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28 July 2007

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

South Korea is the new World Champion in Karl Popper Debate


The KPDWC is over. The new World Champion in Karl Popper Debate is South Korea! The actual team in question is Korea 1, consisting of Woon Joon Jang, Habin Chung and Yunsieg Paik Kim. The win was a decisive 8 - 1 in favor of Korea 1 over South Africa.

Source: http://idebate.blogspot.com/

27 July 2007

Updates on the Tabbie System

Klaas van Schelven has left a comment on the post "Tabbie system" but I thought it was worth a post by itself.

The newest version (1.1.1) can be found on the project's homepage.

This version supports
* An overview page for peace of mind in stressful tab rooms.
* An integrated one-click backup module
* Adjudicator sheets can now be generated with one click as a PDF (no mail merge required)
* The official WUDC rules to calculate its draw. (as before)

More info: Tabbie British Parliamentary Debating Tab Software

More Updates from NE Asian 2007

Greetings,

It is my great pleasure to announce that North East Asian Open 2007 is now open for your registration. Please visit neao2007.conasian.com and read the further information (the website is still under construction but it will give you basic information). If you have any question please leave your messages on Q&A board, email to ifota9000@yahoo.com, or call 82-10-2070-7879 (Korea)

I am looking forward to seeing you in Incheon!

Regards,
Lee, Jin-gyu
Convener
Please visit our website!!
http://neao2007.conasian.com/

:: Dates
November 9 - 11th

:: Registration dates
July 23, 2007 – Setember 28, 2007

:: Team cap
Total team cap: 50 teams
Institution team cap: 3 teams
N-1 rule applied for Adjudicators (N = number of teams from one institution)

:: Registration fee:
a. on a twin room share basis : \ 120,000 Won per person
b. on a triple room share basis : \ 10,000 Won per person**
c. on a quad room share basis : \ 90,000 Won per person**
d. Registration fee without hotel: \ 30,000 Won per person

As there are limited numbers of available quad/triple rooms, option b. and c will be provided on a first come, first served basis.

Contact InfoMail to ifota9000@gmail.com

Source: Korea Debate List, NE Asian 2007 website at http://neao2007.conasian.com/

North East Asian Debate - Format/Council

NEAO will be held in asian parliamentary debate format. Three debaters constitute one team and each speaker will have 7 minutes perspeech with additional 4 minutes' speech by first or second speakerfrom each team. Motion can be various and will promptly be given foreach round with 30 minutes of preparation time.

Details of asian format is explained on our website. :) http://neao2007.conasian.com2

The NEAO council will take place on the 9th of November, the firstday of NEAO.

This council, though NEAO now became 4 years old, is first timetaking its place.

As NEAO is getting bigger year by year, it is proper to have officialorganization to boost up active communication between the region. Especially the necessity for official bidding on the next NEAO led usto open NEAO council.

Each institution's representative from North East Asian countrieswill have voting right to decide certain matters regarding NEAO andNEAO council.

The related information will be posted on our website soon.

26 July 2007

UCT win SA Nationals

Results of the 2007 South African Nationals

EFL winners - UCT D (Dave Watson & Emma Webber)
EFL best speaker - Rob Garlick

ESL winners - USDV F (Janine de Kock & Peter Koornhof)

ESL best speaker - Songezo Mabece

Public Speaking Winner - Mathew Smorenburg

Best Adjudicator - Andrew McMillan and Nick Schultz

Best New Adjudicator - Alinka Brutsch

Best New Speaker - Matthew Butler-Adams

WUDC 2008 updates

Dear All,
Please check the Assumption Worlds 2008 website at http://www.assumptionworlds.com/ for very important updates regarding registration and team cap increases. Our registration system will lock down on September 1. September 5, we will announce if we will increase the team cap. From September 1st till September 4th, the registration system will lock down so no new teams will be able to register between those dates. So please make sure you register before August 31st and please pay by that date. The teams that have registered before August 31st will be able to edit their information. But they must confirm all payments by August 31st. We must receive all payments by August 31st.

From September 1st till September 4th, we will calculate and confirm how many teams have paid. We will not accept any payments during this period. Based on the number of slots left, we will increase the team cap and open registration again on September 5th. The team cap increase is expected to increase to 5. After September 5, the registration will be first come first serve basis. When we increase the team cap, the registration module will give you the option to add the extra teams and the details.

You can view all your payment information by logging into your account and clicking on the PAYMENT link. Our team here will be updating the payment information regularly. You can even scan your invoices and submit on our website by logging in. Our system will create a folder in our database in your institutions name and store your invoice in it.

As of July 26 we have 317 teams registered from 136 institutions.

We will be updating the website regularly. Please register by your INSTITUTION NAME.

Tarique Shakil
Tournament Director
WUDC 2008

Oxford IV 2007

Hello everyone,

Oxford may be under threat of flood, but fear not, for it gives us great pleasure to announce that we are ready to begin registration for the Oxford IV 2007.

International Package registration will open at 00:01 hrs BST on Wednesday, August 1, 2007. Registration for domestic teams will open at 00:01 hrs BST on Saturday, September 1st.

