Event Supervising

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Re: Event Supervising

Post by nicholasmaurer »

Unome wrote:
Flavorflav wrote:
nicholasmaurer wrote:
No, we run 15 minutes blocks with 3 teams/block. The whole operation will require 15-20 volunteers if you include judges, timers, and score entry.
15-20? Lol. You live in a different world, my friend.
That was my thought... I last ran Mission with 2 people to help.
Well, it's a world designed to accommodate 72 teams efficiently (which realistically means ~60 devices and ~12 no shows) with nationals-quality scoring. If you're running a smaller tournament, or are willing to tolerate fewer timers etc., far fewer volunteers would be needed.

Regardless, staggering the teams into 15 or 20 minute blocks helps prevent them all using the first 30 minutes of each hour to set up, leaving you with a rush at the end. The number of simultaneous teams and therefore the necessary volunteers will scale with the tournament size.
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Re: Event Supervising

Post by Unome »

nicholasmaurer wrote:
Unome wrote:
Flavorflav wrote: 15-20? Lol. You live in a different world, my friend.
That was my thought... I last ran Mission with 2 people to help.
Well, it's a world designed to accommodate 72 teams efficiently (which realistically means ~60 devices and ~12 no shows) with nationals-quality scoring. If you're running a smaller tournament, or are willing to tolerate fewer timers etc., far fewer volunteers would be needed.

Regardless, staggering the teams into 15 or 20 minute blocks helps prevent them all using the first 30 minutes of each hour to set up, leaving you with a rush at the end. The number of simultaneous teams and therefore the necessary volunteers will scale with the tournament size.
True, but even then that's about double the number of people I would have expected. Where do you get so many people?
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Re: Event Supervising

Post by marty3 »

Unome wrote:
nicholasmaurer wrote:
Unome wrote: That was my thought... I last ran Mission with 2 people to help.
Well, it's a world designed to accommodate 72 teams efficiently (which realistically means ~60 devices and ~12 no shows) with nationals-quality scoring. If you're running a smaller tournament, or are willing to tolerate fewer timers etc., far fewer volunteers would be needed.

Regardless, staggering the teams into 15 or 20 minute blocks helps prevent them all using the first 30 minutes of each hour to set up, leaving you with a rush at the end. The number of simultaneous teams and therefore the necessary volunteers will scale with the tournament size.
True, but even then that's about double the number of people I would have expected. Where do you get so many people?
No clue how Nick does it, but my local tournaments require schools provide some number of volunteers (2/school?). It works at tournaments where events are run by alumni, etc. and they don't need coaches to run events themselves. Coaches often can find parents or teachers from their school to help. The host site is another possible source of volunteers, but I've seen that less often. It totals 2-5 volunteers at a time, which is reasonable for our tournament size. I'd recommend bringing this up with your tournament directors. Perhaps they can contact coaches and ask for a few additional parent volunteers for certain events.

One thing to keep in mind though is that you often can't trust these volunteers for riskier things like timing runs (I'm still quite bitter about my Scrambler score, and that was long ago), especially for mission possible. They tend to be very unfamiliar with the events. And parent volunteers are often, understandably, thinking more about how their kid's events are going. In my experience, they have been very helpful checking in teams, overseeing 30-minute setup times, and keeping coaches and parents out of bounds. I'm sure there are other great ways they could help too.

I'm definitely an avid fan of staggering teams with blocks, but my tournament directors don't do that any more. :cry:
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Re: Event Supervising

Post by nicholasmaurer »

marty3 wrote:
Unome wrote:
nicholasmaurer wrote:
Well, it's a world designed to accommodate 72 teams efficiently (which realistically means ~60 devices and ~12 no shows) with nationals-quality scoring. If you're running a smaller tournament, or are willing to tolerate fewer timers etc., far fewer volunteers would be needed.

Regardless, staggering the teams into 15 or 20 minute blocks helps prevent them all using the first 30 minutes of each hour to set up, leaving you with a rush at the end. The number of simultaneous teams and therefore the necessary volunteers will scale with the tournament size.
True, but even then that's about double the number of people I would have expected. Where do you get so many people?
No clue how Nick does it, but my local tournaments require schools provide some number of volunteers (2/school?). It works at tournaments where events are run by alumni, etc. and they don't need coaches to run events themselves. Coaches often can find parents or teachers from their school to help. The host site is another possible source of volunteers, but I've seen that less often. It totals 2-5 volunteers at a time, which is reasonable for our tournament size. I'd recommend bringing this up with your tournament directors. Perhaps they can contact coaches and ask for a few additional parent volunteers for certain events.

One thing to keep in mind though is that you often can't trust these volunteers for riskier things like timing runs (I'm still quite bitter about my Scrambler score, and that was long ago), especially for mission possible. They tend to be very unfamiliar with the events. And parent volunteers are often, understandably, thinking more about how their kid's events are going. In my experience, they have been very helpful checking in teams, overseeing 30-minute setup times, and keeping coaches and parents out of bounds. I'm sure there are other great ways they could help too.

