Registration System,Adjudicator and Observer updates WUDC 2008

Dear All,

I would like to request all the institutions to make full use of our online registration system. It is a system which gives the institutions a lot of power and flexibility to register.

Some have complained, there is too much information to fill up. Yes, but it is critical for us for you to fill up all this information for our logistic purposes. The transportation team and food and beverage teams need all the information in advance so we can provide you with the most efficient and professional service as an organizer. It is for your own good ladies and gentleman. We want to make sure we have all your travel details and dietary needs. We must ensure we know exactly how many teams are coming and adjudicators etc. So please do take the registration process seriously. If you have any inquiries please email myself or the communication director Mr. Rish. We really need your kind cooperation.

Our IT team has worked very hard to make an excellent system. Believe me it is a great registration system. I have been in the event management business for 4 years now and worked a lot with IT solutions for conferencing. This system is very user friendly if you just take the time to educate yourself about it for ten minutes. We are putting up a user manual within this week with instructions and pictures. The system is there for your benefit and ours as organizers. In the past some organizers used emails for registration purposes especially with changing details of delegates, a lot of misinformation happened such as misspelling, wrong team name, or incorrect dietary requirements. We are trusting you to input all your own details and we have given you plenty of time to do it also. Of course, your details can even be updated once more for the last time during registration day of the tournament.

Make sure only the team leader has the username and password. Please do not share your username and password with too many people. That would give others the power to enter our system to alter any delegate information. We are trusting you to keep your username and password to yourself safely.

With regard to team cap. Please wait till September 5. We will announce if we will increase the number of teams per institution or not and increases in adjudicators. I encourage all of you to register the slots you can get now then wait till September 5.

Please try to understand we are trying to be as fair as we can to all institutions. We wish to have diverse worlds. Currently, we have almost 150 institutions registered. We have institutions from Estonia, Russia, Romania, Turkey, Israel, China, India, Bostwana and many more! We wish to give a fair chance for all to attend this tournament. We do wish to have a very strong adjudication pool representing the best in all regions of the world both from institutions and independents. I strongly encourage independents to apply, we need the alumnis of excellent debating institutions to come and adjudicate in Bangkok.

If any institutions have any concerns or request regarding registration please do email me directly. If any independents need any help please contact me also. We want to make sure if you are an experienced adjudicator who wants to come to our worlds, that you are here to do world class adjudication for our participants.

I would like to also state that please do not expect the team cap to go above 350 teams for this tournament. The DCAs and CA have decided it is very highly unlikely to go above 350. We believe once we have reached our 350 team cap that is a very good size tournament. Next thing we will focus on is ensuring these 350 teams get the best adjudicators we can find not just based on numbers but also on quality. The team cap per institution will only increase if by August 31st 350 teams have not paid. Please do not take the risk of waiting till then in the hope we will increase the number of teams for the tournament above 350. From the current trend, I feel there is a very high chance that by August 31st, above 300 teams will have their slots reserved. The slots will be full or very few left.

Please register now and transfer your payments to reserve your teams and adjudicators based on the registration policy stated on our website. No institution can send less than N-1 adjudicators. Our policy now is N+2 adjudicators maximum per institution. We will review the list of adjudicators very carefully after August 31st and decide if we will increase the number of adjudicators depending on the pool of independent adjudicators and adjudicators sent by each institution. Our goal is have a large pool of quality adjudicators from as many regions as possible.

Our DCA team will be consulted on all issues relating to adjudication. I can ensure you that we will work very hard to provide you with the best adjudicators. Our DCA and CA pool are all world class adjudicators and debaters and you can trust them to put together a great pool of adjudicators both in quantity,quality and diversity. Your kind patience is highly requested by us.

Last but not least, our policy regarding observers is that unless you are an University Administrator(faculty member, administration representative,liason, chaperon etc), you cannot attend worlds as an observer. If you wish to attend
World's as an observer you must request the organizing committee directly. You
need to explain to us why you are attending worlds as an Observer and why you
cannot adjudicate.

There have been complaints in past worlds that many observers attend and take adjudicator slots from independents and institutions even if the rego fees for observers is doubled as in UBC WORLDS. We wish to avoid this situation because as stated earlier in my email, we are doing everything we can to put together a pool of excellent adjudicators for the tournament. We want to avoid losing a great adjudicator because an observer took their slot. So if you are a group of students from an institution planning to only come watch Assumption Worlds,please note you are not allowed to do so. You must come adjudicate. It will save you cost and you will gain valuable experience which you can take back to your institution and educate others about BP Style of debating. All observers rego fees are higher and they must be approved by the organizing committee to be allowed to attend or not.

University Administrators can attend our tournament as observers . We understand some universities have a policy of sending a faculty or administrator with each team, please let us know about such cases. But again, we even encourage those faculty to come as adjudicators. It will save cost for the institution. Who knows, they could end up being great judges and break.

I will be sending more updates regarding different issues. Please email me at tarique@... for any other concerns or request. I am currently a member of the APDA,CUSID,AUSTRALS, ALLASIANS and EUDC. I also send updates directly to Mr. Flynn's website flynn.debating.net. I feel I am reaching out to a large percentage of the debating community in the world. If I am missing any other large forum, please let me know.

Tarique Shakil
WUDC 2008
Tournament Director