Page 1 of 1

ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 1:59 pm
by jinah
This is the official announcement for ACF Regionals 2020, which will take place on January 25, 2020. It will be head edited by myself and edited by Dennis Loo, Geoffrey Chen, Jordan Brownstein, Neilesh Vinjamuri, Nick Jensen, Nitin Rao, Taylor Harvey, and Wonyoung Jang, with Billy Busse and Ophir Lifshitz providing oversight for science and music.

The distribution for this tournament will follow the standard ACF distribution, as laid out here.


PACKET SUBMISSION

Any team with at least two people on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament* (either as a college student or as a high school student) prior to September 1, 2018, is required to submit a half-packet. If you are unsure whether your team is required to submit a half-packet, please email us at [email protected]. A team that is not required to submit a packet may submit an optional packet by the no-penalty deadline for a $50 discount.

* For these purposes, all ACF tournaments, NAQT SCT (Division I or Division II), NAQT ICT, and typical college-level academic invitationals count as regular collegiate academic tournaments. Pop culture or “hybrid” tournaments, HCASC, and tournaments played on NAQT’s Collegiate Novice series sets do not.

The submission schedule is as follows (your submission must be sent to [email protected] by 11:59 PM PT):
  • November 10, 2019: -$50
  • November 24, 2019: -$25
  • December 8, 2019: -$0
  • December 22, 2019: +$25
  • December 29, 2019: +$50
After December 29, 2019, teams will be required to pay an additional $10 per day their packet is late. Teams that have not submitted a packet by January 12, 2020, will be dropped from the tournament.

The submission discounts and penalties – but not the schedule – will likely differ for teams attending sites outside of the United States, and will be detailed on the relevant site's forum post.

If your team is obligated to submit a half-packet or wishes to do so, please register here. A half-packet distribution will be mailed to you. If you have already received a half-packet distribution, please still register, but no additional half-packet will be emailed to you. If you register and do not receive a half-packet distribution in a timely manner, please email regionals@acf-quizbowl .com. Registration for ACF Regionals 2020 is now closed. If you have a question about your packet submission, please email [email protected].

In order to meet a deadline, you must submit your half-packet before 11:59pm Pacific Time on that date. Half-packets should be submitted in Microsoft Word .doc or .docx format. Please do not submit packets as pdfs. If a team wishes to outsource part of its packet to a player not expected to play on that team (e.g. a student who has graduated), it must first receive approval from the head editor. If anyone who works on a packet or has access to that packet ends up playing on a different team (e.g. if someone originally intended to be on McGill B instead plays for McGill A) please let the head editor and your local TD know as soon as possible.


HOSTS:

This iteration of Regionals will be mirrored at the following sites:
Schools located more than 400 miles away from a Regionals site can apply for a special "wildcard bid." Applications must be submitted by January 4 at the latest; ACF will adjudicate each such bid (including bids for host teams and teams with a Regionals editor) within one week. If you would like to submit a bid, or would like to receive additional information about submitting a bid, please email [email protected].


REGISTRATION

Registration for ACF Regionals 2020 is now closed. If you need to make changes to your registration, please email your TD and [email protected]. The field for each site can be found here.


FEES:

Additional details can be found on the ACF website. Fees and discounts for this tournament are structured as follows:
  • Base fee: $150
  • Shorthanded discount (teams of 1-2 players): -$75
  • Buzzer: -$10/functional system
  • Staffers: -$15/staffer with laptop
  • Travel discount: -$10 per 200 miles traveled one-way
  • Packet submission discounts: As noted above
  • New to quizbowl discount: -$100
The new to quizbowl discount is intended for schools that did not send a team to any regular collegiate academic tournament (exclusively Novice tournaments do not count) since September 2018, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school.


