Live WC 2018 Organisational preparations
Tournaments without proper preparations from an organisational side are doomed to fail. Small, local tournaments, may seem as only renting a venue to play at, but a lot of other things must be taken into account as well. Boards, clocks (logistics) must be taken care of. An invitation has to be made. A referee/computer operator is required. In The Netherlands we use a 'tournament owner' system. A player, often a local, will take care of many of the organisational things (venue, invitation, referee/computer operator) while the National Stratego Organisation (NSO), in this case Stratego Bond Nederland (SBN) takes care of the finance, logistics, prizes and sending out the invitation. A specific player (or group of players), with support from SBN, organise local tournaments.
While all of this are a lot of background tasks, it can be time consuming and if the turnout of players isn't high, it can be slightly demotivating even for a tournament owner. Onhe year a local tournament may have a good turnout, the year after the amount of participants may suddenly be halved. The opposite of course is possible also, doubling the amount of participants.
When I look at online tournaments, those are rather difficult to organise. Sure, it all plays in a virtual world, but this virtual world comes with many challenges. Technical issues, timezones, people tend to act differently online (usually not for the better) opposed to a real life tournament. A bigger challenge, if not the biggest challenge, is to keep people motivated throughout the tournament. Especially those that take a long period of time (Pyramid league, WCO come to mind).
This year, 2018, the live World Championships will be held in The Netherlands from 23 through 26 of august. With only a few days to go, I'd like to shed some light on some background things that may have gone unnoticed, but are worth pointing out. Those things are not even close to what a local, smaller, tournament require.
One of the very first steps goes back to somewhere in april 2017, which is a talk about the possibilities for a live WC in the Netherlands with the producer of the game, Jumbo. The live WC will be held in august, 2018. 16 months later. After some consideration, Jumbo was quite enthusiastic about the live WC being in the Netherlands and decided to support the event. Without them this live WC would not be possible. A challenge was added for the live WC team, in that Jumbo wanted the location to be something strategic, limiting our options. The easiest is a hall in a hotel in a major city, but since this did not fulfill said criteria, a search for a proper location was started.
I don't recall the exact amount of locations we have looked up online, but I think it is safe to say atleast 50 were looked at. A difficult triangle was soon identified, most locations would either not really fulfill the strategic setting requirement, or be too expensive or have really poor logistic options. Most locations were ok for 2 out of 3, still renendering them unfit for a live WC location. One of the locations that was considered and visited was "het scheepvaartmuseum" in Amsterdam. The available halls were just a little too small, a bit expensive but had good logistics.
The media partner from Jumbo suggested we could look at forts, but again, the same issues occured, poor logistics, too expensive, playing halls not suited. When we (WC team) visited the "Naarden-Vesting" everyone was quite enthusiastic about it, it's a good looking place, it has a strategic and historic atmosphere, now we had to hope that the actual playing location we were visiting would fulfill the other requirements and it definitely did. Making this the first location that fulfills all requirements. Afterwards, we also visitted the "Vestingsmuseum", which also was a considerable option for the WC 2018, but would require a tent to be set up and all other sorts of tricky things. However, we did decide to hold the barrage tournament in the vestingsmuseum as the location was too nice to let go of that easily. The people in the vestingsmuseum were very friendly and enthusiastic too.
After some back and forth communication, the location was agreed upon. The second step was made, but still, much to do.
One of the more tricky but also easily overlooked things, is making a time schedule for the four days. Finding a good balance between not starting too early and not finishing extremely late and also fitting in sufficient time for breaks and the games is quite a challenge. In the end, I think we have managed to come up with quite a good and fair schedule, but there will always be people that would have preferred to be done 30 minutes earlier, while someone else may have preferred to start an hour later. Can't have it all, unfortunately. The most difficult schedule to make was the barrage one. During the opening of the barrage tournament, a cannonshot will be held as an opening for the tournament. Obviously, this is not done by the WC team, but by other people, soldiers in costume. Their schedule / availability also affected the barrage schedule. It turned out more than fine in the end, but those kind of things do delay rhe finalizing of the schedules as you're dependant on other parties who may or may not communicate swiftly (no issues here in this case).
