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!
1 comment:
I for one think many more Kraken should be released. Not only would it be a whale of a tale, but properly trained why may solve the problem you write about in TODAY"S note about suspect judges.
Sort of like ''Turner and Hooch' though Tom Hanks might be getting a bit too long in the tooth to be an on-the-street PI. Then again, it HAS been thirty years. Perhaps in the reboot, as part of his retirement gig, Scott Turner has become a security consultant to Speech and Debate Tournament. If Tom is outside our budget, we can probably afford brother Jim.
And if want to make it a family affair, we can even hire LARRY Hanks, who if Wikipedia can believed, is an entomologist. Given our plague year, I for one think it would be a dandy idea to have one on staff just in case insects start to gnaw through the ether cables. And let's face it, having a cop/dog/debate tournament about insects would be a new niche, if nothing else. Maybe we could interest Jeff Goldblum.
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