestions (again, without regards to feasibility) as alternatives:

Get one livestream going every round. (I think it goes without saying that the ICT/IPNCT/SSNCT livestream situations for this year cannot be repeated. For what it’s worth, the videos of past HSNCTs have been pretty good, but I wasn’t involved in the community before this year, so I don’t know what the live situations were like. I have heard of the Chloe debacle and that is obviously like not a thing that should happen ever; chat moderation would fix this but also require someone to do it.) The dream scenario would be to pre-load questions and have them read on the stream display using question-reader software at roughly moderator-speed simultaneously with the questions being read in real-time. When a player buzzes, stop the question-reader; when they are correct, display the rest of the question. The dream-dream scenario would be to get the question reader integrated into a live chat with crude answer-checking capability (Protobowl-like suffices) so that you can be “competing” against the players in the round and the other players in the chat (hide other participants’ answers until the question is finished live, just check time buzzed Qblitz-style), but obviously this requires lots of effort and probably needs chat moderation, and probably just isn't worth the effort (the question-on-the-display thing at least helps casual viewers a lot, while this... doesn't, really). But honestly just like a livestream every round with scorebugs would be great.

For the more invested people: have actual live stats. Like live, live stats, with electronic online scoresheets in every room being updated as the questions happen. (maybe on a delay, I suppose.) Seeing a game develop “as it happens” per se is significantly more compelling than just getting a final score - this could provide much of the function of a live-blog and cover every room. Categories (and answerlines, perhaps) would be awesome. Advanced stats with buzzpoints and stuff would be amazing but obviously more difficult (especially at NAQT with timed rounds).

But yeah it's pretty cool to see NAQT actually making some amount of effort? to pay attention to this stuff
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

cftsoc3 wrote: Sun May 05, 2019 10:50 pm But yeah it's pretty cool to see NAQT actually making some amount of effort? to pay attention to this stuff
Absolutely it is. Joyce Sun has actually put NAQT on the social media map.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

cftsoc3 wrote: Sun May 05, 2019 10:50 pm was told to crosspost this from discord:

Don’t mirror nationals sets after their corresponding nationals. Not being able to talk about question content really sucks. I feel that it legitimately hurts quizbowl’s social media presence when we can’t post about the actual content of the games, especially when a player firstlines something, feels really cool, and then can’t post about it.
On this, which I and others discussed on the discord after seeing this post: especially with HSNCT, since I know SSNCT is now mirrored fairly widely, it would be much more interesting if liveblogs had answerlines. Seeing "TU 12: John Doe first lines Orwell on [some clue]" would be more interesting than just "John Doe powers the literature tossup." Off the top of my head question security would be easily dealt with by a stricter no-phones policy, though it's possible I'm forgetting something. Since NCTs run on timing, I don't think there's any actual risk of one game finishing entirely ahead of another game played on the same questions.

It's a shame that nationals is not a very engaging thing to tune into from afar unless you're already invested in it (I have to imagine players not at the nationals are the only ones for whom watching the bracket update is interesting).

This next point isn't particularly helpful since I'm unsure about what the solution is but the Discord rightfully discussed how great the Plano West interview after the 2018 HSNCT finals was. I'm not sure how to replicate that—alot of the charm is the Plano kids—but it felt much less awkward and stunted than some of the on-the-couch exit interviews are that I've seen. Maybe some of that has to do with the context of someone (phone recording?) while standing around with the Plano kids (kind of like an on-the-field post game interview after a baseball game), but good interviews that highlight the wonderful quizbowl community could, I imagine, go a long way.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by touchpack »

The Billiards Fool wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 12:24 am
Since NCTs run on timing, I don't think there's any actual risk of one game finishing entirely ahead of another game played on the same questions.

