Introducing the UQC

Anything that's on topic but doesn't fit elsewhere, including related events that might be of interest to quizbowl players.
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oriley
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Introducing the UQC

Post by oriley »

Hello! My name is Owen Riley. I’m the guy from Minnesota who’s been running all those online tournaments this year.

This is a brief announcement post for the company I am starting to run my tournaments and do outreach in a more official capacity. I chose the name “Ultimate Quizbowl Championship” because I’m going to try and attract a decent audience of laypeople. If you don’t aim high, what’s the point?

EDIT: I am removing the website link until I can resolve some technical difficulties. I apologize for causing NAQT offense by linking to their video, and I will make the link public again after I get that off the site.

I was informed after the fact by an acquaintance that there is an “Ultimate Quizzing Championships” event in Europe—I apologize for any confusion this may cause. My company is legally registered in the state of Minnesota, and I am assured there is no issue with the name. As I’m mostly operating in the United States, this should not cause any problems.

If you think you see the obvious influence on the name, you are probably correct, and the origin of one of the things I’m building to is the same. Please be civil; folks from other academic competitions will find this thread next year. Feel free to DM or email me if you don’t know what I mean.

I’m just doing my own thing and running the outreach I want to do in a more official capacity. I am not trying to compete with NAQT or PACE, and if I do end up running a nationals, it would likely be in February or March. Please feel free to reach out if you have feedback on any of this, or the tournaments I’ve ran this year, or anything in particular. My email is oriley1201 AT icloud.com. Thanks!
Last edited by oriley on Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by meebles127 »

What do you aim to achieve with this?
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by matthewspatrick »

oriley wrote: Tue Jun 07, 2022 11:34 am The website is here. The HSNCT video at the top is a placeholder until a set clears that I have an edited recording from. I needed a quizbowl game to show to a couple of people I’m forwarding the website to, so. . . free advertising!
Unless you asked NAQT about that first and they gave it the OK, using their content like that for your own commercial venture is a really, really bad look. You might want to reconsider that, no matter how temporary you intended that to be.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by jonpin »

oriley wrote: Tue Jun 07, 2022 11:34 amI was informed after the fact by an acquaintance that there is an “Ultimate Quizzing Championships” event in Europe—I apologize for any confusion this may cause. My company is legally registered in the state of Minnesota, and I am assured there is no issue with the name. As I’m mostly operating in the United States, this should not cause any problems.

If you think you see the obvious influence on the name, you are probably correct, and the origin of one of the things I’m building to is the same. Please be civil; folks from other academic competitions will find this thread next year. Feel free to DM or email me if you don’t know what I mean.
I'm confused. Was the European "Ultimate Quizzing Championships" an obvious influence on the name of your organization, or was it something you learned about after-the-fact? Or is the obvious influence something else?
Further, allow me to put on my mod hat to remind you (and the rest of the thread) that "Please be civil" is walking a fine line towards trying to control the thread. If there is inappropriate behavior or discussion, the mod team is fully capable of telling people to knock it off.
The website is here. The HSNCT video at the top is a placeholder until a set clears that I have an edited recording from. I needed a quizbowl game to show to a couple of people I’m forwarding the website to, so. . . free advertising!
I'm gonna agree with Patrick here that this is extremely dubious. The questions are not your property, the event in the video is not operated by your organization, the video was not produced by you. What you are presenting with that video is either completely immaterial to your own enterprise, or blatantly piggybacking on the expertise and credibility of NAQT.
I studied neither business nor law, but a defense of ". . . free advertising!" is not a panacea, especially when your website doesn't remark upon the fact that this is someone else's production, nor link to NAQT, and they are a much more established presence. If I start a soft-drink company, and film a commercial where people drink Coca-Cola and say "Wow, that soda sure is refreshing. Try JP Cola." I will rightfully be sued, and saying "Oh, but you can see the can he's drinking from is a Coke can, so really I'm doing their advertising for them!" is not going to save me.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by oriley »

I’m happy to remove the video. Apologies, and thank you for raising your concern.

