In which we are thinking out loud

I used to work with a marketing guy who always said, “I’m just talking out loud here.” I don’t think he understood the concept.

 

Anyhow…

 

The single versus double flight debate continues. 

 

The advantages of single flights seem to be mostly procedural, to wit, no need to move judges from room to room for the second flight, and straightforward tabbing and scheduling. In some cases, it can also mean more rounds, which can be a really good thing. The benefits, in other words, are solid.

 

The disadvantages seem to be harder to pin down. Single flights obviously means more judges, which can be hard to get. although, as pointed out earlier, there are those who believe that judges will fall from the trees next season like ripe coconuts. I question that; I am fine with likening debate judges to ripe coconuts, but not because of their ready availability. The presence of more judges, it is then argued in reply, will mean pool degradation and resultingly tougher prefs. That is, if you need all that many judges, the percentage of those in the pool who suck will be higher than normal. And finally, single flights are harder than doubles on both judges and debaters. Perhaps, but 6 single flights of LD is no different than 3 single flights of CX in terms of hardness, and no one is protesting that we should only run 2 rounds of CX in a given day. 

 

My leaning is that the harder the goal, the stiffer the rules. TOC bid at Qs or Os? Tough field caps, most rounds possible, probably single flights, MJP and obligations by the round. Otherwise, double flights, no caps, strikes and 1-3 judge ratio.

 

We’re meeting Monday to hash these things out for PPC (Princeton, Penn and Columbia). At first blush the three look alike, but digging into their pasts, one sees very broad differences. I’ve been collecting data on the three of them for the last 3 years, and that data is starting to talk.

 

I’ll keep you posted. 

In which there are flightless birds

I’m going to say that the biggest question some tournaments are going to have is the question of caps. 

 

If you previously had 240 entries in your PF division—normal at Ivies—and broke all 4-2s (54 of them or so) to a triple/runoff after 7 rounds, what do you do when you have 6 rounds breaking to doubles (32 of them)? If you still cap at 240, most of your 4-2s won’t break. The only way all your 4-2s break is to cap at 90. Dropping from 240 to 90 is pretty draconian. Not breaking with a 4-2 record is also pretty draconian. A field cap necessitates a school cap. It all gets pretty painful.

 

Of course, adding a Community/Open division at least lets you keep your numbers. With the Ivies especially, debating there and doing well has always been a feather in the cap above and beyond the bid issue. One wonders if that will hold with virtual tournaments. I tend to think so. Plus, second-years and lightly seasoned third-years and former MS stars in 9^th grade really aren’t (or shouldn’t be) in the bid hunt. In a way, they’re just easy pickings for the more sturdy bid-hunters. 

 

A limited bid division will be a tougher division, but I think that is as it should be. Still, where do you cap? Do you cap at the solid 90 for all 4-2s? Or at 130, for half the 4-2s? That latter option is a real one, especially in PF where 4-2 screws are relatively common. It sounds to me like a much better option than endless 4-2 screws. And while an unlimited C/O division might end up with lots of 4-2 screws as well, at least those aren’t screws of the bidworthy variety.

 

And none of this begins to address MPJ, obligations, single v. double flights…

 

Anyone who thinks virtual tournaments will be like IRL tournaments should say hello to the heads of the other ostriches down there in the sand with them. 

 

 

In which we are done for now with Virtual Tournament ideas

I've finished summing up everything we know so far. Check it out at http://www.jimmenick.com/vault/E_tournaments.pdf

This talks about schedules, divisions, caps, management roles, and some other stuff. It is not all-inclusive, nor is it definitive, in that you may wish to run your tournament some other way entirely. That is your prerogative. I wouldn't recommend it, but, well, it's on your head, not mine. Anyhow, there's more to come, but a lot of decisions need to be made for next season in the next few weeks. From that point of view, it's not a moment too soon.

Meanwhile, I assume you've seen the LD resolutions for next season, and the new system of selection. I am really pleased with the overall selection. It is possibly the most educational batch of rezzes I've ever seen. (The software wants to change rezzes to fezzes, but, to be honest, I've seen more educational fezzes.) Good job all. I don't know how some of them will debate, but debating resolutions is the least interesting part of the deal, if you ask me. All the education that goes into preparing for debating is what matters most. Not that I undervalue speaking—don't get me wrong. I just don't prioritize the competition. 

