Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Dormant threads from the high school sections are preserved here.
Locked
User avatar
cchiego
Yuna
Posts: 890
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:14 pm
Contact:

Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Post by cchiego »

Quizbowl has come a long way in the past decade or so, but still could generally use a bit more professionalism in terms of selling the activity to outsiders (and thus securing more funding/more interest) and avoiding the perception of being a weird, insiders-only activity. There are a few basic steps that more tournaments could take to help with this. All of these steps have low (or no) costs and major benefits. I'm listing them in order of what I think would be most important to prioritize. I would be eager to hear others' takes on these and any other ideas that other people might put forward.

Stop using ridiculous acronyms for tournament names. If you're a school board member, a high school principal, or a parent, what do you think looks better--a team that got a trophy at the GIDGUUD Invitational or the "Western _Insert State Here_ Academic Classic"? A team that went .500 at the SPOOKYPOOKYLOOKY event or the "_insert Metro-Area Here_ Fall Academic Tournament"? Schools like to triumph their teams' success in press releases and on social media. Ridiculous acronyms (to be clear, non-ridiculous acronyms/names that fit are fine) make quizbowl look like a joke here compared to similar competitions. Stop using them.

Professionalize pseudonyms. All Pseudonymous Teams Should be "_insert nearby town/city/neighborhood here_ Scholars." No goofy inside jokes, trying-too-hard-to-be-clever names, or unprofessional-looking mismashes of both. Just plain and simple: _X Town_ Scholars. It would be ideal to push back on these as much as possible (especially if they're rogue individual players not affiliated with a school's official team too), but I understand the need of some schools to use them. Just make them professional.

Post clear results and wrap-ups. Results should be clearly posted somewhere (besides in the QuizDB) to show to stakeholders at that school and so others like parents looking for information about that school can see (and ideally link to) the outcomes. Even better is a wrap-up with shout-outs to interesting pieces of information about the event that mention as many teams as possible.

Nametags for Staff and Nameplates for Teams. This is optional, but would be a nice gesture and could be a neat way of making more connections between people ("oh you go to X college or teach at Y high school?"). Teams could even re-use their nameplates from tournament to tournament.

Basic Dress Codes for Staff. Something as simple as "dressy casual" would be ideal. I haven't seen too many issues with this at most events recently, but it's part of a more general approach to taking these tournaments seriously. Just inculcating the idea that tournaments are real events that are worthy of respect and not last-minute disorganized moving caravans of people.
Chris C.
Past: UGA/UCSD/Penn
Present: Solano County, CA
User avatar
Cheynem
Sin
Posts: 7220
Joined: Tue May 11, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Re: Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Post by Cheynem »

I think a lot of Chris' ideas make sense. I don't think he, as I've heard some people suggest, is calling for like hyper professionalism in which all staffers must wear blazers and khakis, but rather a simple idea that there's many small things quizbowl could do to be more professional in general, which does immeasurable much in spreading this game (especially in high school but also in college).
Mike Cheyne
Formerly U of Minnesota

"You killed HSAPQ"--Matt Bollinger
User avatar
meebles127
Tidus
Posts: 572
Joined: Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:27 am
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia

Re: Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Post by meebles127 »

I think most of the points you make are great and I definitely plan on utilizing some of them when we host in October. Pitching quizbowl to school administrators is a difficult task but I have found that it is made significantly easier to secure funding and resources with tournament names like "Cave Spring Invitational" rather than something dumb. Making quizbowl appear more professional while avoiding over-professionalization is something that will do wonders for high school outreach.
Em Gunter
Club President, University of Virginia
Tournament Director, 2023 Chicago Open
Assistant Tournament Director, 2022 and 2023 ACF Nationals

Author of: My Guide to High School Outreach and So You Want to Buy a Buzzer System

"That's got to be one of the most useful skills anyone has ever gotten from quizbowl." -John Lawrence
User avatar
Sima Guang Hater
Auron
Posts: 1958
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:43 pm
Location: Nashville, TN

Re: Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

heterodyne wrote: Sat Feb 29, 2020 9:40 pm professionalism sux lol
I wonder if this utterly contentless post is going to be removed, taking bets.