Actually, this happens somewhat frequently, and it makes liveblogging question content for the prelims infeasible. The card system requires that game-deciding protests be adjudicated immediately, which can cause delays if a game ends up decided by multiple contentious protests. I agree though that for later playoff rounds, it would be very good if the liveblogs could mention specific content.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by cchiego »

Me, in a 2009 email to NAQT wrote: I could liveblog the tournament from my laptop and provide instant commentary. If wanted, I could even do interviews and such before and after matches... I could use the liveblog as a way to keep friends, family, teachers, principals, teammates, etc. in touch during the tournament. Each round, I'd do a recap of the top individual players at the time, some of the leading teams, notes of any upsets etc. in addition to a blog of an individual game (maybe follow the #1 card team around the whole day or stay in one room?). I even could do a "pregame" show previewing the top 25 teams (as determined by the World of High School Quizbowl poll) and a wrap-up on Saturday night and after the tournament. Whatever might work. Heck, I could even Twitter during the tournament; it would be a New Media extravaganza.
So these ideas aren't new and have been shared before. As the originator of Liveblogging at HSNCT (2009 and 2010!), I think it was generally successful in its time. Keep in mind that this was before NAQT posted live full stat updates throughout the tournament; one of the biggest things I did was send out stats and team record updates to people who requested them based on what we knew. I also originated a website to put previews and updates on and it got a ton of traffic, but it kind of withered away in use over time.

I also don't think liveblogging by itself is a *bad* thing necessarily. I used the CoverItLive software so there were links, a scrolling set of scores, and a focus on interactions with the people who came in to chat as well as color commentary about the tournament site itself and what was going on during the matches besides the score. Twitter is not nearly as useful of a medium for that and it can be very confusing to have 3-4 games liveblogged at once on the same hashtag.

The key is to make sense of what's going on for the lay audience in addition to engaging with the quizbowl community. I got a lovely email from a parent after a tournament who said the following [emphasis added]:
[player]'s grandparents and other family members really enjoyed your liveblog. It gave them a sense of being there and the drama of the event which is otherwise difficult for people outside of the small world of quiz bowl to understand.

I think that bolded part should be the overarching goal of all social media engagement at quizbowl nationals. Things that are insidery, confusing, cluttery, etc. should be excised. Can engagement with quizbowl social media be made so simplified and coherent that even your grandparents could access, understand, and enjoy it? Yes, as Mike points out above, this would require a lot of work on the part of at least a few people to build up the unique skills required to run a more robust social media presence. But I think it would be worth it and there's a good example quizbowl could follow:

The FIRST Robotics Twitch channel is an example of more of what I'd love to see Quizbowl nationals look like, at least in terms of the general setup for a social media portal. Personally, I'd add more links below the video screen to explanations about what's going on and to other social media products, but overall it's a spiffy-looking page and they seem to get a lot of use out of it at their events (they have 23k followers!). They also have permanent hosts who guide the viewer through what's going on. On the negative side, there's a lot of time-filling gimmicks and I personally think quizbowl is a better product overall with more natural drama, human stories, and impressive feats. I bet quizbowl would beat them in viewership numbers if done right. But you can see the potential here that a group of Twitter accounts and pictures just doesn't get across by itself. And yes, you can have moderation features on there so a few idiots in the chat don't ruin things.
Cheynem wrote:I think the "social media host" Chris is describing would be great to see, but that also does seem like a job that not just any person could do (and the amount of work in that job would also require probably a greater level of compensation than that of simple staff members). I'm assuming Chris is aware of this, but this would almost be like a "full-time" job that someone would train to do and maintain for a few tournaments, like a tournament director or statsmaster.
NAQT already has a bunch of people that they fly out for PR and Liveblogging purposes and there seem to be a lot of longtime staffers and NAQT members out there that could work at this in addition to hired staff. I think part of the issue is that, until now, there really wasn't a call for engagement from the community, as Emily's post points out. There's likely a lot of talent among quizbowlers and alumni far and wide if it was sought out.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

touchpack wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 12:47 am
The Billiards Fool wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 12:24 am
Since NCTs run on timing, I don't think there's any actual risk of one game finishing entirely ahead of another game played on the same questions.