I was made aware of the existence of a European “Ultimate Quizzing Championship” AFTER I had already chosen my name, officially registered with the state of Minnesota, and paid the state of Minnesota the required fee to register the name as mine.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by High Dependency Unit »

Owen, it's exciting that you're trying to do outreach, but it's unclear whether there's any planning behind this or if you have any help at all. Is anyone else working on this? What question sets do you plan on licensing (especially for a national!) or would you produce your own? How is UQC planning on running tournaments in several different regions, especially if you are the only organizer and they are in-person?

It's also not like Ohio, New York, North Carolina, and the Northwest are complete dead zones for quiz bowl. Why can't you partner with existing tournaments or organizations to conduct outreach in those states? Unless the end goal isn't purely outreach -- so to echo Em's question, what's the goal here? If you have answers to these questions they should at the very least be available on your website and in your announcement here.

As a final note, generally when you're in potential copyright infringement you want to take down the infringing material as soon as possible, and that video is still up 24 hours after you said you would remove it.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

As with AQBL, I hesitate to see the good in the increasing proliferation of tournaments run by non-teams. There are only so many sets, and so many weekends, and it seems better for a community often starved for money that money recirculate (that is, back to teams who will spend that money on subsequent tournaments) than to end up in private hands. I've been out of the high school circuit for years, so maybe I'm wrong about the state of HS quizbowl. I also don't mean that as a personal attack on Owen. I just don't see how companies like this are healthy for quizbowl long term (especially if, through a combination of less red tape and fewer individual expenses, they can charge less than schools do; whether or not that is the case here, I have no clue).
Owen said wrote:I am not trying to compete with NAQT or PACE, and if I do end up running a nationals, it would likely be in February or March.
I think this misses the point a bit. The far more direct competition seems to be local high schools, including ones that used to host things but have to deal with covid rules, or the easing of said rules. Every set (or, if there are proprietary sets, every weekend) taken up is not available to those schools to run those tournaments. Those schools also can't plan things as far ahead, since the composition of their eboards, teams, teachers, etc. may not be settled. I'm posting this here, though admittedly it also seems as true and more pertinent with AQBL. I don't think a nationals is really the main threat (I can't imagine these upstarts really threatening HSNCT/NSC, but who knows). The decreased funds accessible to local clubs (and to a less extent the sense of community, and opportunity for high schoolers/coaches to run tournaments) seems like the biggest threat posed by independent tournament organizations.

If any of this is wrong--it's been a minute since I staffed/directed a HS tournament, and longer since I was a high schooler myself--I apologize.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by oriley »

EDIT: I am removing the website link until I can resolve some technical difficulties. I apologize for causing NAQT offense by linking to their video, and I will make the link public again after I get that off the site.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by meebles127 »

oriley wrote: Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:19 pm EDIT: I am removing the website link until I can resolve some technical difficulties. I apologize for causing NAQT offense by linking to their video, and I will make the link public again after I get that off the site.
Do you plan on addressing the questions Emmett and I raise?
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"That's got to be one of the most useful skills anyone has ever gotten from quizbowl." -John Lawrence
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by oriley »

Let me respond to some of the questions here. If I continue to miss yours, please feel free to bother me. Thank you to Mr. Matthews and Mr. Pinyan for raising your concerns re: linking to the HSNCT video—please feel free to raise any other concerns you might have.

What is your goal with this?
My main goal with this is to be able to (partially) help financially support myself by running quizbowl tournaments.

Is there any planning behind this?
There is a year’s worth of planning behind this. I’ve been figuring out what I’m good at and what I need to improve on by running tournaments throughout the year.

How is UQC planning on running tournaments in several different regions, especially if you are the only organizer and they are in-person?
Think ACF’s naming conventions, if that makes sense. In-person in those regions, other tournament directors will be running those. More details to be finalized over the summer.

“It's also not like Ohio, New York, North Carolina, and the Northwest are complete dead zones for quiz bowl.”
The Northwest has no consistent circuit of any kind. North Carolina has problems. We’re focusing outreach in New York on upstate. Ohio I announced because I know that’s happening. Regions with a less established quizbowl presence need more dominoes to fall in place before I can officially announce things, thus why what I’m comfortable announcing isn’t exactly revolutionary.

Is anyone else working on this?
Yes.


EDIT: responding to the rest of Emmett’s concerns.

There are only so many sets, and so many weekends, and it seems better for a community often starved for money that money recirculate (that is, back to teams who will spend that money on subsequent tournaments) than to end up in private hands.

