2024 UMN Open Weekend (CO Trash + Side Events) : August 16-17, 2024

[shar2931]

The University of Minnesota Quiz Bowl team, along with the CO Trash team, is excited to announce the 2024 edition of UMN Open Weekend, an open weekend of quiz bowl on Friday August 16 and Saturday August 17, 2024. The tournament will take place at Blegen Hall on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota campus.

Due to changes in UMN policies, we are no longer able to reserve or access rooms on Saturday night or Sunday. Therefore, the Open Weekend will have a different schedule to previous years.

Schedule
As of right now, the current plan is as follows:

We are running three side events: SEANCE, a film side event written by Nicholas Tunks and Morgan Bozeman; TOWNS, an American geography and current events set written by Conor Thompson, Joel Miles, and Guy Indorante; and LITANY, a literature set written by Shourjo Ganguli, Ali Hamzeh, Stan Melkumian, and Clark Smith. Unlike previous years, the side events will be held on Friday night, starting at about 6pm.

Saturday's main event will be CO Trash 2024. More information about the set can be found here.

Costs
The costs of CO Trash will be updated soon with more information. The cost of side events will be variable depending on the event and will be announced once the full slate has been finalized.

Team Formation + Sign-Up
A team formation, staffing, and free agent sign-up sheet for all of the events of the open weekend can be found here. There is a tentative field cap of 12 teams for CO Trash, and of 8 doubles teams for the side events.

Minor Chaperone Policy
Beginning in Fall of 2020, the University of Minnesota is requiring that all minors be accompanied by a chaperone to all on-campus events. As a result, each minor attending any tournaments as part of the open weekend is required to have a chaperone of some capacity at this tournament. Players who are both under 18 years of age and do not have an adult chaperone with them will not be allowed to play this tournament.

Code of Conduct
All players, staffers, and spectators attending any part of the open weekend will be required to abide by the UMN Quizbowl code of conduct. Participants who feel that a fellow competitor, staffer, or spectator is not following the code of conduct should fill out the UMN Quizbowl misconduct reporting form.

I would like to apologize for the delay in getting this announcement out. We've been attempting to find a way around the new UMN room reservation policies, including exploring alternate hosting sites, but this plan is the most financially feasible. If you have any questions, please contact us at suacb [at] umn [dot] edu. We hope to see you here in August!

[Cheynem]

I would really enjoy playing This Set is Garbo, Litany, and TOWNS. (Or if feasible, Untitled Film Set).

I'm not sure how things have changed since I was there (I understand the campus has electricity now), but there were usually a few rooms one could use for at least a shootout (especially during the summer when very few people are around, although I guess there's a chance they could be locked or unavailable). I understand that running a full fledged doubles or quads tournament might be hard on Sunday or Saturday night, but maybe shootouts are an option.

At the very least, I could offer my hotel room on Sunday for a very small shootout.

[Auks Ran Ova]

Is the Mayo breezeway still regularly open? We ran at least one full (shootout) tournament there once on an MO Sunday.

[shar2931]

I would really enjoy playing This Set is Garbo, Litany, and TOWNS. (Or if feasible, Untitled Film Set).

Sounds good, thank you for the suggestions! For the film event, UMN's own Nicholas Tunks and Morgan Bozeman have written a film side event (SEANCE) that we'll be running. I'll contact the folks behind Litany and TOWNS and see if we can get those as well.

[shar2931]

Is the Mayo breezeway still regularly open? We ran at least one full (shootout) tournament there once on an MO Sunday.

Unfortunately, we checked over the weekend and while some buildings are open and accessible, every classroom is locked (especially in the health sciences areas). I'd personally prefer not to play quiz bowl in a public space, but people are of course welcome to set up their own events on Sunday.

[Cheynem]

I'm not 100% sure, but I would guess that the summer might also be a more viable chance to play quizbowl in a public space. But we can play things by ear.