In which we come closer to a rubric

We’re coming into some sort of agreement on how to run tournaments next season. The NSDA finals gave some of the Usual Suspects yet more experience to draw from. I would say that our story so far includes the biggest question of single versus double flights, followed closely by the question of caps, which of course depends on the answer to the first question. Personally, I’m beginning to lean toward very tightly capped single-flighted Varsity rounds, with the resultingly high judge requirement, and looser double-flighted Community/Open and Novice rounds, not carrying the burden of lots of judges. In other words, if you want to aim for a bid, you have to want it enough to pay the (judging) price. Somehow I think that might cut out the ribbon clerks, but I could be wrong. In any case, we’ll be getting together soon to hash it all out. The goal is to present something concrete to all our tournaments to work with. For some, it will be a reality check. For others, it will remove much of the worrying, since we’re doing it all for them. And I mean that. I think about this stuff all the time. The thing is, there is no perfect solution, and arguments can be made for a lot of different possibilities. However you slice it, it won’t be easy. 

 

For those who miss complaining about the music in the tab room, please note that new tracks have been added to the playlist: a couple of k.d. lang songs (what a voice!), one Thin Lizzy (one was enough), a Squirrel Nut Zippers, yet another Delaney and Bonnie which I think finishes their run, a Ronnie Lane & Slim Chance, 3 Frank Zappa songs (including “Peaches En Regalia,” “Dancing Fool” and “Valley Girl,” the latter two of which probably will be deleted eventually, after they’ve annoyed the appropriate people enough), some rare Nilsson, some Fabulous Thunderbirds, two David Lindley, yet another Steve Earle (when he rocks, he rocks), a Big Star, a Walter Trout, a bunch of Eddie Money, and, after somehow missing this particular album completely earlier on, all sorts of songs from “Magical Mystery Tour.” We’re closing in on 2400 songs. Which is about 140 hours of music, just enough to last through Day One of most tournaments. 

 

I actually played golf twice this week, which is why I haven’t been writing here. The courses are open, they send you out one to a cart, and social distancing is a given, so why not. It’s the only thing I’m doing these days out of the house other than hitting the supermarket at the crack of dawn on Wednesdays with the other old-timers. I don’t see much else happening to break the pattern, though. Opening the various states, allowing the yabbos out maskless and witless, isn’t helping anybody. It’s not even as if the results will only affect the yabbos. They’ll get infected and pass it along to the rest of us. Where’s Darwin when you need him?

In which we analyze the Supremes

Gorsuch’s logic is, shall we say, a little tortured. The way I read it, it goes something like this:

 

Men are presumptively attracted to women. 

Women are presumptively attracted to men.

 

To discriminate against someone who is attracted to men is the equivalent of discriminating against women, and to discriminate against someone who is attract to women is the equivalent of discriminating against men. 

 

Therefore, such discrimination is discrimination based on sex, which is illegal.

 

I think that you, being of the forensician persuasion, can see the underlying flaw in this logic. 

 

Better argument, although it doesn’t really stand up to a lot of legal analysis: people are people, period, due equal rights and equal protections under the law, period again, end of story, shaddup about it. 

 

Nevertheless, today’s headline in the Times is the cheeriest news in a long time, and Lord knows we are due some cheery news. But it ain’t over. There’s still a lot of fighting ahead turning the policy of equality into reality. I mean, racial policy is set, isn’t it—in the 13th, 14th and 15 amendments, i.e., the effing Constitution, to begin with—yet that equality is still not forthcoming. 

 

Anyhow: Onward!

In which we contemplate the tin

If you ask me, the hardest thing about running a virtual tournament of any substance is going to be trophies. In theory, it's simple enough. 

• You figure out a budget
• You'll pass the cost along, of course, but you'll have to know what that cost is
• And it includes trophies, packaging and postage
• You study mail packaging
• You obtain trophies that you can easily package
• You mail them to the winners

Yeah. Simple enough.

In the normal run of things, going into a tournament you have a good idea, based on past performance, of how many trophies you will need. But past performance might not be a good indicator of our upcoming virtual season. Of course, a good rule of thumb is get the most you might need, and put neither dates nor division on them, just Groundhog Invitational Semifinalist or Chipmunk Challenge Quaterfinalist or whatever. That way, you can mix and match divisions, even speech and debate, and any leftovers are good to go for next time. But make them nice. It's bad enough that we're not anywhere in person; at least if people take tin it should be nice tin worthy of display. Remember, a lot of school administrations measure the success of their forensic dollar investment by the weight of the tin that comes home. Act accordingly. 