I financially support two quizbowl teams, I play for a community college, and I like open tournaments. Then there’s the obvious parts of my tournament revenue that go to staff, writers of the set, and so forth.

On interfering with schools’ ability to run tournaments: First, if this does happen, I would be happy to work with any school whose interfered with by the tournaments I run. I’ve also been thinking of ways to prioritize these hosts if I want a given mirror for a set. Second, this year we saw a noticeable decrease in a couple of regions of schools who wanted to host tournaments at all. That can’t continue, and one of the things I’ll be doing this summer is finding schools to host a set I’m helping to produce for the fall. That process will inform me where the community needs to try to develop more hosts in the future. If, for a random example, nobody wants to host in Oklahoma anymore, maybe I can get in contact with a graduating senior who has some ideas.

And I generally don’t charge less than schools do, since I like to pay staff more than the average.

Thanks for the feedback!
Last edited by oriley on Thu Jun 09, 2022 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by cchiego »

After seeing similar enterprises like NHBB and AQBL come and (mostly) go, I'm very skeptical of these kinds of ambitious plans for newfound national-level multi-state tournament schemes. The posts here so far do not allay those concerns.

I'm especially disappointed by the labeling of this as "outreach." Successful, lasting outreach in quizbowl is very difficult to accomplish and the details released thus far do not bode well on that front. "Outreach" is not simply getting new teams to one event and taking their money after spamming them with incessant emails; it's creating sustainable circuits and expanding the reach of quizbowl within those circuits. It's very hard to do this in one place even with multiple dedicated community members over several years, much less in multiple places all over the country at once.

It's also very difficult to combine "making money" with "doing outreach" well in quizbowl. Newer schools tend to have less $$ available to spend on quizbowl activities and require a large amount of coaching and support to prepare for and get to events. They also generally benefit from smaller, specialized fields with other novice teams, wherein "novice" =/= 9th graders who were top scorers at MSNCT moving up to HSNCT contenders. This thus requires a lot of unprofitable one-on-one attention and specialized, smaller events that seem at odds with what is planned here.

Furthermore, it's quite hard to scale up to multiple sites across a wide geographic range and still ensure quality experiences. It would help to first show that an organization can do extremely well-run, well-written, well-received events in a small number of sites before scaling up to a national level. If the organization is based in Minnesota for instance, running several well-run events involving teams there first would be ideal as a first step (though of course keeping in mind and respecting existing events and competitions, which has been an issue in the past with similar enterprises). It would help to have respected members of the community to vouch for the successful running of said events and positive experiences with the tournament direction and staff before rapidly expanding.

Others in this thread have brought up very valid concerns as well, including about the impact of this on local tournament schedules, staffing, and the perception of quizbowl in various areas. These would be very good to keep in mind.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by meebles127 »

cchiego wrote: Wed Jun 08, 2022 11:12 pm After seeing similar enterprises like NHBB and AQBL come and (mostly) go, I'm very skeptical of these kinds of ambitious plans for newfound national-level multi-state tournament schemes. The posts here so far do not allay those concerns.

I'm especially disappointed by the labeling of this as "outreach." Successful, lasting outreach in quizbowl is very difficult to accomplish and the details released thus far do not bode well on that front. "Outreach" is not simply getting new teams to one event and taking their money after spamming them with incessant emails; it's creating sustainable circuits and expanding the reach of quizbowl within those circuits. It's very hard to do this in one place even with multiple dedicated community members over several years, much less in multiple places all over the country at once.

It's also very difficult to combine "making money" with "doing outreach" well in quizbowl. Newer schools tend to have less $$ available to spend on quizbowl activities and require a large amount of coaching and support to prepare for and get to events. They also generally benefit from smaller, specialized fields with other novice teams, wherein "novice" =/= 9th graders who were top scorers at MSNCT moving up to HSNCT contenders. This thus requires a lot of unprofitable one-on-one attention and specialized, smaller events that seem at odds with what is planned here.

Furthermore, it's quite hard to scale up to multiple sites across a wide geographic range and still ensure quality experiences. It would help to first show that an organization can do extremely well-run, well-written, well-received events in a small number of sites before scaling up to a national level. If the organization is based in Minnesota for instance, running several well-run events involving teams there first would be ideal as a first step (though of course keeping in mind and respecting existing events and competitions, which has been an issue in the past with similar enterprises). It would help to have respected members of the community to vouch for the successful running of said events and positive experiences with the tournament direction and staff before rapidly expanding.