Actually, this happens somewhat frequently, and it makes liveblogging question content for the prelims infeasible. The card system requires that game-deciding protests be adjudicated immediately, which can cause delays if a game ends up decided by multiple contentious protests. I agree though that for later playoff rounds, it would be very good if the liveblogs could mention specific content.
I experienced at least two delays in the Open Division prelims, for example, so that could have not been good.

Plus the SSNCT set is used at regular tournaments throughout the next year.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by matthewspatrick »

1992 in spaceflight wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 7:50 am I experienced at least two delays in the Open Division prelims, for example, so that could have not been good.
Yup. Also in Open, and by the time we got started with Round 1 (photography-related delay) my Round 2 teams had started showing up.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Everything in the Whole Wide World »

It's probably not the best social media practice, and definitely not a very professional look for the company, to post a video alleging to be the championship of a major national, and instead have it consist of 42 seconds of almost nothing.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Important Bird Area »

Everything in the Whole Wide World wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 2:46 pm It's probably not the best social media practice, and definitely not a very professional look for the company, to post a video alleging to be the championship of a major national, and instead have it consist of 42 seconds of almost nothing.
This has been removed; our apologies for accidentally making visible to the public what was supposed to be brief test clip for our livestream.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by The Stately Rhododendron »

I think the "play-along" aspect of Finals is something that a) is fun and participatory from afar and b) has been very hard to capture outside of a live setting. I'm talkin' bout when the whole audience is whispering to each other before, after, and during the buzzes. ("would you have gotten that???" "that's hella hard!! nope, that's real, it came up two years ago at MYSTERIUM" fx).

Q: How to incorporate this?
A: With Commentary.

I'm talking handicapping with "computer whiz" Ophir Lif. Expert play-by-play with Saul and Naveed. Teddy Atlas style NAQT strategy breakdowns from Yours Truly....

Just a thought.

-Isaac

EDIT: Big Fan of adding captions to videos!
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by ezubaric »

The Stately Rhododendron wrote: Wed May 08, 2019 12:16 am I think the "play-along" aspect of Finals is something that a) is fun and participatory from afar and b) has been very hard to capture outside of a live setting. I'm talkin' bout when the whole audience is whispering to each other before, after, and during the buzzes. ("would you have gotten that???" "that's hella hard!! nope, that's real, it came up two years ago at MYSTERIUM" fx).

Q: How to incorporate this?
A: With Commentary.

I'm talking handicapping with "computer whiz" Ophir Lif. Expert play-by-play with Saul and Naveed. Teddy Atlas style NAQT strategy breakdowns from Yours Truly....
Our QANTA system is now equipped to handle ASR. Assuming that the microphones are good, a doable summer project would be to do "play along" to a livestream. There's no research value to it, so my students wouldn't do it, but might be fun!

Edit: Failed to Quote Correctly
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Rabbinator »

I think what everyone is saying is that now that NAQT has managed to gain some sort of internet presence, there should suddenly be money in the budget for a full time social media analyst/content creator who can also craft a team of people to help make live streaming happen. Or you're just expecting someone to magically create an online phenomenon in the spare time they have. Huh.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Whiter Hydra »

I suspect I'm on a one-man crusade here, but "High School National Championship Tournament" is a really bad name for an event in terms of outreach. It says absolutely nothing about what it's about, unlike similar championships like the "National Scholastic Championship", "National Academic Championship", "National History Bee", and so on. In order for a news article to talk about the event, they'd have to use the cumbersome "National Academic Quiz Tournament's High School National Championship Tournament". The name of the tournament should include what the tournament is about.

Also, minor suggestion for next year: At the moment playoff scoresheets go to the control room, where they are checked, then sent to the stats room and entered, and then finally the results are put in the online bracket. If you want results that aren't a full round behind, you'd need to hope someone relayed the results on Twitter or Discord. I'd wager it'd be a better experience for those following along if the results were put in immediately after the control rooms have double-checked the sheets.

EDIT: I'm also of the opinion that the playoff bracket should show the initial playoff seeds of the teams as opposed to the card numbers, which primarily only have internal use. It's a lot more interesting to see that the 67th-seeded team has made it into the top 20.