I would recommend acrylic, and flat. This makes them lightweight, and packable. Also, you can put really nice designs on acrylic for not much cost. 

I'd go with one size for all levels if it were me, i.e., same size for quarters and finals. Then you buy up as many envelopes (the stuffy kind) as you need into which they will fit. And remember, some schools will win a lot.

If I were you, I'd look into stamps.com. Or you can go spend a few weeks after the tournament at the post office with the clerks there posting the envelopes one at a time...

And here's the hardest part. You do have to mail them. You have to find someone to sort them, stuff them and ship them. Let's say you have 3 divisions of PF all breaking to doubles. That's 96 trophies, times two. And then there's all the other divisions. (Actually, you might want to do medals for doubles people. Medals are cheap, and quite popular.)

Oh, yeah. Where are you going to get the mailing addresses? No, they're not in tabroom. And what about programs that won 17 trophies?

That is going to be fun. But if you're prepared, and have a good team on it, it's doable. 

In which everybody's workin' for the weekend

A lot of discussion and thought is going on about how to handle things next year. One thing that is going to be problematic is the traditional two-day high school tournament starting on Friday and ending late on Saturday. The thing is, the most you can swing with a sane schedule is six rounds, two on Friday and four on Saturday. And that’s it, at least with double flights. If you can single-flight it, you’re better off, but the idea of single-flighting is almost inevitably some sort of wishful thinking unless your tournament is already established as such. They expected it at the Massachusetts finals. They’ll expect it at Scarsdale. And for a short one-dayer with upperclass judging, I probably can pull it off in the NYCFL events. (We’re thinking starting with 3 rounds at the first tournament to get noobs onto the bus, then going to 4. We’re also hoping to add policy; we’d have 3 of them.) But in the world at large, the judging for single flights just isn’t there, at least where it counts. I think some people have a vision of a virtual judge consortium where rounds are sold to the highest bidder, but even if that is a good idea—and I don’t know that it is—it would require a bit of personnel management that isn’t exactly the strength of our activity. It’s going to be more like freelancing in general, something I know a little bit about from my publishing days. Freelancers who want business have to work at getting it; freelancing is like having a job without the steady paycheck, in aid of getting paychecks steadily. (That’s a great quote. I’m wasting it here.) A loose amalgam of mostly college students looking to judge on occasion for the odd extra bucks? That’s a different thing. And you can forget the idea of judges around the country available everywhere; once tournaments realize that shifting their schedules for the purposes of attracting other timezones is a mug's game that only ends up punishing your regular guests, judges sitting on the dock of the bay are not going to want to be up and flowing at five a.m. their time at good old Bigle X or Rather Large Bronx. Ain't happ'nin'.

 

Anyhow, the point is, Fri-Sat isn’t going to hack it except for certain smallish tournaments with guests that want that sort of debate. Going Sat-Sun, on the other hand, solves the problem fairly decently. I don’t know how that will play in real life, though. I’m not so much worried about the debaters, or the LD and CX judges. It’s the PF judges that are going to be the ones most likely to balk. Then again, with decent management on the parts of coaches, resources can be organized so that the burden is well shared.

 

As you can tell, I’m thinking aloud here. The college schedule is pretty much set at this point, with 2 prelims on Fri, 4 on Sat, and elims on Sunday, with caps on some divisions if warranted. I don’t see the average HS invitational going to that (i.e., any tournament with less than a quarters bid) because it’s way too demanding. (And for that matter, there is some question about Friday afternoon rounds if school is in session. Can the debaters get home in time for round 1? A little of that will go a long way.) So I guess Sat-Sun is going to be a thing for the high schools in the region with semis and finals bids. The question is whether they are going to A) be able to get their heads around it early enough for scheduling purposes, and B) be able to pull it off.  

In which, like Futurama riders at the NY World's Fair in 1939, I have seen the future

NSDA has officially announced NSDA Campus. 

And away we go.

It remains early days for Rippin’, but their announcement is pretty gung-ho. Needless to say, the MSDL championships a couple of weeks ago was the real acid test, and Catholic Charlie and Kaz and I were all there in the trenches. The platform NSDA is using, jitsi, just works. It’s private and straightforward, and it works seamlessly with tabroom. We used it all this last weekend as our tab chat room at Byram Hills, and also for the rounds, both speech and debate. People had individual glitches, but what app doesn’t, and they were fixable. Everyone participated in all the rounds, except one yabbo who, when having problems, rather than fixing them, decided to pull their kids into their own private room on a different platform. Sigh. Some people just don’t get the idea that beta testing (and isn’t all virtual tournamenting beta testing at the moment?) requires a certain mindset other than Screw This, I’m Off to Neverland. They also don’t get that taking the first star to the right and straight on till morning does not solve the problem.

