In which we parse some more of the Tournament Director's Toolkit

One of the things I did a long time ago, that I also included in the Tournament Director’s Toolkit, is a manual for tabroom.com. This was before there was any built-in help. Theoretically I could delete it now, but even though it’s a bit outdated, given that the program is regularly (albeit secretly) updated every eleven minutes or so, and the built-in help is more than adequate, I think there are some people who might appreciate having something that they can print out and keep handy. Yes, I realize that this is an old-fashioned concept—Oh, boy! A printout!—but the world I live in (i.e., the DJ, which is probably one beat behind a state-of-the-art media corporation) still includes people who don’t do everything on their device of choice. Or more to the point, it includes people whose device of choice is paper. Don’t kill me when you hear this: I’m only the messenger.

I didn’t update the manual for the NDCA presentation, and I probably never will. It served its purpose, and one moves on. It's just there for those just getting started. It can't hurt.

Another thing I did a while ago was a guide to setting up physical registration for tournaments using tabroom. I have given this to a number of people, and I’ve noted that when I have, they have religiously avoided following its advice. Everyone always seems to know better. My favorite thing that they all know better is not to use tabroom for monitoring payments and printing receipts. People find it much easier to create a whole new way of monitoring payments and printing receipts (when they do either), which inevitably leads to confusion over payments and receipts. I can appreciate folks wanting to put their own spin on the ball, but this one has to be the dumbest of the personal spins. Here, take this system that does everything one hundred percent perfectly well, and introduce a whole bunch of factors that will require copying over data and a bunch of other opportunities to almost guarantee errors. I have noticed, in my many years of computing (I bought my first Apple II in 1981) that computers have this amazing ability to do addition and subtraction. In fact, they do it better than most people. Yet most people don’t believe it. Go fig, as they say.

I do add one thing in my blurb about the registration instructions, that at least at high school tournaments, an adult should be in charge of the payments. Yes, it is lovely to invest that responsibility in your top students, but I have watched JV do it all by himself (which inspired me to do it all by myself in subsequent years), and compared it to when students—any students at any school—have done it, and the difference is amazing. No confusion. Money in, duly accounted, end of story, versus 17-year-olds all competing to enter the data wrong, twice, or not at all. Maybe it’s better advice just to have all tournaments have JV handle their payments. Couldn't hurt.

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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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In which we come home to roost

We’re back. We spent the last week exploring Western New York, marching around state parks and seeing the sites from Ithaca to Buffalo. Lots of waterfalls, culminating in Niagara, which outfalls them all. You’re close enough to walk over it on a tightrope, plus you do get to ride in the kitschy old Maid of the Mist into the Horseshoe Falls, which is way cooler than it ought to be. And very misty, as you might imagine. No false advertising there.

Buffalo was way more interesting than I had expected. We stayed in a nice old neighborhood near the museums, and did a lot of walking around looking at how the other half lives, or, I guess nowadays, how the other one percent lives, given that the numbers have changed a bit since the phrase was coined. Frank Lloyd Wright knocked together the odd bungalow in the area, most notably the Darwin Martin house, whence originated the Tree of Life windows. Quite a place. The Buffalo Historical Museum is the remaining building from the 1901 Exposition, the one McKinley should have stayed away from. Nearby you get to see where he died, and where TR was sworn in. Downtown has an amazing Louis Sullivan building, plus some other notable buildings, so that was also fun to walk around. There's a surprising amount of history there at the end of the Erie Canal.

Before that, we stayed in Ithaca, chugging around the university a few times, including a trip to the Pei-designed Johnson museum. Cornell is one big campus, let me tell you. It’s not like I’m not on a lot of college campuses now and then, but this one takes the cake. I can’t imagine arriving there one’s first day. I would have run away screaming, except I would have gotten so lost that I would never have found the exact away to run to.

And on the way back, we hit up the Corning Glass Museum, which is absolutely worth a trip. Lots of information, demos, displays—we spent quite a few hours there, taking it all in. Unfortunately, we stayed the night in town, and it was hopping with high school prom people taking up all the good seats at the restaurants. Proms are like Halloween, except the people don’t seem to notice the silliness of the costumes. Oh, to be young again, in a powder blue tuxedo. (No, I never wore one myself. Powder blue, that is. I was much too fashionable for that. Still am, obviously.)