EDIT EDIT: I've just been reminded that the company logo is literally just the letters "NAQT" with the full name in tiny print below it, which seems less than inspiring to be quite honest.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Rabbinator »

Harry, you're not a one man crusade. I done been saying HSNCT et al is a ridiculously long and unmarketable name since I first heard it.

Edit: And your complaint about the logo is...it's spot on mate. And another thing I been saying for years.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by CPiGuy »

Haaaaaaaarry Whiiiiiiiiiite wrote: Fri May 31, 2019 10:23 am EDIT EDIT: I've just been reminded that the company logo is literally just the letters "NAQT" with the full name in tiny print below it, which seems less than inspiring to be quite honest.
To be fair, NAQT does have some really excellent logos for their individual tournaments, which they use in all the marketing and stuff for said tournaments. If there's a need for NAQT-wide marketing, maybe they could take the shield design and just make it say "NATIONAL ACADEMIC // QUIZ TOURNAMENTS" or something, but I haven't actually seen the NAQT general logo on anything this nationals season except for the staff polos.
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Whiter Hydra »

CPiGuy wrote: Fri May 31, 2019 11:00 pm
Haaaaaaaarry Whiiiiiiiiiite wrote: Fri May 31, 2019 10:23 am EDIT EDIT: I've just been reminded that the company logo is literally just the letters "NAQT" with the full name in tiny print below it, which seems less than inspiring to be quite honest.
To be fair, NAQT does have some really excellent logos for their individual tournaments, which they use in all the marketing and stuff for said tournaments. If there's a need for NAQT-wide marketing, maybe they could take the shield design and just make it say "NATIONAL ACADEMIC // QUIZ TOURNAMENTS" or something, but I haven't actually seen the NAQT general logo on anything this nationals season except for the staff polos.
I'm glad that NAQT has started to move away from its generic logo for its national tournaments, but they ought to completely divorce themselves from it. Unfortunately, the tournament logos have the issue that the only thing associating themselves with Quizbowl is that they all feature a fist holding a thing that is only recognisable as a buzzer to people who are already familiar with Quizbowl (since the names are insufficiently descriptive).
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by jonpin »

Haaaaaaaarry Whiiiiiiiiiite wrote: Wed Jun 05, 2019 2:57 pm
CPiGuy wrote: Fri May 31, 2019 11:00 pm
Haaaaaaaarry Whiiiiiiiiiite wrote: Fri May 31, 2019 10:23 am EDIT EDIT: I've just been reminded that the company logo is literally just the letters "NAQT" with the full name in tiny print below it, which seems less than inspiring to be quite honest.
To be fair, NAQT does have some really excellent logos for their individual tournaments, which they use in all the marketing and stuff for said tournaments. If there's a need for NAQT-wide marketing, maybe they could take the shield design and just make it say "NATIONAL ACADEMIC // QUIZ TOURNAMENTS" or something, but I haven't actually seen the NAQT general logo on anything this nationals season except for the staff polos.
I'm glad that NAQT has started to move away from its generic logo for its national tournaments, but they ought to completely divorce themselves from it. Unfortunately, the tournament logos have the issue that the only thing associating themselves with Quizbowl is that they all feature a fist holding a thing that is only recognisable as a buzzer to people who are already familiar with Quizbowl (since the names are insufficiently descriptive).
Indeed, as I noted in Discord at one point last week, the HSNCT shirt doesn't have "quiz bowl" or even "NAQT" anywhere on it (though it does have LetterOne!), so it looks like a shirt for the High School National Championship Tournament of Giving a Thumbs Up. The staff polos at least had NAQT (on the sleeve IIRC)
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Re: NAQT, Outreach, and Social Media

Post by Whiter Hydra »

I'm glad that the HSNCT final video is up and has decent audio and video quality, but the video immediately starts with tossup 1 before the title card even goes away. There's no context at all for the grand finals of a 336-team national tournament.
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