I'm definitely an avid fan of staggering teams with blocks, but my tournament directors don't do that any more. :cry:
This is accurate. We assign schools to staff events, and with 72 teams that often means several schools working together on a single event. In the case of Mission Possible, we have two schools (four teams) providing volunteers, plus one of the National Event Supervisors, and a couple Solon parents.
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Re: Event Supervising

Post by Flavorflav »

I get four helpers for 52 teams, although I usually have less than 30 devices because so many teams are scared of Mission. I will have to think through the logistics of 15 minute blocks, but one thing that occurs to me right away is that the this schedule will kill two time slots for half of the students, as they wouldn't be able to get to the next event on time. Still, if it improves throughput it could be worth it - to me, at least.
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Re: Event Supervising

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Flavorflav wrote:I get four helpers for 52 teams, although I usually have less than 30 devices because so many teams are scared of Mission. I will have to think through the logistics of 15 minute blocks, but one thing that occurs to me right away is that the this schedule will kill two time slots for half of the students, as they wouldn't be able to get to the next event on time. Still, if it improves throughput it could be worth it - to me, at least.
You're right, that is a con of staggered blocks. That said, teams also really hate waiting 10+ min to run their device. It also really, really hurts when teams set up their device, can't run because ES are behind schedule, have to leave for another event and come back later. I've seen tears over this, and that is largely why I prefer staggered blocks. Even if they are not happy about it, their team will prepare accordingly before the tournament, and fewer things will go wrong the day of.

Some other suggestions are to shorten the blocks. Sounds hard, but blocks of 8-10 min, 1 team/block ran very smoothly for me in the past. An interesting variant of this that I heard last year was that NorCal has 1 ES team judge 2 teams/15 min block. This helps the ES accommodate unexpected things like teams taking more than 30 minutes for setup, or tweaking their device after setup for safety violations (e.g. 12V battery). (And any NorCal readers, please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.)

Something I'm stuck doing is making up my own block schedule during impound. I ask teams if they have events right after their block, and if both team members don't, I FORCE them to start setup 30+ min later in their 8-team, 60-minute block. I've even had a couple of teams volunteer to do this when only 1 team member could stay after setup. Even just knowing 1-2 teams are starting later than officially scheduled can be a relief. Some teams will still have to wait 20+ min to run their device (including several medalists last year), but it's the best compromise I've got between staying close to schedule and sticking with 1 ES team to judge all devices (possible at my tournaments).
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Re: Event Supervising

Post by C8H10N4O2! »

Virginia limits each teams setup time to 15 minutes of general set up, then 3 minutes right before the start of your device. You can still use more than 15 minutes, but you just wont get the 50 points bonus. After 30 minutes, you lose 50 points. While this doesnt solve the general problem of how to run mission possible, it does help give more time for running the event during the time block and allowing all teams to test. Another thing they do is have 7 sessions for build events, since builds generally take less time to score than other events, so that there are less teams competing in each session, which also helps with making sure everyone gets done in their time block.
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Re: Event Supervising

Post by Unome »

marty3 wrote:
Flavorflav wrote:I get four helpers for 52 teams, although I usually have less than 30 devices because so many teams are scared of Mission. I will have to think through the logistics of 15 minute blocks, but one thing that occurs to me right away is that the this schedule will kill two time slots for half of the students, as they wouldn't be able to get to the next event on time. Still, if it improves throughput it could be worth it - to me, at least.
You're right, that is a con of staggered blocks. That said, teams also really hate waiting 10+ min to run their device. It also really, really hurts when teams set up their device, can't run because ES are behind schedule, have to leave for another event and come back later. I've seen tears over this, and that is largely why I prefer staggered blocks. Even if they are not happy about it, their team will prepare accordingly before the tournament, and fewer things will go wrong the day of.

Some other suggestions are to shorten the blocks. Sounds hard, but blocks of 8-10 min, 1 team/block ran very smoothly for me in the past. An interesting variant of this that I heard last year was that NorCal has 1 ES team judge 2 teams/15 min block. This helps the ES accommodate unexpected things like teams taking more than 30 minutes for setup, or tweaking their device after setup for safety violations (e.g. 12V battery). (And any NorCal readers, please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.)

Something I'm stuck doing is making up my own block schedule during impound. I ask teams if they have events right after their block, and if both team members don't, I FORCE them to start setup 30+ min later in their 8-team, 60-minute block. I've even had a couple of teams volunteer to do this when only 1 team member could stay after setup. Even just knowing 1-2 teams are starting later than officially scheduled can be a relief. Some teams will still have to wait 20+ min to run their device (including several medalists last year), but it's the best compromise I've got between staying close to schedule and sticking with 1 ES team to judge all devices (possible at my tournaments).
I wonder whether 60 min blocks staggered every 30 min would be helpful (random thought). An extra session at the end also sounds like a good idea.
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