ACCESSIBILITY:

This tournament is intended to be close in difficulty to ACF Regionals 2019, and easier than ACF Regionals 2018. While writing submissions, please keep the following in mind:
  • At least 50% of tossup answerlines should be things that can be tossed up at ACF Fall or below. This does not mean “answerlines for which a theoretical Fall-level giveaway exists,” but rather answerlines that actually could have a Fall-level (or easier!) tossup written on them.
  • The remaining tossup answerlines should be predominantly things that could be uncontroversially tossed up at regular difficulty. While you should feel free to submit tossups with unconventional answerlines that are still accessible (e.g. the trend of writing harder tossups on elements of core-canon works) these should make up no more than one or two of your overall submission.
  • As Will put it last year, “Easy parts for bonuses should be genuinely easy,” gettable by around 90% of teams. However, try and avoid “curved yellow fruit” style bonuses that a) don’t reward knowledge and b) can actually obfuscate an answer.
  • Tossups this year will be hard-capped at seven lines, 10-point Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Please do not submit tossups that run into the ninth line or are shorter than five full lines. For bonuses, please do not submit any bonus parts that are over three lines, and aim for 1-2 lines per part.
Submissions that flagrantly disregard the length or difficulty guidelines will be sent back to teams and will be considered unsubmitted for the purposes of packet discounts. If you would like to request an extension for your deadline, please submit your request and explanation to [email protected].


FURTHER QUESTIONS:

If you have any further questions, please send them to [email protected].


PACKETS RECEIVED

-$50 deadline:
  • Berkeley A
  • Colorado A
  • Columbia A
  • Cornell A
  • Maryland A
  • McGill A
  • McMaster A
  • NC State A
  • NYU A
  • NYU B
  • Princeton A
  • Princeton B
  • Texas A
-$25 deadline:
  • Duke B
  • Auburn A
  • Auburn B
  • Brown A
  • Colorado B
  • Columbia B
  • Duke A
  • Georgia A
  • Glasgow A
  • Illinois A
  • Iowa A
  • Penn State A
  • Penn State B
  • Penn State C
  • Purdue A
  • UGA B
  • UNC A
  • UNC B
  • VCU A
No-penalty deadline:
  • Cambridge A
  • DePaul A
  • Duke C
  • Georgia Tech A
  • Georgia Tech B
  • Harvard B
  • Illinois B
  • JHU A
  • Liberty A
  • Liberty B
  • MIT B
  • MSU A
  • MSU B
  • Northwestern A
  • Pitt B
  • UCSD A
  • UT Dallas A
  • Warwick A
  • Waterloo A
  • William & Mary
  • Wright State A
+$25 deadline:
  • Berkeley B
  • Cambridge B
  • Central Florida A
  • Chicago A
  • Chicago B
  • Harvard C
  • Michigan A
  • MIT A
  • Oxford A
  • Oxford B
  • Stanford A
  • Texas A&M B
  • Texas B
+$50 deadline
  • Claremont A
  • Delaware A
  • MSU B
  • NCF A
  • Ohio State A
  • Penn A
  • South Carolina A
  • Texas A&M A
  • Virginia A
  • WUSTL A
+$60 deadline
  • NC State B
+$70 deadline
  • Washington A
+$100 deadline
  • Chicago C
+$170 deadline
  • Queen's A
  • WUSTL B

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2019 11:31 am
by jinah
As a tweak from the previous post, teams interested in hosting a mirror of Regionals should email both the mirror coordinator and the regionals email ([email protected] and [email protected], respectively). The original post has been edited with this change.

If you have requested a half-packet distribution and have not heard back within 24 hours, please feel free to send a follow-up email.

EDIT: Additionally, highlighting the following point (now bolded in the post): If a team wishes to outsource part of its packet to a player not expected to play on that team (e.g. a student who has graduated), it must first receive approval from the head editor.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2019 2:23 pm
by Bosa of York
jinah wrote: Mon Sep 30, 2019 11:31 am If a team wishes to outsource part of its packet to a player not expected to play on that team (e.g. a student who has graduated), it must first receive approval from the head editor.
What is the rationale for this?

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2019 4:01 pm
by jinah
Milhouse wrote: Mon Sep 30, 2019 2:23 pm
jinah wrote: Mon Sep 30, 2019 11:31 am If a team wishes to outsource part of its packet to a player not expected to play on that team (e.g. a student who has graduated), it must first receive approval from the head editor.
What is the rationale for this?
I’d just like to know ahead of time, especially in case there’s anything that could impact combining packets.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2019 5:11 pm
by Cheynem
I also might imagine it's helpful for packet security purposes as well.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:47 pm
by jinah
Please note that bids to host Regionals close in one week!