One thing that remains clear following the BH tournament is that, first, the day everyone reads the emails is the day I can announce that my work here is done (and there were only a couple of emails, so it wasn’t as if I was bombarding them), and second, the tournament that accepts independent entries is welcome to them. Lips that touch indies won’t touch mine. That will be my hard and fast rule going forward. They’re just not worth the hassle. Between their not showing up, and their lack of preparation and their lack of understanding of SOP, they suck the juice of life right out of you. I have a feeling I won’t get much argument on that, though. There will probably be plenty of virtual tournaments that will welcome anyone, which is fine if that’s what they want. In fact, I would like to see folks without teams get some chances to debate. I similarly feel that people who like to play tennis should be able to play tennis even if they’re not a member of the school tennis team. And so forth and so on, with arguments familiar to everyone by now.

The best thing about now having run 2 virtual tournaments is that I think we’re getting a real feel for procedures, which I’m working up for the Toolkit. Eventually I will publish it all, both here and on the site; so far all I’ve done is a quick stab on updating the instructions for participants, which, as noted, some people avoided religiously. Given that it’s my illustrated, laugh-a-minute material updated with a couple of virtuality notes, it’s both marvelously entertaining and it’s not even TL;DR. Whatever. Some people will never get it; it’s pointless to lose sleep over them.

Anyhow, some things on NSDA Campus remain uncertain, most primarily cost. It should cost something; bandwidth isn’t free, and tabroom.com is a busy hub. Whatever it is, I’m sure it won’t be prohibitive, and that it will be a lot less than the usual cost of custodians and the like. My guess is that the colleges that want to use it might have to pay a premium, and I feel that they should. So would John Locke, once he learned that tabroom is the NSDA’s property and that the colleges (with some exceptions, like Penn) are simply in the business of fundraising out of high school pockets for their own college business. What does worry me, but probably won’t really be a problem, is the possibility that the number of rooms available to a tournament might be limited. I think NSDA is a little worried about everything crashing around them. Probably a little more exposure and testing and they’ll get past that. We’ve already begun brainstorming other ways of handling virtual rooms if we must, but if you know a better one than an automated system where the room is built-in to the tab software, more power to you. I’ve seen Catholic Charlie on I think four different video platforms, and he looks the same every time. (If you have a platform where he looks decidedly better, on the other hand, please let me now. I’ll drop Campus like the proverbial hot pomme de terre.)

In which, as always, we say Fie to independents

Jeesh.

The problem with a tournament like the one this weekend is that we haven’t established any limits on who can register. Originally this made sense. Now, not so much. The main problem is the number of kids who registered themselves. Despite my normal position against it, this didn’t seem like a bad idea originally, because, well, covid-19, but the ones signed up for this tournament can’t follow instructions worth a damn, not to mention that it is unlikely that any adult on the planet other than me knows they’re at this tournament. Running tournaments is complicated enough without endless emails from teenagers who don’t know what their partner is doing, much less what their judge is doing. And perish the thought, when they send those emails, that they identify their “school.” Sigh. Did I really need any further reason to ban independents when the season begins in the fall? 

I’ve been beavering away at the toolkit to virtualize it. I am a sucker for sending out documentation for things, and I depend on my own files to provide the best stuff. The most relevant front end stuff, that is, how to e-judge, is completed and posted. The backend stuff is in fairly polished final draft form. One more run-through should do the job. I’m ignoring platforms in all of it. I’ve now done chats on a handful of them, and, surprise, they’re all alike, a bunch of faces staring out at you from your computer screen. The reasons to use one over another at this point don’t bear analysis, and maybe never will, given that some schools may have this school account and some schools may have some other account, end of story. I know that at the moment a lot of institutions are holding out against Zoom because of reasons that don’t hold a lot of water. People seem to forget or maybe never knew that Zoom has a background of solid performance in the corporate arena, and perceived problems with the platform are more likely a problem that you (or your IT people) aren’t technically adept enough to solve and not something intrinsic to the platform. Anyhow, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other in the trenches. Cost and access are going to be the big issues when serious virtual tournaments are a weekly thing. And I think you can rest assured that next season serious weekly tournaments, the ones run by pros and where people like to try for bids, are going to be virtual. Schools in the Hudson Valley are all looking at different ideas for classes, mostly mixes of IRL and online, that inherently preclude the idea of flying down to Rio for the Heart of Brazil Invitational any time soon. And that's just the covid side of things, which doesn’t even begin to address rampant, Depression-era unemployment and an economy going down the tubes. Schools aren’t going to have two nickels to rub together in 20-21. To paraphrase somebody on the NDCA call, nobody in forensics is going anywhere until the football team is going everywhere. Don’t run out to the bus just yet, Junior.