Anyhow, it was only a week, but it was nice to get away. And now it’s back at the DJ, and final prepping for Dallas this weekend. In other words, it's a busy couple of weeks before settling in for a little bit of summer.

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Advice from a life coach: Accept what you can't change, including your clothes

There is a commonly held misconception that you, or they, will grow out of it. This is not true. Whatever it is, it will just get worse. And the less desirable it is, the worse it will become. The best you can hope for is that something else will come along that's even worse that will distract you from it. This advice is especially useful when you have children, but if you are simply a hot mess, it applies to you too. 

Bonus advice: Once you find articles of clothing that you like, buy it in bulk, preferably off the internet. The results of doing this are that, first, you'll be more comfortable more often, and, second, people will recognize you easier when they see you. If you are worried that people will think that you never clean your clothes if they see you in the same thing every day, or that they'll think that you're a tramp and didn't get home last night to change, buy it in different colors. But careful about that. No one has ever bought the orange one, and you don't want to be the first. 

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In which we discover that less is less (or, actually, fewer is fewer, but that isn't as alluring a headline now, is it?)

I have to admit that the further away I get from running a tournament, the happier I am. I’m also starting to enjoy the idea of reducing the number of college tournaments, which are almost the same for me, since I seldom just tab them. Somebody’s got to be the perceived grownup. Since I’m older than all the other grownups in the activity put together, that tends to be me. And then, of course, I mostly act like a grownup, setting tournaments up and monitoring waitlists and dealing with both gruntled and disgruntled customers. In the aftermaths, people want to send me their late registration checks, although they show a strange reluctance to make them out to cash. Anyhow, perception is reality.

I’m already breathing easier not doing Yale. Granted, there’s a lot of work on those waitlists, but what seems so much nicer is that, aside from the early Byram Hills event, I will now have a big bunch of free weeks in September, which is the best time of year to travel, since everyone else (including, until a few weeks ago, me) is back to school. On the other hand, I have committed to Penn for next year regardless which weekend they conduct it, so that one is locked in. Then again, if it works on the earlier weekend, that would free up Prez weekend; a little holiday in London, maybe? I know I’ll stick with Columbia, too, because they treat the tab staff well and they’re great to work with. At one point we were ready to abandon them after certain unacceptable shenanigans, but their teams going back quite a few years now have been stellar, as have the tournaments, even as they’ve combatted the odd blizzard and whatnot. The Tiggers remain a bit dicey. I don’t ask for much, merely hospitality, but I don’t like to have to ask for it again and again and again from an institution with $23.8 billion dollars in assets (as of 2015). Of course, there’s not much one can do the first weekend of December if one suddenly finds that it has freed up. Christmas shopping? A weekend in Manhattan? Or maybe just stay home and work on my new play, “Burr: The Musical.” All transgender casting. (I’m already counting up my Tony award nominations.)

So, when all is said and done, I might be down to two winter college tournaments next year, plus all the usual regionals and CFLs. I’m starting to get into this whole retirement business. It’s still a lot of work, but not as much as it used to be. Plus no pesky students to worry about.

All right. Now where’s my rocking chair?

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A debater says thank you

I have to admit that I am touched—touched!—by the many outpourings of affection debaters have been posting on Facebook now that their careers have ended (most of them by bombing out at TOC). I’m reprinting verbatim one of the more touching valedictions below.

This has been an amazing four years, and it all was made possible by debate. If it hadn’t been for debate, I would no doubt be in a juvenile detention center this very minute, never knowing that it was not my fault but rather the fault of my not-yet-formed cerebral cortex. I’d be setting up to learn the skills to succeed at a life of crime rather than setting up to learn the skills of being a lawyer, which, admittiedly, is also a life of crime, but at least you get to live in the suburbs. I will never debate again, and once I’m in college you won’t catch me hanging around any high school debate tournaments when I could instead be getting intimate with randy college girls. I mean, seriously? In any case, the time has come for me to acknowledge those who have stood behind me through thick and thin, or at least through thick, in some cases.