Anyway, having talked more with high school admins since my retirement, this is absolutely correct. Comparing something like Vanderbilt's ABC to a local high school tournament (the former of which used negs, powers, fast-and-clear readers, and was generally a "better' tournament by most quizbowl-relevant metrics), the reception for the local high school tournament was more positive because the staff appeared more professional. The things that matter to quizbowlers are not necessarily the things that matter to admins, and we should take that into account whenever possible.
Eric Mukherjee, MD PhD
Brown 2009, Penn Med 2018
Instructor/Attending Physician/Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Coach, University School of Nashville

“The next generation will always surpass the previous one. It’s one of the never-ending cycles in life.”
Support the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome Foundation
User avatar
cchiego
Yuna
Posts: 890
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:14 pm
Contact:

Re: Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Post by cchiego »

as I've heard some people suggest, is calling for like hyper professionalism in which all staffers must wear blazers and khakis
Note too that the "dress code" (which I would say means nice jeans and such are fine) was the lowest priority here, mostly in terms of "don't look like you just rolled out of bed to read a quizbowl tournament." That said, one thing I have noticed is that coaches and teams in general do like to know a bit more about the moderators and I've been pleased by NAQT and PACE adding affiliations and/or years of experience to their staffer tags. It helps to add authority to the readers and can lead to more friendly interactions with teams.

I do look forward to all schools, but particularly those with immense institutional resources and membership bases, applying their dedication to the game to hosting or assisting in hosting professionally-run tournaments in their area. Experienced moderators are critical to making events run well (and can also use their experience to help work with hosts to make the events run better/more professionally) and can be a great way for alumni or temporarily burnt-out players to make an impact.
Chris C.
Past: UGA/UCSD/Penn
Present: Solano County, CA
User avatar
Ciorwrong
Tidus
Posts: 696
Joined: Fri Dec 20, 2013 8:24 pm

Re: Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Post by Ciorwrong »

As I've said in the Discord, all of these suggestions are good. The people who are worried about "over-professionalism" are pretty off-base and may be conflating college and high school quizbowl. High school administrators, parents and the PR people and reporters who might write a short story on a tournament result care about some of these things. People always make a deal about the dress code when it really comes down to "don't look like a slob." The vast majority of staffers already exceed this standard. College tournaments are always going to be more laid back and as someone who has TD both, I care way less about how staffers dress at college events. Additionally, it's probably best to avoid swearing around high school teams and parents. I swear a lot, honestly, but some parents and especially teachers definitely care about this stuff and it makes your university look bad.

Tournament titles should be easy to understand and include no acronyms. A good tournament title is something like Wildcat Spring Invitational (IS-199) while a bad tournament title for high school is MACRONYM 22 @ RSU. Additionally, I think collegiate sets should try to continue to move towards evocative names like "Spring Undergraduate Novice" rather than "Peaceful Resolution." I'd invite high school sets to try to move in this direction as well.
Harris Bunker
Grosse Pointe North High School '15
Michigan State University '19
UC San Diego Economics 2019 -

at least semi-retired
User avatar
i never see pigeons in wheeling
Rikku
Posts: 440
Joined: Mon May 31, 2010 3:57 am

Re: Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Post by i never see pigeons in wheeling »

Something that’s been nagging at me more and more (and certainly something I’m very guilty of) is that the forums are a great clearinghouse for tournament announcements for the community at large, but they should not constitute the main interface of interaction between us and the external tournament-seeking world. Outsiders (especially older people) can definitely be weirded out by the experience of seeing a weird forum avatar that’s inextricably linked to an ostensibly serious academic extracurricular (or a weird forum siggy, or just the aesthetic of the thing). Furthermore, many set announcement or tournament threads contain additional commentary posts that are either totally opaque to non-quizbowlers or, worse, air dirty laundry that simply does not need to be presented at the outside world at the time (and will also for the most part be opaque to an outside world that’s weirded out mostly by the fact that the very location announcing the tournament isn’t presenting it in an uncontroversial light).
Ankit
Cal '16
Bellarmine College Preparatory '12
CaseyB
Wakka
Posts: 117
Joined: Mon Dec 29, 2014 7:22 pm

Re: Basic Steps Towards Quizbowl Professionalization for Tournaments: Cut the Acronyms and Pseudonyms

Post by CaseyB »

i never see pigeons in wheeling wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2020 5:45 am the forums are a great clearinghouse for tournament announcements for the community at large, but they should not constitute the main interface of interaction between us and the external tournament-seeking world.
I agree with this sentiment. Both this year and last year, there was a new club in the Southeast that only attended two tournaments, Collegiate Novice and SCT, because they didn't know where to find information about tournaments other than NAQT's website.
Casey Bindas
PACE VP of Event Management
Michigan Tech 2016-18
VCU 2015-16
UCF 2011-15
Canton HS (MI) 2007-11
Locked