Anyhow, back into the trenches tomorrow morning, for the last time for a while. 4 single flights, starting at 11, over around 6-ish. (The California teams account for the late start.) Thank God we somehow managed to get a lot of extra judges. We’ve been talking about single-flighting all the local events next season, and the more I think about it, the better it sounds. 4 rounds in about 7 hours versus 4 rounds in about 12 hours. How much convincing do you need? 

In which we are judged as not quite judge material

Yesterday’s meeting of the NDCA to discuss virtual judging didn’t really accomplish much. In fact, much of it was déjà vu all over again. I remember back about 15 years ago when we had this one judge who appeared out of the mists and creeped everyone out for a while until he was escorted from a tournament in manacles by your friendly neighborhood fibbies. This started a whole discussion of things like creating shared lists of do-not-hires and tournament ombudspersons and all manner of things that seemed ultimately impossible to solve. And, well, we didn’t solve them. Most of what we said back then was said again yesterday, and, well, we didn’t solve anything yesterday either. I don’t think we will. I mean, if you had a do-not-hire list, how would you determine the criteria? Criminal history as a child molester would be easy enough. Questionable responses to identity arguments, as in possibly a racist? Not so easy. Discovering one is on such a list would not lead to happiness, and could lead to severe repercussions. Even having a shared list of do-hires is problematic, if exclusion from the list excludes one from getting hired. 

In other words, it’s all a mug’s game. 

Some tangential things were discussed, like fee schedules and things like that. It was suggested that paying by the round makes sense, as compared to IRL where you’re there for the day whether or not you judge so you should get paid for the day. That’s questionable. You’re still on the hook for the day, and available. Once you were hired, is it your fault you don’t fit in any rounds? The idea of paying a kill fee for rounds not judged and a full fee for judged rounds was floated, and maybe that’s the solution. I don’t know. No one else seemed to either. 

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that the Tournament Director’s Toolkit, which I’ve been gently updating over the last few weeks, needs some less-than-gentle updating on the virtual side. I started working on that today. Tis a bit of a biggie, but when it’s done it will give me something to fall back on when we start getting serious next fall. 

In which the bit is champed at

I have created notes on running virtual tournaments based on my vast experience in doing so, and I’m getting to put them to the test for Byram Hills this weekend. I’ve also created a rough Greetings email to go out when registration closes; there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed to the teeming millions. And I’ve also tossed together a guide to virtual tournaments incorporating a lot of what others have done before me. Given that this stuff changes minute by minute, I’ve got my virtual Wite-Out at the ready. 

It occurred to me from conversations with one of the coaches attending this coming weekend that familiarity with tabroom, which I consider a given nowadays, is not be as widespread as I would like. I did notice at MSDL finals that there were a couple of schools where all the team and judge emails were actually the coach email, which is a real rookie mistake, and often hard to detect because it defies all logic. Then again, logic is not necessarily being distributed free on the street corners yet, as far as I know, especially when it comes to tech. We expect people to be competent. But we expect too much. I ought to know. I did run a systems operation for a decade or so. Two important conclusions came from that experience: 1) Never overestimate your users, and 2) Never underestimate your users. Success in systems management is the ability to intuit whether to follow the first or the second of these conclusions.

Things have come together for the tournament, in any case. Quite runnable numbers in the debate divisions, although the couple of speech events are a little anemic. Then again, it’s a little late in the IE game for last year’s pieces and a little too early for next year’s, so that may explain that, whereas debaters in general tend to be more rabid about the whole thing, and will not only compete at the drop of a hat, but will go around dropping hats like nobody’s business given half a chance. Anyhow, registration closes tonight; I may be able to clear a couple of souls from the waitlist, provided they don’t flood a division, and then the Greetings email goes out and for all practical purposes, the games will begin.

Or as we used to say, Release the Kraken!