Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

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Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!
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Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

Hello friends! I hope summer is going well for everyone! Up at Iowa, we have a freshman introduction week in August. Our Quiz Bowl team hosts a fun trivia night there, which is where I first met our team. Anyways, I see this as a big opportunity to get freshman talent and participation involved in our program. Last year, we made it to Nationals for the first time in many years for our program, and we have a strong returning pool of players I know who are going to be involved.

I was wondering if you guys had broad tips on how to advocate for our program during our trivia night and also more niche ways to spin and pivot our success from last year into more participants for the future. I for sure wanted to namedrop who we are and our achievements, but I'm curious if anyone else has a "secret formula" for advertising this. We had many people put down their names on our email list last year, but few people responded, so I'd love to see how we can spice this up some more and get more returners, but this could be content for another post.

Thank you for your time!
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Re: Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

Post by Hypersmart »

This is a really good idea! And probably more practical in a college setting than posting a flyer or going from classroom to classroom.

I'd be very interested in doing this at VMI. Do you all write the questions yourselves or find them from the internet? If you write the questions what kind of distribution, difficulty, and even question length are you using? If you have a packet available I'd be interested using it as a mirror.
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Re: Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

If I were doing this, I'd basically chop up some ACF Fall or SCT questions and insert them among the trivia rounds. Then I'd announce at the end something to the effect of "and a lot of these questions were based on REAL quizbowl questions!" Might help combat the impression that quizbowl is impossibly hard.
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Re: Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

Post by i never see pigeons in wheeling »

Hypersmart wrote: Wed Jun 26, 2019 4:21 pm This is a really good idea! And probably more practical in a college setting than posting a flyer or going from classroom to classroom.

I'd be very interested in doing this at VMI. Do you all write the questions yourselves or find them from the internet? If you write the questions what kind of distribution, difficulty, and even question length are you using? If you have a packet available I'd be interested using it as a mirror.
For your particular case, it might be pretty useful to get questions from the archive directly pertinent to American military history (using QuizDB's category dropdowns), along with standard trash. Knowing your audience is key.
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Re: Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

Hypersmart wrote: Wed Jun 26, 2019 4:21 pm This is a really good idea! And probably more practical in a college setting than posting a flyer or going from classroom to classroom.

I'd be very interested in doing this at VMI. Do you all write the questions yourselves or find them from the internet? If you write the questions what kind of distribution, difficulty, and even question length are you using? If you have a packet available I'd be interested using it as a mirror.
Hey Veer! So I'm pretty sure all we have is a rough powerpoint instead of a packet. I still need to get the resources from our outgoing seniors, but I remember we split it into categories of University of Iowa, Iowa, Pop Culture, and then actual QB content. I second the suggestion in this thread of focusing in on military history and perhaps making that its own category. It might be nice to have a category based on like VMI itself, or Virginia too to balance things out. I'll post a link to what we did in here as soon as I get it!
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Re: Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

Post by Hypersmart »

Hi all! I really like the suggestion of incorporating some military (even some older military history might be yielding) and Virginia-based "trivia". It was something I was also thinking about. I guess that means I'll have to learn some VMI and Military history (might be good to know considering I might end up joining it). I'll also be incorporating some SCT (DII) and ACF Fall questions along with some VHSL regional and above questions. I'm going to write some of my own questions *muscle emoji*.

What sentence length and distribution are you all looking at?
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Re: Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

Hypersmart wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 8:39 pm
What sentence length and distribution are you all looking at?
I'd say for trivia nights, definitely one clue/sentence. We play with about 20 tables of roughly 8 people, so for our format, one clue works since there isn't enough time to stretch out every question. Distribution I wouldn't go crazy with either - we had like a title card listing the category for the next 10 questions and went off of that.
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Re: Public Trivia Nights into Quizbowl Play

Post by Hypersmart »

We play with about 20 tables of roughly 8 people
So when you say this, do you have like a presentation up on a screen, a bunch of people at each table with like a sheet of paper to write down answers?
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