International teams who wish to attend the Oxford IV can register either with the International Package or with the IONA (domestic) package. However, we do strongly recommend the International Package for international teams. Although it is £30 more, among its benefits are this it does guarantee you, in addition to everything provided by the IONA package:

* Exemption from the n-1 rule.
* A guaranteed extra night of crash on Thursday.
* Free entrance to the historic Oxford Union Thursday night debate, "This house looks forward to seeing a democrat in the White House". This debate will feature Tom DeLay and Al Sharpton, amongst others, and is set to be the Union's most high-profile debate in years.
* A cocktail party on Thursday night with free cocktails.
* A free walking tour of historic Oxford, which is celebrating the 1000th year of its foundation.

The team cap is 3 teams per institution. We would like to draw the attention of all Irish institutions to our website, which explains the position of the Convenors with regard to Irish institutions.

http://www.oxfordiv.org/registration.html

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at convenor@oxfordiv.org or at our personal e-mails krishnaomkar@gmail.com and lewis.turner@new.ox.ac.uk.

We're also in the process of planning some fantastic social events for you, and more information on these will be available soon. Of course, there's always the Championship Dinner to look forward to, which this year will be bigger and better than ever before!

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in November.
Best wishes,
Lewis Turner and Krishna Omkar
Co-Convenors, Oxford IV 2007

24 July 2007

Worlds Update

The Assumption Worlds Organizing Committee has updated the website. We have made some very important announcements regarding transportation, team cap increases and bursaries. Please do visit our website at www.assumptionworlds.com. Please do pay special attention to the updates.

As for our adjudication policy. Each institution must send atleast N-1 adjudicators and maximum of N+2. N representing the number of teams per institutions. Please visit the registration link on the website for more information regarding registration.

Currently, within 3 weeks of registration opening, we have 275 team registered from 119 institutions. We are considering increasing the team cap per institution. We are just right now observing the trend of how many teams register and how many pay. Please visit our website regularly for announcements. We will be announcing to increase team caps some time in August, latest 1st week of September.

Last but not least I would like to warmly welcome all you to WUDC 2008. I promise you it will be worth all your time. We are doing our best to put on a great event! See you at the LAND OF SMILES!

Tarique

Tournament Director

WUDC 2008

tarique@assumptionworlds.com

Cambridge IV 2007

Dear All,
We are pleased to announce the dates and details of the Barclays Wealth Cambridge IV 2007.

The competition will be held on the 16th and 17th of November 2007 and registration will open after Euros finishes in Turkey in mid August. There will be five rounds of open motions, breaking to semi finals, with a top judging pool guaranteed. The team cap will be at least 88 but hopefully more.

Thanks to the generosity of Barclays Wealth Management, plenty of alcohol will be available on the Friday and Saturday nights as well as lots of delicious food prior to the Grand Final. More details will be released when registration opens; in the meantime if anyone has any questions please just email us.

Looking forward to seeing you all there,
Jo Box & Mischa Balen,
Convenors.

22 July 2007

Philippine Inter-Collegiate Debating Championship 2007

The AdMU reaped numerous achievements in the recently concluded Philippine Inter-Collegiate Debating Championship 2007: UPD-A and AdMU made it to the finals round of the Asian Parliamentary format tournament which is regarded as the National Debating Championship in The Philippines.

It was AdMU-A however, composed of Sharmila Parmanand, Leloy Claudio, and Miko Biscocho, who won the championship title by a 5-2 vote from the adjudication panel. Nevertheless UPD won runner-up as the affirmative side debating on the motion

"This house believes that the youth’s political maturity is ill-served by their generation’s representatives in print media."

These achievements came on top of UPDS’s successful organization of the 4-day tournament in which was held in Luisita, Tarlac and co-presented with the Tarlac Conventions and Visitors Bureau, the North Philippines Visitors Bureau, and the Benigno S. Aquino Foundation. With the theme Filipino Minds, Global Perspectives, the tournament was hosted by the UP Debate Society in line with its continuing mission of nurturing debating and critical thinking skills among the youth.


Grand Champion
AdMU A: Sharmila Parmanand, Miko Biscocho and Leloy Claudio by a 5-2 vote from the adjudication panel

Runner-Up
UPD A: Anna Arcellana, Nicolo Cabrera, and Claire Jiao

Best Speaker of the Finals
Miko Biscocho of AdMU A

Top 10 Best Speakers
7th (tied )- Judilyn Sison (UST), Dino de Leon (DLSU), Sabrina Gacad (UPD), Eric Javeloza (UST)
4th (tied)- Miko Biscocho (AdMU), Estelle Osorio (DLSU), Claire Jiao (UPD)
3rd - Sharmila Parmanand (AdMU)
2nd - Nicolo Cabrera (UPD)
1st - Leloy Claudio (AdMU)

Best Rookie Team
UP Baguio A: Abel Quintos, Jahzeel Cruz, and Arlene Bonifacio

Best Adjudicator
Yves Saint-James Aquino (UPM)

Philippine Representative to the ESU-International Public Speaking Competition
Weber Amores (FEU).
Source: www.pidc-online.com and www.updebatesociety.org