Others in this thread have brought up very valid concerns as well, including about the impact of this on local tournament schedules, staffing, and the perception of quizbowl in various areas. These would be very good to keep in mind.
As usual, Chris Chiego is correct.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by Cheynem »

From what I can tell, Owen is a very good tournament director who has run good, strong events.

In an ideal world, I would advise Owen to work within existing organizations and circuits to promote good quizbowl and run events. Perhaps that could include continuing to run online tournaments in the same vein he's doing now. Perhaps he could work more on the untapped, Knowledge Bowl-dominated portions of Minnesota.

Unfortunately, as Chris alludes to, this work doesn't always produce the goal of profit, which Owen suggests is a primary motivation. I don't think trying to make money off quizbowl is bad--it's quite understandable, and I write for a living. However, it's very challenging to make money off quizbowl AND do outreach, as Chris explained. I like that Owen hasn't immediately made any far-reaching promises and is still working on determining what he and his organization can do best (avoiding the Dave Madden Dilemma here), but I'd urge him to read through these posts and questions and think very carefully before making any future decisions.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by Ndg »

I agree that there's nothing wrong with trying to make one's efforts in quiz bowl financially sustainable. Unfortunately, I don't see any evidence of something financially sustainable here. There's very little on the website that will foster trust from your prospective customers. Here are some questions that "laypeople" are going to have trouble finding answers to:

Who is running this organization, and what is their background in academic competitions?
Why should they do business with you?
What are the gameplay format and rules at your events?
What are the questions like at your events? Who is writing them? Is there a sample available?
In what way is this a "championship"?
In what way is the championship "ultimate"?
Why are you bragging about having cheating allegations?
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by matthewspatrick »

oriley wrote: Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:33 pm Let me respond to some of the questions here. If I continue to miss yours, please feel free to bother me. Thank you to Mr. Matthews and Mr. Pinyan for raising your concerns re: linking to the HSNCT video—please feel free to raise any other concerns you might have.
I'm pretty concerned that you think editing out the link to your org's homepage from the head post of this thread is sufficient to address that matter of passing off someone else's work as an example of what your org will provide.

It should not take more than a few minutes of HTML editing to remove that link to the 2018 HSNCT final video from your site, and yet two days after you said you'd take it down, it's still there.

Is this indicative of the level of professionalism your prospective customers can expect?
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by oriley »

I ran into some technical difficulties, and I’m not sending the link to anyone anywhere until I can resolve those technical difficulties. I expect to have it figured out after I get back from work today.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by meebles127 »

Do you planning on addressing your general tardiness with paying your staff on time?
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by oriley »

Yes.


I think I figured out those technical difficulties, actually. I’ll replace that video with a blank one until I have an edited recording to put there.
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by Votre Kickstarter Est Nul »

Owen wrote:There are only so many sets, and so many weekends, and it seems better for a community often starved for money that money recirculate (that is, back to teams who will spend that money on subsequent tournaments) than to end up in private hands.

I financially support two quizbowl teams, I play for a community college, and I like open tournaments. Then there’s the obvious parts of my tournament revenue that go to staff, writers of the set, and so forth.

On interfering with schools’ ability to run tournaments: First, if this does happen, I would be happy to work with any school whose interfered with by the tournaments I run. I’ve also been thinking of ways to prioritize these hosts if I want a given mirror for a set. Second, this year we saw a noticeable decrease in a couple of regions of schools who wanted to host tournaments at all. That can’t continue, and one of the things I’ll be doing this summer is finding schools to host a set I’m helping to produce for the fall. That process will inform me where the community needs to try to develop more hosts in the future. If, for a random example, nobody wants to host in Oklahoma anymore, maybe I can get in contact with a graduating senior who has some ideas.

And I generally don’t charge less than schools do, since I like to pay staff more than the average.