This WC also is a moment to put the new Stratego game into the spotlight for the press again. Last year, a new edition was given out. This edition will also be used during the live WC. Special WC boards were made too, slightly bigger than the ones coming in the standard boxes.
Now most of the above has been settled, next would be the invitation documents. Many different versions of those have come out, some being minor changes, layout related, some being mistakes in spelling, while some other changes were major ones, including a new schedule, travel descriptions etc. For a standard tournament, the invitation document typically is copy/paste from a previous tournament while adjusting the date, location etc. For a WC, this woul not suffice. The document is much different opposed to the standard one-pagers. It has to sell the location, the venue, yet be informative enough. Schedules, costs, prizes, contact details all have to be in it, while still making it an attractive document.
Also important, finding organisers for the days themselves. Preparations are extremely important, but maybe even more important, people who are willing to lead the WC days. All members of the WC 2018 team that were very involved with the preparations wanted to play the live WC as well. Luckily we did not have much struggles to form a team that would lead the WC days. One less thing to worry about. In the past this used to give some issues.
One of the things that has consumed a lot of time, is trying to contact potential players and figuring out which events they'll be playing. This WC consists of:
1. Barrage
2. Main event seniors / Main event juniors
3. Open tournament / country teams
Many players would often give incomplete or vague information. " I will be present in Naarden " doesn't specify which events those players will be playing, which is important for us to know so we can make a better estimate of how many players will be present which is necessary for logistics, materials but also for the amount of keepsakes required. A tremendous amount of time has gone into this. Making a list of all potential players, dividing them between the WC team members, updating the overview etc.
Especially for the newer players, we wanted to make referees / organizers a bit more easy to recognize, thus badges were created. Initially the idea was to make simple name tags, but they don't really stand out. Coloured ones (see image) will draw attention much more easily.
Other sorts of things that add up slowly are things like: Flyers, score papers, making an introduction video for the WC, ensuring the ranking files are up to date, computer will be operated properly and having the proper files on a USB-stick to do so, ordering flags to use as decoration for the countries that will be represented during the WC, looking for national anthems and last but not least, managing media requests, interviews and people who need last minute information.
And during all of this, the 4th WCO will be announced soon too😊.
We owe a big thanks to Jumbo, they've really gone out of their way to make this event possible.
While all of this are a lot of background tasks, it can be time consuming and if the turnout of players isn't high, it can be slightly demotivating even for a tournament owner. Onhe year a local tournament may have a good turnout, the year after the amount of participants may suddenly be halved. The opposite of course is possible also, doubling the amount of participants.
When I look at online tournaments, those are rather difficult to organise. Sure, it all plays in a virtual world, but this virtual world comes with many challenges. Technical issues, timezones, people tend to act differently online (usually not for the better) opposed to a real life tournament. A bigger challenge, if not the biggest challenge, is to keep people motivated throughout the tournament. Especially those that take a long period of time (Pyramid league, WCO come to mind).
This year, 2018, the live World Championships will be held in The Netherlands from 23 through 26 of august. With only a few days to go, I'd like to shed some light on some background things that may have gone unnoticed, but are worth pointing out. Those things are not even close to what a local, smaller, tournament require.
One of the very first steps goes back to somewhere in april 2017, which is a talk about the possibilities for a live WC in the Netherlands with the producer of the game, Jumbo. The live WC will be held in august, 2018. 16 months later. After some consideration, Jumbo was quite enthusiastic about the live WC being in the Netherlands and decided to support the event. Without them this live WC would not be possible. A challenge was added for the live WC team, in that Jumbo wanted the location to be something strategic, limiting our options. The easiest is a hall in a hotel in a major city, but since this did not fulfill said criteria, a search for a proper location was started.
I don't recall the exact amount of locations we have looked up online, but I think it is safe to say atleast 50 were looked at. A difficult triangle was soon identified, most locations would either not really fulfill the strategic setting requirement, or be too expensive or have really poor logistic options. Most locations were ok for 2 out of 3, still renendering them unfit for a live WC location. One of the locations that was considered and visited was "het scheepvaartmuseum" in Amsterdam. The available halls were just a little too small, a bit expensive but had good logistics.