First and foremost, I want to thank my parents, Hedgehog and Mickey (“Pete”) Buonosera. If they had not had unprotected sex that night way back when, I wouldn’t be here to write this. Throughout grade school they always insisted that I put education first, limiting my Playstation time to four hours a day. Once I reached high school, there was no question that I needed something other than video games to entertain me, at least until the next Bioshock came out, and they encouraged me to join debate. And then, weekend after weekend, even though we couldn’t afford it, they paid for me to go to debate tournament after debate tournament, the further away the better. Which might explain my little brother who was born just a few months ago, much to Hedgehog’s and Mickey (“Pete”)’s surprise and amazement, but they are not Playstation people, and I guess you can figure out how they spent all their time in the empty nest I had created for them.

I also have my Uncle Englebert to thank, as he was the first person in my life to open my eyes to the variety that is human existence. Uncle Egg, who identifies as a Belle Epoque French chambermaid, helped me understand the myriad arguments I was hearing from an assortment of debaters over the years, as they cleverly skirted the posted resolutions, concentrating instead on why they should win because of anything but their debating skills. As a result of all those Thanksgiving dinners with Uncle Egg arguing, in French, with my grandparents, I learned to deflect their identity arguments while at the same time acquiring a decent knowledge of Parisian home maintenance.

I have to thank my teachers at Southwest North Central High School. They only saw me on Tuesdays and Wednesdays most of the time, but their respect for education matched that of my parents, which informed all of the theory arguments I began running starting the second week I joined the team.

And then there was my head coach, Dr. Thump, who refused to let me off the team, no matter how poorly I did, and God knows, I was a disaster when I first started out. Dr. Thump, whose stipend depended on having a certain number of students on the team, refused to even listen to my pleas to let me go, let me go, please let me go, I’m begging of you! Although Dr. Thump is no longer with us, my alibi still holds and I refuse to say another word without my attorney present.

And finally, I would like to thank all the assistant coaches who worked with me this year, to get me to the TOC. (It is not their fault that I totally tanked.) So in no particular order, my gratitude to Guy Kibbee, Spencer Tracy, Dick Grayson, Rex the Wonder Horse, Nick and Nora Charles, Vito Corleone, Ralph Nader, Wendy Darling, Maimonides, Rosemary Clooney, Professor Plum, Howard “Sandman” Sims, Edward Everett Horton, The Beatles, Donald Trump, Ma Rainey, Freddie Mercury, Philip Roth, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Claude Monet, Anne Boleyn, Timothy Leary, Umberto Eco, Lao-Tzu, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Humbert H. Humbert, Enrico Caruso, James Beard, George Washington, the Fonz, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Cantinflas, Little Lulu, the Gershwins, Charlotte Corday, Frank N. Furter, R. P. McMurphy, Winston Smith, Dolores del Rio, Simone Simon, Bob Fosse, Ernest Hemingway, Leland Stanford, Huckleberry Finn, Marjorie Main, Seven of Nine, Archie Goodwin, the Reverend Charles L. Dodgson, Eliot Ness, Mamie Eisenhower, Hermione Gingold, Slim Gaillard, Rowdy Yates, Jonathan and Martha Kent, Leo Gorcey, Busby Berkeley, Baby LeRoy, Jack Soo, Gilbert du Motier, Ann Miller, Michael Moschen, Uriah Heep, Benny the Cab, St. Augustine, Flo Rida, Tuli Kupferberg, the Realist Nun, Hildy Johnson, Eustace Tilly, Lassie, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Mustapha Mond, Mia Hamm, Francis Albert Sinatra, Wrong Way Corrigan, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, John Jay, Ian Fleming, Joan Crawford, Daniel Boone, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Cecil B. DeMille and a cast of thousands—plus a slew of others too numerous to mention, including Horatio Alger, Henry Clay, Nanki-Poo, Fidel Castro, William Henry Pratt, Ishmael, Eli Whitney, George Pal, Carrie Nation, Fala, Burl Ives, Yuri Gagarin, Joseph “Socks” Lanza, Bernard Quatermass, Julie Andrews, Bob Wills, Joe Rohde, Jawaharlal Nehru, P. G. Wodehouse, Federico Fellini, Roald Dahl, bell hooks, and the cast and crew of the upcoming Hello Kitty movie… Guys, and non-guys, and non-non-guys, and others, I couldn’t have done it without you.

