In which we begin to unveil the tournament director's toolkit

As I've been saying, I've been working a lot getting material ready for the NDCA conference. While I have a feeling that no one really cares much about tournament best practices, the subject of my session, nonetheless I will barrel through undaunted, because I love nothing better than presenting to a crowd. I do love an audience...

One of the things I had in mind when I started with the NDCA board was putting together a tournament director's toolkit on their website. After all, it is the thing I allegedly do best. I put up a few bits and pieces, but never had the incentive to really make it a thing. This conference provided that incentive.

The starting point for anyone would be the document, So you want to run a tournament. It is not unusual for me to hear from people who want to start a new tournament. As a general rule, they expect to make enough money to fund their team for the next twenty years. They will open their registration and the people will just sign up like there's no tomorrow. After the inaugural tournament, they'll get themselves some TOC bids, maybe at the quarters level. They will go down in history as the best tournament ever, year after year, and every other tournament will just stop running because once perfection has been achieved, what's the point? This document is their inaugural reality check. It even includes advice about selling t-shirts. (In a word, don't.)

One of the things I'll be doing in my best practices presentation is concentrating on the customer. The customer, of course, is the schools that attend the tournament. You need to run a tournament that satisfies those customers, or they won't come. They might give you one chance, but if you fail them, they won't return. You've got to give the customers what they want. The document above discusses that at the macro level, that is, what sort of events and at what levels.

After the presentation, I'll post a pdf of the Powerpoint presentation. (Yes, a dreaded Powerpoint deck. As anyone in business will tell you, there is no better presentation than from a person reading their slides to you. Sigh.) The Ppoint puts it all together in order but, in fact, doesn't cover what's in this document. It seemed unnecessary. Most of the people attending the tournament either already run tournaments (and presumably consider that their practices are de facto best practices because they are doing them) or have been around long enough to know that they would rather choke on someone else's vomit than run a tournament themselves. (I left that particular Spinal Tap reference out of the document, but it's appropriate. Then again, you and I have been around the onion patch a few times, so I figured we know each other by now.)

By the way, most of the documents are, indeed, doc files. If people want to adapt them, they can feel free. Since I haven't made a fortune from debate by this point, I think it's fair to say that the money ship has sailed, so I'm not worried about that, and I don't care much if people credit me or not. I've already earned all the fame I need in the world of debate: Palmer blames me for just about everything. What more could I ask?

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