PACE Membership Changes for 2012-2013

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

PACE would like to welcome the following new members to the organization:

Lily Chen, MIT
Stephen Eltinge, MIT
Daniel Hothem, University of Virginia
Michael Hundley, Virginia Tech
Matt Jackson, Yale
Tanay Kothari, Berkeley
Jason Loy, Tuscumbia
Aidan Mehigan, Columbia
Brian Mongilio, Virginia Tech
Jon Pinyan, Bergen County Academies
David Riley, Loyola Academy
Joelle Smart, University of Washington
Sharad Vikram, UC Berkeley
Jacob Wasserman, Yale

We’re excited to add so many members of the community with such diverse talents to our efforts.


PACE also bids farewell to former members Dwight Wynne and Gautam Kandlikar, who are busy with increasing real-world obligations.

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

PACE has concluded this year's officer elections. Our board members for 2012-2013 are:

President: Mike Bentley
Editing: Erik Mukherjee
Technology: Dan Goff
At Large: Fred Morlan
Finance: Aaron Rosenberg
Secretary: Julie Gittings
Communications: Sarah Angelo
Tournament Director: Matt Weiner
Outreach: Lily Chen

I'm looking forward to serving a second term as VP of Communication. As during last season, please feel free to contact me with PACE-related questions or concerns by forum PM or by email at sangelo147 AT gmail DOT com.

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

Matt Jackson will be replacing Lily Chen as Vice President of Outreach for the remainder of this academic year.

[Stained Diviner]

What does the PACE Vice President of Outreach do?

[Adventure Temple Trail]

What does the PACE Vice President of Outreach do?

The PACE by-laws state that the Vice President of Outreach shall be in charge of all issues related to encouraging and aiding the growth of quizbowl, chair any PACE committees designed for the purpose of spreading good quizbowl across the nation, and perform any other outreach duties assigned to him/her by the rest of the board of directors.

For the rest of the year, I will be focusing my attentions on outreach to the NSC itself - encouraging qualified teams across the whole geographic range to register, helping more marginal qualified teams learn more about the quizbowl world which the NSC is a part of, and helping with wildcard bids.

[Emil Nolde]

What does the PACE Vice President of Outreach do?

The PACE by-laws state that the Vice President of Outreach shall be in charge of all issues related to encouraging and aiding the growth of quizbowl, chair any PACE committees designed for the purpose of spreading good quizbowl across the nation, and perform any other outreach duties assigned to him/her by the rest of the board of directors.

That sounds a lot like what I would imagine the Communications officer's role to be, unless it's much more of an IT thing or something?

For the rest of the year, I will be focusing my attentions on outreach to the NSC itself - encouraging qualified teams across the whole geographic range to register, helping more marginal qualified teams learn more about the quizbowl world which the NSC is a part of, and helping with wildcard bids.

That sounds all well and good, but how exactly would you endeavor to do that? If I understand you right in that middle part, you pretty much outlined your to-do list as fixing what Mr. Reinstein and many others have been trying very hard to fix for quite a while.

[Stained Diviner]

I have no idea what James is talking about, which is fine.

Are the PACE by-laws online?

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

Mr. Reinstein: I'm looking into the status of our by-laws; Wordpress can be less than user friendly and sometimes it's harder than ideal to find older pages of our website.

James: my job as Communications officer entails posting announcements (here, on our website, on Facebook, and on Twitter) on behalf of the group, maintaining the NSC field and some other pages of our website (in those cases where I haven't been replaced by a script), and answering questions for the group here and via email to the best of my ability. When I'm qualified to answer a question myself I do so; otherwise I notify whichever officer can best meet the enquirer's needs, usually via CC to start a conversation for people.

[Emil Nolde]

helping more marginal qualified teams learn more about the quizbowl world

So basically your job is to do things that for the most part, all good quizbowl players try (or at least, should) to do; that is, act as an advocate for good quizbowl practices for players, coaches, and teams that probably wouldn't hear about them otherwise.

[Cheynem]

Right, except this is an official position. All good quizbowl people are an advocate for quizbowl and (should) provide some outreach, but some are limited due to time, interest, and effort, plus many lack an institutional connection. Matt Jackson's position allows him to advocate on hopefully a more sustained, regular, and institutional basis.

[AKKOLADE]

helping more marginal qualified teams learn more about the quizbowl world

So basically your job is to do things that for the most part, all good quizbowl players try (or at least, should) to do; that is, act as an advocate for good quizbowl practices for players, coaches, and teams that probably wouldn't hear about them otherwise.

PACE is an organization that wants to accomplish outreach for the improvement of quiz bowl; as such, yes, having an officer to help plan those activities is important.

I will admit that we have not been as successful at accomplishing this as I would like. But I have the utmost faith in Matt Jackson, and I believe that he'll be the one to turn this around.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

helping more marginal qualified teams learn more about the quizbowl world

So basically your job is to do things that for the most part, all good quizbowl players try (or at least, should) to do; that is, act as an advocate for good quizbowl practices for players, coaches, and teams that probably wouldn't hear about them otherwise.

Wow you're being a prick.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

To speak for myself a bit: Essentially, James is right - many people are and should be doing outreach activities in their own areas to promote quizbowl, and nothing about the existence of a VP of Outreach position should preclude those efforts or cut them off. In fact, it's our hope that having a national figure will help those efforts in a unique way - perhaps coordinating people who might not have met who might work well together, providing advice to people who want/need it, or leading original efforts where they seem efficient and doable.

To clarify further about the NSC recruitment: I don't think I have the ability to do an infinitely elastic number of outreach tasks for the remainder of the year, though I've been putting in legwork in my region and I am glad to try my best to answer email inquiries about good recruitment strategies and the like. Therefore, my efforts are going to be predominantly focused on one big task: ensuring that qualified teams and suitable wild card candidates know about their qualification for NSC, encouraging them to attend, and trying to build a fuller, more national field at this year's event. How will I go about this? I plan to contact (or work with others to contact) individual coaches from the qualified teams list and talk to them, listen/respond to their concerns, etc. (or stay in touch with other PACE members doing so in their own regions). While I'm at it, in cases where it seems as though a team doesn't have a lot of knowledge about the NSC, or quizbowl more broadly, I'll seek to have a somewhat broader conversation about the NSC and its place at the end of a yearlong schedule of many entertaining, fruitful tournaments.

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

Guy Tabachnick and Hannah Kirsch have resigned from PACE. I wish them the best in their future endeavors.