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In which we account for our whereabouts while everyone else was staring in disbelief at hot browns

This weekend was my last chance to prepare for the NDCA coaches' conference later in the month. I managed to finish everything I needed to finish thanks to a relatively cold and rainy couple of days, and I'll go over it all here to share it with interested parties. I have no idea how long it runs; I'm supposed to have maybe an hour or so, but it seems longer than that to me. Plus I'm hoping for interaction with the people who remain awake when I give it. We'll see. Always leave 'em wanting more, eh?

This was also TOC weekend. This morning I saw on Fb a lot of people either congratulating other people on breaking or patting the backs of those who were retiring from the activity now that it was all behind them. Oh, the humanity. I can't say I paid much attention to the ongoing festivities, other than to note that CP was handing out yellow penalty cards left and right, when he wasn't sneaking the odd listen to "Luck be a Lady Tonight" on his PF tab music machine. Who listens to music while tabbing? Oh, right. I can't imagine not listening to music while tabbing, aside from when we're actually putting out the pairing and need to concentrate. I'll betcha things are going to be pretty dull at Hell House at Yale this September without a little "Yodeling's Greatest Hits" to get them through the battle. Anyhow, everyone knows that Palmer wasn't actually tabbing this weekend, and was instead spending most of his time catching up on the Eurovision entries. TOC? He's barely ever heard of it. Eurovision? He's got season tickets. (He's especially rooting for the Bosnia & Herzegovina rapper.)

In other news from the TOC, I noted that Sunday, during round 6 of LD, someone ran a case that actually referenced the topic that they were supposedly debating. Even though there was only one judge, that person lost on a 3-0.

Advice from a life coach: For adults only

It would be an error on your part to assume that the wisdom in these posts is always derived from first-hand experience. A life coach does not have to have empirical, personal evidence for every piece of advice. Often it is the careful observation of others that results in a conclusion worth sharing, while other times simple common sense is all that is needed. The following is an example of the latter:

A wink and a nudge at the concierge desk at your Walt Disney World hotel will not result in a professional "escort" appearing at the door of your room any time soon.

I included the preface at the top of this post because, as I have just been to Walt Disney World, I do not wish to give the impression that I spent any of my time there patiently waiting in my room for company to appear. Nor did I see hordes of winking, nudging conventioneers wearing fezzes and blowing noisemakers while slipping the concierges the odd Benjamin to set up a little hankus pankus. Come to think of it, I never even saw any concierges, because I was staying at a value hotel. Maybe that was the problem. If I had been staying at a luxury hotel...

Anyhow, when you see the words common sense, you no doubt immediately wonder about the expression horse sense, which means much the same thing. I offer the following definition, from W. C. Fields: "Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people." As for the etymology of the phrase, you can google that yourself. I'm not here to do your work for you.  

In which we gaily sing. "California Here I Don't Go"

I can’t imagine that I’m the first person to notice that the CatNats LD and PF topics were accidentally switched at birth. I’m not attending, of course, so it was just out of morbid curiosity that I took a look. And lo and behold, someone must have been dipping into the altar wine on selection day, because, well…

Resolved: Human genetic engineering should be banned.

Resolved:  In a just democracy, elections for public office should be solely financed through public funding.

I mean, let’s face it. How much evidence is there about human genetic engineering outside of science fiction? “Are we not Men?” It’s not like, I don’t know, they’ve been tinkering a lot with the embryos in Harrison which is why they’re all good debaters, and Chetan has the cytosine data to prove it. This is a purely moral question. PF is the perfect place for that?

On the other hand, while one might make an ethical argument for or against public funding of elections, it seems to me that it would make more sense to look at actual situations. (And note that it doesn’t specify which elections, so we’re starting at dog catcher here.) We’ve seen public and private funding of campaigns of all sorts, so we can look to plenty of actual evidence of results, not to mention the whole corporate spending issue (thank you, Nino). Sounds perfect for LD!

Is it any wonder that Henry VIII wanted to start his own church?

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