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. 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.
Regards,
Tarique Shakil
WUDC 2008
Tournament Director
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