2020 ACF Fall: Global Announcement (October 17)

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2020 ACF Fall: Global Announcement (October 17)

Post by benmillerbenmiller »

I am excited to announce that 2020 ACF Fall will take place on Saturday, October 17. It is being edited by Drew Benner, Justin Duffy, Halle Friedman, Alex Hardwick, Arjun Nageswaran, and Karthik Prasad, with myself (Ben Miller) as head editor. Matthew Lehmann and other ACF members are offering oversight.

Format
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACF Fall will be held entirely online this year. ACF will coordinate with host schools to hold mirrors using an online platform (to be announced later), and will work to create the most authentic and engaging quizbowl experience possible under these circumstances.

Registration
Fill out the central 2020 ACF Fall registration form with all relevant information. The form is here. The field for each site can be found here.

Fees
Base fee per team: $120
New to quizbowl discount: −$80
Shorthanded discount (1–2 players): −$60
Staffers: −$25 per staffer with functional laptop. Staffers must register with ACF in advance.

To reflect the new online format of Fall, ACF has lowered the price of the tournament. We hope this maximizes the accessibility of the event considering the diminished fundraising environment that many teams face.

The "new to quizbowl" discount is for schools that did not send a team to any regular collegiate academic tournament (not counting exclusively novice tournaments) since September 2019, and which have no players who competed in non-novice collegiate tournaments during that same period.

Host sites will bill teams as soon as possible after the teams register. Teams should pay their host sites by whatever method is convenient for the hosts, who will in turn pay ACF by check, bank transfer, cash, or PayPal.

Packet Submission
Unlike past iterations of the set, no teams are required to submit questions in order to play the tournament. However, ACF still needs high-quality, half-packet submissions from teams to complete the set.

Below is the submission schedule for ACF Fall. All deadlines are at 11:59 p.m. PDT. The maximum packet discounts have increased since last year; furthermore, all submitting teams are eligible for an additional −$20 quality discount if their questions are particularly polished and usable, up to a maximum discount of −$60. Teams may submit a maximum of one half-packet.

August 23: −$50
August 30: −$40
September 6: −$30
September 13: −$20
September 20: −$10

If you would like to submit a half-packet, fill out this form. ACF will respond with a half-packet template specifying which categories you are assigned to write.

Each submission consists of 12 tossups and 12 bonuses. Before writing, please review ACF's packet submission guidelines and stick to the format provided. Answers should generally emphasize playability over creativity – aim for creative and interesting clues with straightforward answerlines. These 5 model tossups reflect the difficulty and style to aim for. When finished, submit your half-packet by emailing it to [email protected].

In another change from last year, your assigned half-packet will ask for questions from more specific categories within the distribution. For instance, instead of being assigned an “American Literature” tossup, you might be asked to write a question on a 20th-century American poem, or an Economics bonus instead of “Social Science/Philosophy.” This should reduce redundancy in submissions and maximize the number of submitted questions we can use, without being too constraining. The submission form offers space to indicate your writing interests in each category, which we will do our best to accommodate.

Hosting
If you are interested in hosting an online mirror of ACF Fall, fill out this form. If you have any questions about hosting or about the form, contact ACF’s Mirror Coordinator, Margaret Tebbe, at [email protected]. Hosts must abide by ACF’s Hosting Guidelines, which will be revised to reflect requirements for online tournaments.

Mirrors will by default be regional. One benefit of online tournaments, however, is that smaller sites can be condensed without creating transportation barriers. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites. ACF intends to mirror 2020 ACF Fall in the following regions:

College Sites:
Northeast: Harvard
Upper Mid-Atlantic: NYU
Lower Mid-Atlantic: UNC
Overflow for Northeast/Mid-Atlanic: Stony Brook
Southeast: USC
Great Lakes: Chicago
Midwest: Illinois
North: Carleton
South Central: Rice
Mountain West + Northwest: Colorado
California: Berkeley
Eastern Canada: McGill
UK: UKQB

We are still looking for an additional Northeast site and an additional Florida/Southeast site.

High-school-only sites:
Ridgewood HS (Northeast and Upper Mid-Atlantic)

High school teams and high-school-only mirrors
As in previous years, ACF is willing to provide the ACF Fall set for high-school-only tournaments. If you are interested in hosting a high-school-only mirror of 2020 ACF Fall, email [email protected]. However, we do not plan to offer mixed mirrors that include high school and college teams.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please email [email protected].
Last edited by benmillerbenmiller on Sat Oct 10, 2020 7:21 pm, edited 6 times in total.
Ben Miller
Blair '18 | UChicago '22
NAQT Editor, ACF Member
mtebbe
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Re: 2020 ACF Fall: Global Announcement (October 17)

Post by mtebbe »

Bump to say that the bid form for hosting this tournament closes in a little less than a week (August 29th)!
Margaret Tebbe

Spartanburg High School '17
Penn '21

Site Coordinator, ACF
Member, PACE
High Dependency Unit
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Re: 2020 ACF Fall: Global Announcement (October 17)

Post by High Dependency Unit »

Is ACF planning on being stringent with what site teams can sign up for? I understand that hosts in New England are hard to come by, but it's a little odd that the Upper Mid-Atlantic host (NYU) would, under in-person circumstances, be a shorter trip for us than the New England host (Stony Brook).
Michael Borecki
Middlesex Middle '13,
Darien (co-captain) '17,
Bowdoin College (club president) '21
mtebbe
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Re: 2020 ACF Fall: Global Announcement (October 17)

Post by mtebbe »

We are not planning to be extremely stringent and I may move teams between sites, but please register for the region that your school would normally be considered a part of (there is a guide to regions in our Hosting Guidelines). For schools that are on the borders between regions, please use your judgement and register for the mirror that you would attend if we were in person--if there's any question, feel free to email me ([email protected]).

One of the benefits of holding tournaments online is that it gives us a lot of geographic flexibility--in this case, designating schools from one region as hosts for another region that didn't receive bids (Chicago for the Great Lakes and Stony Brook for the Northeast). In an ideal world the Stony Brook site would be the overflow for the Upper Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, not the main Northeastern mirror. Unfortunately, all of the Northeastern teams I've reached out to (Harvard, Yale, Brown, Bowdoin, MIT) have either not responded or aren't able to host. Until/unless I find another host, please register for the Stony Brook mirror.
Margaret Tebbe

Spartanburg High School '17
Penn '21

Site Coordinator, ACF
Member, PACE
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Fado Alexandrino
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Re: 2020 ACF Fall: Global Announcement (October 17)

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

How many packets is ACF expecting to produce for this tournament?
Joe Su, OCT
Lisgar 2012, McGill 2015, McGill 2019, Queen's 2020
benmillerbenmiller
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Re: 2020 ACF Fall: Global Announcement (October 17)

Post by benmillerbenmiller »

We will be producing 13 packets, six of which will be based off submitted questions.
Ben Miller
Blair '18 | UChicago '22
NAQT Editor, ACF Member
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