We are extending the time period to apply to host Regionals to November 3. Please see the below post for details.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2019 1:02 am
by jinah
To give more schools the opportunity to bid to host Regionals 2020, we are extending the application period to November 3. Sites will be announced November 17. The main post has been amended with these new dates; please get your applications in if you're interested!

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 6:58 pm
by Zealots of Stockholm
Is opera part of classical music or other arts for this tournament?

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 6:19 pm
by jinah
100% Clean Comedian Dan Nainan wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 6:58 pm Is opera part of classical music or other arts for this tournament?
Opera will be part of “other arts,” though there may be opera-related clues within classical music questions.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 6:43 pm
by ryanrosenberg
I'll also take this opportunity to plug the new ACF distribution page, which has the distributions for Fall, Regionals, and Nationals in one place, along with handy explanations of what goes in which category and how categories should be sub-distributed.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:28 pm
by naan/steak-holding toll
ryanrosenberg wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2019 6:43 pm I'll also take this opportunity to plug the new ACF distribution page, which has the distributions for Fall, Regionals, and Nationals in one place, along with handy explanations of what goes in which category and how categories should be sub-distributed.
Nitpicky, but is there a reason that British history is still a full 1/3 of the European History requirement, or that majority-white Commonwealth countries like Australia and Canada - which most tournaments today group with "European History" or "Commonwealth / Misc" - is being put in the World History category? Obviously ACF is free to do as it likes, but this strikes me as at odds with most contemporary writing conventions.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:46 pm
by Bosa of York
I believe is also contrary to the half-packet distributions we were assigned for Regionals, which I recall included something to the effect of “European/Canadian/Australian History.”

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 2:50 pm
by The King's Flight to the Scots
When we say "British" history in our distribution, we mean "British Isles/Canada/Australia/New Zealand," following the usual quizbowl convention. We realize this could be made more explicit and we're updating the website accordingly.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 3:11 pm
by jinah
Milhouse wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:46 pm I believe is also contrary to the half-packet distributions we were assigned for Regionals, which I recall included something to the effect of “European/Canadian/Australian History.”
Because the packet templates were created before the ACF distribution and guidelines were finalized, there are are some slight discrepancies in wording and content. History is probably the clearest example, but these discrepancies also apply to other categories that don't cleanly have some multiple of 1/1 within the distribution (e.g. sub-distributions with Other Science).

Matt's post directly above mine should address your specific question about European History. For the purposes of Regionals packet submissions, if there are any additional discrepancies or such issues, please adhere to the categories as laid out in your assigned half-packet distributions. Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you have questions.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 1:20 pm
by Aaron's Rod
There are still 9 days until we'd like to have all of our bids in, and while I'd love more bids from any region, I am particularly seeking those from the following regions:
  • Northeast (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut)
  • Lower Mid-Atlantic (Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, North Carolina)
  • Mountain West (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming)
  • United Kingdom
Interested teams can contact me at [email protected].

The procedures for qualifying for ACF Nationals, including via a host bid, are here.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 3:39 pm
by naan/steak-holding toll
The King's Flight to the Scots wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 2:50 pm When we say "British" history in our distribution, we mean "British Isles/Canada/Australia/New Zealand," following the usual quizbowl convention. We realize this could be made more explicit and we're updating the website accordingly.
Awesome, thanks for the clarification!

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 9:42 pm
by jinah
jinah wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 1:02 am To give more schools the opportunity to bid to host Regionals 2020, we are extending the application period to November 3. Sites will be announced November 17. The main post has been amended with these new dates; please get your applications in if you're interested!
A reminder that bids will close on Sunday, and that the first packet deadline is a week from Sunday.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2019 7:34 pm
by jinah
Registration for ACF Regionals 2020 has opened! Please note that we are still finalizing sites for the UK and the Mountain West regions. The main post has been updated with sites and will be updated with links to site-specific forum posts once those have been made.