The media partner from Jumbo suggested we could look at forts, but again, the same issues occured, poor logistics, too expensive, playing halls not suited. When we (WC team) visited the "Naarden-Vesting" everyone was quite enthusiastic about it, it's a good looking place, it has a strategic and historic atmosphere, now we had to hope that the actual playing location we were visiting would fulfill the other requirements and it definitely did. Making this the first location that fulfills all requirements. Afterwards, we also visitted the "Vestingsmuseum", which also was a considerable option for the WC 2018, but would require a tent to be set up and all other sorts of tricky things. However, we did decide to hold the barrage tournament in the vestingsmuseum as the location was too nice to let go of that easily. The people in the vestingsmuseum were very friendly and enthusiastic too.
After some back and forth communication, the location was agreed upon. The second step was made, but still, much to do.
One of the more tricky but also easily overlooked things, is making a time schedule for the four days. Finding a good balance between not starting too early and not finishing extremely late and also fitting in sufficient time for breaks and the games is quite a challenge. In the end, I think we have managed to come up with quite a good and fair schedule, but there will always be people that would have preferred to be done 30 minutes earlier, while someone else may have preferred to start an hour later. Can't have it all, unfortunately. The most difficult schedule to make was the barrage one. During the opening of the barrage tournament, a cannonshot will be held as an opening for the tournament. Obviously, this is not done by the WC team, but by other people, soldiers in costume. Their schedule / availability also affected the barrage schedule. It turned out more than fine in the end, but those kind of things do delay rhe finalizing of the schedules as you're dependant on other parties who may or may not communicate swiftly (no issues here in this case).
This WC also is a moment to put the new Stratego game into the spotlight for the press again. Last year, a new edition was given out. This edition will also be used during the live WC. Special WC boards were made too, slightly bigger than the ones coming in the standard boxes.
Now most of the above has been settled, next would be the invitation documents. Many different versions of those have come out, some being minor changes, layout related, some being mistakes in spelling, while some other changes were major ones, including a new schedule, travel descriptions etc. For a standard tournament, the invitation document typically is copy/paste from a previous tournament while adjusting the date, location etc. For a WC, this woul not suffice. The document is much different opposed to the standard one-pagers. It has to sell the location, the venue, yet be informative enough. Schedules, costs, prizes, contact details all have to be in it, while still making it an attractive document.
Also important, finding organisers for the days themselves. Preparations are extremely important, but maybe even more important, people who are willing to lead the WC days. All members of the WC 2018 team that were very involved with the preparations wanted to play the live WC as well. Luckily we did not have much struggles to form a team that would lead the WC days. One less thing to worry about. In the past this used to give some issues.
One of the things that has consumed a lot of time, is trying to contact potential players and figuring out which events they'll be playing. This WC consists of:
1. Barrage
2. Main event seniors / Main event juniors
3. Open tournament / country teams
Many players would often give incomplete or vague information. " I will be present in Naarden " doesn't specify which events those players will be playing, which is important for us to know so we can make a better estimate of how many players will be present which is necessary for logistics, materials but also for the amount of keepsakes required. A tremendous amount of time has gone into this. Making a list of all potential players, dividing them between the WC team members, updating the overview etc.
Especially for the newer players, we wanted to make referees / organizers a bit more easy to recognize, thus badges were created. Initially the idea was to make simple name tags, but they don't really stand out. Coloured ones (see image) will draw attention much more easily.
Other sorts of things that add up slowly are things like: Flyers, score papers, making an introduction video for the WC, ensuring the ranking files are up to date, computer will be operated properly and having the proper files on a USB-stick to do so, ordering flags to use as decoration for the countries that will be represented during the WC, looking for national anthems and last but not least, managing media requests, interviews and people who need last minute information.
And during all of this, the 4th WCO will be announced soon too😊.
We owe a big thanks to Jumbo, they've really gone out of their way to make this event possible.
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ReplyDeleteFascinating and interesting; DID read. :)
It sounds like everything was considered and if the event didn't work out perfectly, it wasn't for lack of planning.