Writing resources for new teams

This forum is for anyone seeking advice on starting a collegiate team, branching out into new types of tournaments, or other "how-to" aspects of collegiate quizbowl.
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Thaumatibis gigantea
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Writing resources for new teams

Post by Thaumatibis gigantea »

This past year I went through the process of reinstating Swarthmore Quizbowl as a legitimate, school-recognized club eligible for club funding. In the interim, I went through some other grant methods to fund our activities and in the meantime found myself reusing the same text that I wrote on why quizbowl is important (both in general and to Swarthmore College); what quizbowl accomplishes for players, how quizbowl compares to other activities in helping students, mission statements for clubs, etc.

Most of my text for funding applications and trip reports was generic and could be applied outside of Swarthmore, which got me thinking. There's a large amount of good writing on quizbowl itself around, but it's generally tailored to an insider audience.

Is there a model for briefly presenting quizbowl to people who aren't well-versed in it (or who may not particularly care about it for the feel-good reasons quizbowlers do-- especially student government/administrators)? Does something like this already exist that could be used with the author's permission? Would it be worthwhile to establish a well-written form letter or model answering the questions in the first paragraph publicly?

I am by no means experienced in this field, and was lucky to have a pretty much amenable administration to work with (some of whom were also familiar with quizbowl), but I would be more than happy to share my own work on funding applications and club charters from the past year in the interest of making it easier for more clubs to exist. I hope to hear from others who have written this sort of stuff to make the process easier on everyone.
(edited for more clarity)
Rebecca Rosenthal, Bergen County Academies '16, Swarthmore College '20
PACE, Director of Communications
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alexdz
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Re: Writing resources for new teams

Post by alexdz »

I think this would be great! I've also been throwing around the idea of working on a good "media guide" for covering quiz bowl tournaments. I think a lot of the work would be similar.
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Majin Buu Roi
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Re: Writing resources for new teams

Post by Majin Buu Roi »

I think I remember Chris Chiego posting something in this ball park for high schoolers. Maybe that could be jury-rigged a bit.

(Incidentally, I'm jealous your administration offered the possibility of getting funded at all! Princeton's entire budget has been the profits from PHSAT and whatever tournament we happened to run in the spring)
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El Salvadoreno
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Re: Writing resources for new teams

Post by El Salvadoreno »

Lily Chen and Adam Kalinich (of MIT fame) once posted a slideshow that does a fairly good job of explaining quizbowl. They posted it on the forums here so I assume you can use it.
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Thaumatibis gigantea
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Re: Writing resources for new teams

Post by Thaumatibis gigantea »

jasongg17 wrote:I think I remember Chris Chiego posting something in this ball park for high schoolers. Maybe that could be jury-rigged a bit.

(Incidentally, I'm jealous your administration offered the possibility of getting funded at all! Princeton's entire budget has been the profits from PHSAT and whatever tournament we happened to run in the spring)
Great, I'll look for that. (And if it makes you feel any better, they fund, but not plane trips-- hence our last-minute withdrawl from ICT-- and are currently unwilling to let us reserve rooms for any sort of tournament as it's considered an outside event and cannot happen during the school year.)
El Salvadoreno wrote:Lily Chen and Adam Kalinich (of MIT fame) once posted a slideshow that does a fairly good job of explaining quizbowl. They posted it on the forums here so I assume you can use it.
To further clarify, I'm looking more for language on the utility of quizbowl/what a quizbowl club's functions are/impact on surrounding communities rather than explanations of the game mechanics. This probably will overlap a bit with more high-school level stuff as I include hosting and staffing high school tournaments as part of our club's official mission.
Rebecca Rosenthal, Bergen County Academies '16, Swarthmore College '20
PACE, Director of Communications
she/her/hers
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