If your team is obligated to submit a half-packet or wishes to do so, please register first; a half-packet distribution will be mailed to you. If you have already received a half-packet distribution, please still register, but no additional half-packet will be emailed to you. If you register and do not receive a half-packet distribution in a timely manner, please email [email protected].

EDIT: The form/post previously used an incorrect name for the Georgia Institute of Technology. This has been amended.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2019 10:52 pm
by Bensonfan23
One small thing that I noticed while attempting to sign up teams for Texas, the form incorrectly lists UT Austin as the South Central host. Rice is hosting for our region, not UT.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2019 11:03 pm
by jinah
Bensonfan23 wrote: Wed Nov 06, 2019 10:52 pm One small thing that I noticed while attempting to sign up teams for Texas, the form incorrectly lists UT Austin as the South Central host. Rice is hosting for our region, not UT.
Wow, I'm not sure how that happened! Thanks for pointing it out -- that has been fixed. The form and post have also been edited now that Kansas State is confirmed as the host for Mountain West.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:14 pm
by jinah
The UK site of Regionals will be held at Oxford Brookes University. The forum announcement and registration form have been updated with all sites.

Also, as a note of clarification, painting/sculpture fall within the same category. Please do not submit questions on sculpture for "other arts."

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2019 3:58 pm
by jinah
Additionally, a note on switching players between teams; since it's still a few months out from the tournament, ACF understands that team rosters are not set in stone and are subject to change. Because Regionals is a packet submission tournament, last-minute roster changes can have more of an impact than they would have at other tournaments; for example, if a player originally on Princeton F moves to Princeton G, then that means neither Princeton G nor Princeton F can hear the packet containing Princeton F's submission. This has consequences for both the editing process and for scheduling.

To avoid any potential issues, please a) ensure that each contributor's name is listed in the appropriate part of your half-packet submission; b) restrict access to your submitted questions to only people who are expected to play on that team (or any others who have received permission to work on the packet); and c) let myself ([email protected]) and the TD of your site know if you have any roster changes between teams as early as you can.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:59 pm
by jinah
Reminder that this Sunday, 11/24, is the -$25 deadline! Additionally, if you have submitted your packet but do not see your team listed in the main post above, please PM me or email [email protected].

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Fri Nov 22, 2019 7:55 pm
by jinah
A note on optional packets: in line with ACF's host guidelines (regarding discounts as a result of optional packets submitted by host/house teams), any team that writes an acceptable optional half-packet by the no-penalty deadline is eligible for a $50 discount. The post has been updated with a clarification.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2019 11:19 am
by jinah
A reminder that the no-penalty deadline for packet submission is this Sunday, December 8! Packets should be submitted by 11:59PM Pacific time.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 8:14 pm
by jinah
The post has been updated with all packets received by the no-penalty deadline. Please note that optional packets have been grouped according to the date they were submitted, not the actual discount they received (e.g. a team that submitted an optional packet on 12/8 would be listed under "no-penalty deadline"). If you are unsure of your discount, or you think your team has been listed in the wrong section above / left off entirely, please let me know.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2019 9:52 am
by jinah
A reminder that the +$25 deadline is tomorrow, December 22!

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2019 11:34 am
by jinah
The final packet deadline is today, December 29, 2019, by 11:59PM Pacific Time.

After December 29, 2019, teams will be required to pay an additional $10 per day their packet is late. Teams that have not submitted a packet by January 12, 2020, will be dropped from the tournament. The post has been updated with submitted packets up to the +$25 deadline.

Additionally, please note that wildcard bids for hosts and editors are due by January 4, 2020.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 12:27 pm
by jinah
The main post has been updated with all present packets submitted; if you do not see yours listed, please let me know ASAP.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2020 3:04 pm
by jinah
Please note that registration for ACF Regionals 2020 will close in two weeks, on January 20.

Additionally, a reminder that teams that are required to submit a packet but who have not done so by January 12 will be dropped from the tournament.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 2:36 pm
by jinah
A final reminder that all packet-required teams who have not submitted a packet by today, January 12 will be dropped from the tournament. Please note that registration for ACF Regionals will close on January 20.

Re: ACF Regionals Global Announcement: January 25, 2020

Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2020 6:25 pm
by jinah
A final reminder that registration closes today!