I greatly would enjoy playing SEANCE.

[shar2931]

The sign-up sheet now has tabs for the three side events we're running: SEANCE, TOWNS, and LITANY. We're hoping to run all of these as doubles tournaments, but that may change depending on interest.

[TheLegendaryBenG]

Any updates on costs and main event timing?

[Auks Ran Ova]

CO Trash will be $30/person, or $10/person for current UMN students (thanks for hosting!). We'll have more logistical information posted this coming week.

[Cheynem]

For those who will be around on Sunday, I'd be down to organize some sort of shootout...somewhere on campus. The legendary Mayo Breezeway was a popular location back in ye Stone Age, but since classes haven't started yet, there might be some relatively quiet locations in like Coffman. If we really wanted to get crazy, I do have a hotel room and won't be leaving until Monday.

[shar2931]

In case there's not any current UMN students participating in the shootouts on Sunday, I'd suggest Coffman over Mayo -- the health sciences complex is card-access only at every entrance nowadays. There's a big list of the hours for every building here. "Public Hours" means anyone can get in, "University Hours" means you need an active UCard to get in.

[Cheynem]

E pluribus gads!

[Cheynem]

I'm also looking for a partner for TOWNS and LITANY.

[theMoMA]

We're targeting six teams for CO Trash on Saturday. Conveniently, there are six teams currently listed on the spreadsheet. I just sent an email to everyone who listed their address on the spreadsheet asking that the remaining free agents (and anyone else) fill the empty spots on the rosters. Unless we get an influx of late interest, we don't expect to need staff beyond Rob, Carsten, and me, although we appreciate the interest (and you're welcome to come hang out on Saturday).

[CPiGuy]

We're targeting six teams for CO Trash on Saturday. Conveniently, there are six teams currently listed on the spreadsheet. I just sent an email to everyone who listed their address on the spreadsheet asking that the remaining free agents (and anyone else) fill the empty spots on the rosters. Unless we get an influx of late interest, we don't expect to need staff beyond Rob, Carsten, and me, although we appreciate the interest (and you're welcome to come hang out on Saturday).

There now appear to be zero free agents, and I am not particularly interested in soloing this tournament lol. I recognize that five teams is a very bad number, but if no additional players are forthcoming I'd definitely rather join an existing team, if that's alright.

[Auks Ran Ova]

We won't make you solo against your will! We've started asking around for additional players, and if none appear we'll work something else out.

[Auks Ran Ova]

We have found at least enough free agents to fill out a sixth team, so we should be able to run with that. We've also got 3-4 open slots on those teams, if you happen to be reading this and will be in the area!

[shar2931]

If anyone is interested in playing SEANCE (a film side event) and hasn't signed up already, we're looking for 1-2 more doubles teams to make a nice 8 round schedule!

[Cheynem]

Will there be logistics information for the Friday night events coming soon?

[shar2931]

Yeah, I'll send out an email tonight!

[Cheynem]

I've reserved a closed study room in the Wilson Library that allows for 8 people from 1-3 on Sunday (you can only reserve 2 hours on one account, so if someone else wants to reserve Wilson Room 208 from 3-5, we can have the room basically all afternoon, as the library closes at 6). Since no room in the entire library was reserved on Sunday, I'm guessing we're not going to get kicked out past 3 even if nobody reserves the room anyway.

Obviously a gigantic amount of people can't be in here, but if we wanted to run some shootouts or informal packet play in the afternoon, this is probably the smoothest place to do so on Sunday. (For example, the other packets of LITANY, or some of the Canadian stuff or I can read Chris Borglum's TV thing or whatever.)

[OctagonJoe]

The stats can be found here.

[Cheynem]

If you do come out this afternoon, we will probably be on the first floor since some group ignored the room reservation and I didn't really want to kick them out since every other room is open. My guess is Room 180 on the first floor.

[shar2931]

Thank you to everyone who came to Open Weekend!