Thanks for the feedback!
I'm quite sure I understand the first part: do you financially support teams you don't play for? or do you mean teams, (like Inver Hills) which are (at least for now) you? I suppose it doesn't much matter; you make clear the motive is to make some money. That's fine, as a general idea for why to do something, it just doesn't allay my fears that money leaves the broke qb circuit. I'm glad you pay well for staff, but that too falls in the same realm. When teams run tournaments they volunteer for the team, and the team spends money going to future tournaments. If a tournament is run by this company, and all the staffers are hired by it, the same "money leaves the community" thing is happening. I'm not defining money in the qb community as "any money made by anyone in the qb world." Otherwise I could run a tournament at Rutgers, pocket all the money, and say the money is circulating in the community because I play quizbowl. I'm not trying to impugn the idea that you want some money, simply that it seems to me by definition a for-profit external organization takes money out of the community so long as it uses dates/sets that schools/clubs could hypothetically use. This ain't a personal attack, it's just a concern about all organizations like this, and I don't mean it dismissively when I say I'm not sure I see a great answer which assumes the existence of external tournament-running companies.

I can't speculate too much as to why there are fewer hosts (my knowledge is entirely east brunswick/rutgers), but I have to imagine in at least some places schools have been slow to restart running tournaments for covid reasons (exec boards composed of kids who entered HS during covid, teachers who haven't run anything in years, restrictive policies by schools). Having those formerly school/club run tournaments be replaced by these seems bad in the long term.

But I am confused by what you mean by work with schools that you replace. If the last weekend in October was gonna be an IS set tournament at a local North Carolina HS, and is now a UQC tournament (I assume that means run by a UQC person, with profits going back to UQC), how would you work with that school in a way that substitutes for a fact that now some amount of money they would have raised and spent on future tournaments now doesn't exist? I think part of my confusion comes from the fact that there are hints here of an NAQT/ACF style organization that produces sets, and hints of an AQBL style organization that runs tournaments (I think AQBL does both sometimes?). If it's the latter model, I'm unsure how it bolsters, rather than replaces, elements of the existing quizbowl calendar.

I apologize if my inherent skepticism that organizations like this are good for quizbowl makes any of this come off unfairly. None of it meant personally (which is partly why there are mentions of AQBL, since I have these concerns there too, except now AQBL has existed for two years, and if anything my concerns have grown).
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by Zealots of Stockholm »

oriley wrote: Wed Jun 08, 2022 10:33 pm How is UQC planning on running tournaments in several different regions, especially if you are the only organizer and they are in-person?
Think ACF’s naming conventions, if that makes sense. In-person in those regions, other tournament directors will be running those. More details to be finalized over the summer.
ACF produces 4 sets of its own throughout the year and doesn't attach its name to others (though I think most would agree ACF/its members support the general health of the college qb circuit). Does UQC plan to produce its own sets? Get exclusive licensing rights to certain hs sets?
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

Yeah Owen I don't really want to pile on further but that 1 cheating allegation line really comes off like this Image
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by CPiGuy »

Good Goblin Housekeeping wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 6:26 pm Yeah Owen I don't really want to pile on further but that 1 cheating allegation line really comes off like this Image
in the interest of constructive feedback (because i think if you actually can accomplish the things you want to do it would be very cool), i will add on to this extremely funny post:

if you are interested in marketing to people who are not firmly entrenched in the quizbowl community (which is a good goal) then you should test your marketing on such people

obviously people who have been deeply involved in online QB for multiple years know that only having one cheating allegation at eight tournaments is pretty good, actually, but for people without that context it looks incredibly bad ("why is this guy bragging about having cheating"). even just adding the word "only" to this graphic would make it infinitely less bad. but more generally just consider that most people know far less about quizbowl than you do and act accordingly
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by Bosa of York »

CPiGuy wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 10:29 pm obviously people who have been deeply involved in online QB for multiple years know that only having one cheating allegation at eight tournaments is pretty good, actually
not sure this is true
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Re: Introducing the UQC

Post by StevenIQA »

Hi Owen,

I can assure you that the real UQC (the non-Minnesota one) is not limiting itself to organizing quiz competitions in Europe. True, the first one will be in Berlin in november but in the next years we may venture to the United States.
( for reference see ultimatequizzing.com ). These events are under the supervision of the IQA, the International Quizzing Association, that has organised the World Quizzing Championships, the Quizzing Olympiads and European Quizzing Championships for 20 years now.

I understand that could be confusing for your organization so I would suggest you reconsider your name.


Kind regards,

Steven
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