Vincents
Member
Some Delegates have asked to talk a little bit about the organizational staff behind Worlds 2013. Here's some notes. (These notes may prove useful to current and future competition organizers as well).
Tyson actually ran through a couple of the main things that make us function so well at the delegates meeting, so some of it might be rehashed for some of the Delegates who attended. There's more little tweaks we've made, but here are some of the biggest things:
Team Structure and Communication
This year's staff can be split into two basic levels: organizers and staff.
Organizers:
Tyson Mao
Tim Reynolds
Jim Mertens
Bob Burton
Kian Barry
Felix Lee
Ilkyoo Choi
Vincent Sheu
Shelley Chang
Staff
Jim's Team
Aaron Abramowitz
Ashley Couch
Chester Lian
Evan Liu
James LaChance
Kit Clement
Natan Riggenbach
Shaden Smith
Sarah Strong
Bob's Team
Anthony Hsu
Chris Hardwick
Daniel Lo
Dene Beardsley
Jennifer Tang
Kevin Zhou
Zheng Li
Kian's Team
Tim Sun
Jasmine Lee
Peter Still
Nathan Kearney
Dave Campbell
Ian Winokur
Felix's Team
Jonathan Cookmeyer
Corey Sakowski
Nick Rech
Arthur Adams
Harris Karsch
Ajay Mysore
Richard Meyer
Ilkyoo's Team
Jeong Jong-Ho
Jun Doo-Young
Kim Jae-Min
Mike Hughey
Marie Hughey
Rebecca Hughey
John Brechon
Sébastien Auroux
Oscar Alberto Ceballos Contreras
Radu Făciu
Jean-Louis Mathieu
Sylviane Mathieu
Vincent's Team
Jeremy Fleischman
Steven Xu
Ryan Lim
Chia-Wei Lu
Nick Young
Patricia Li
Amy Tai
David Gomes
Michael Young
Alex Ho
Everest Shi
James Hamory
Courtney Louie
Richard Jay S. Apagar
Shelley's Team
Ambie Valdés
Casey Pernsteiner
Chris Krueger
Chris Dzoan
Dan Dzoan
John George
Lucas Garron
Patrick Kelly
Shonathon Collins
Shotaro Makisumi
Toby Mao
Fangyuan Chang
- Until 2011, Tyson had pretty much coordinated the entire staff team (then around 30-50 people) on his own. This was less-than-ideal for two reasons:
1. It is very difficult to keep track of the individual project threads of 30 people on your own and keep them on task;
and,
2. If you try, you will end up very, very exhausted.
- In 2011, the Staff Team integrated the roll of Organizer into the staff team. Organizers led Staff teams of 6 (Kian's Team) to 15 (Vincent's Team) people. Instead of the pre-2011 model of delegating tasks (of varying sizes) to regular staff members, tasks were now delegated to Organizers, who had the flexibility and team to get more interesting things done. Staff Teams, today, are arranged roughly by both familiarity and geographic proximity. For example, Jim Mertens's team is composed mostly of KOII people; my team is composed mostly of Berkeley people. Invites were (mostly) at the discretion of each Organizer, who had considerable leeway as to the composition of his/her own team, though we tried to invite trusted speedcubers who had extensive experience judging/organizing at the local level (as opposed to volunteers who had never touched a cube, or members of the audience - it cannot be overstated how much things like being able to quickly determine a misalignment penalty play over the grand scheme). Each team was also mostly autonomous. Tyson and Tim, as de facto Organizers, did not command teams this year (Tim commanded one last year, I believe).
This structure provides several advantages:
- Instead of 1:40, the organizer:staff ratio is now roughly 1:10. This makes it far easier to keep track of tasks and people.
- Organizers can assigned Staff members and mini-groups (within their teams) to work on various tasks. This reduced load at the top by allowing the Head Organizer to check in with a single point of contact with regards to various tasks. For example, on Thursday (Setup), I only needed to assign Kian's Team and Bob's Team (as opposed to naming Kian, Bob, Anthony, Dan Lo, Dene, Jennifer, Kevin, Zheng, etc.) to work with Tim on Shipping and Registration to know that Tim would have all the resources he would need to get everything done. Assigning Ilkyoo's, Shelley's, and my team to work on setting up Staff round meant that the entire room was set up in about 15-30 minutes (mostly painlessly, too!)
- Familiarity between Staff members of a single Team make work more efficient. For example, organizing the Staff rounds on Thursday were much easier this year, as all the Berkeley cubers already had connections and email lists in place suitable for that type of work.
- Issues can be compartmentalized. One concern we had a few years back was the amount of email being pushed into the Staff level, much of which only affected small numbers of staff. The "simple" solution of pushing email out to relevant staff is difficult to achieve because you then have to keep track of every Staff email. Now, Organizers are kept abreast of all issues. Emails can be pushed out to individual team mailing lists, or, if necessary, to all staff.
2. In addition to basic structure, we also incorporated the use of an opt-in staff "chatter" list - not all messaging has to be relevant, but we wanted to avoid spamming people who weren't ready for it. "Chatter" enabled things like planning meals, showcasing interesting videos, or simply getting to know one another.
3. We had as many staff as we could download the "GroupMe" app - this enabled us to send out messages and chats that could quickly reach most of our Staff. Through this, we planned informal get-togethers, called meetings, arranged airport trips, and sent out clarifications about anything and everything.
4. All important projects and communications went through the wc-organizers list - this meant that I usually had about 25-50 Worlds-related threads to keep track of a day, but better the 9 of us than all 76 of us...
Competition structure
I'm going to split this into two parts: staff structure and physical structure.
Staff Structure
1. Roles: Judge, Scrambler, Judge, Caller
- Scrambler: Receives solved cubes and scrambles. Leaves scrambled cubes ready for pickup. Checks integrity of cubes (e.g. for cube illegality)
- Runner: Picks up scrambled cubes from the scrambling table. Calls competitor name. Ascertains the next available timer, calls the competitor's name, brings the cube to said timer, and guides the competitor to the timer. Also, runs solved cubes from timer stations back to the scrambler. May also act as crowd control if necessary.
- Judge: Sits at a single timer and judges.
- Caller: Also known as MC. Calls heats, lays out scoresheets for competitors to drop cubes off onto, and moves cubes from drop-off area to scrambling area. May also act as crowd control if necessary.
- Why do we do it this way? The rate at which a competition can process competitors, assuming unlimited competent competition officials (judges, scramblers, etc.), is the number of timers. Timers are a limited resource. Having a runner move cubes to and from timers (instead of having the judge do it) increases the amount of time a timer is being used - the moment the previous competitor has finished an attempt, there is already another one ready to go.
- The runner role can be exhausting - be sure to switch out your runner often! Also, ideally the runner is one of your most experienced staff members. Keeping timers filled is an art. If you have an incompetent judge, only 1 of your 8 timers may be affected. If you have an incompetent runner, all 8 will be suffering. The ideal runner:timer ratio is about 1:4, but an experienced runner can cover 6 timers (and even 8 runners if absolutely necessary, with some loss of efficiency).
2. Accountability and Staff Role Assignments
- After asking each Staff member for preferences (e.g. Like to scramble 2,3,4,5; hate 6,7; Don't know Clock; minimal running), each Staff member was assigned specific roles, down to the nearest fifteen minutes, during the competition. This included duration, role, and location (down to the Stage color and Timer number!). Tim Reynolds is the brainchild behind this. His structuring, individual schedule print-outs distributed to each staff, and station printouts (e.g. Timer 8 would have a print-out of who was supposed to be at that timer) enabled us to quickly ascertain if there was a Staff member incapacitated. The increase in accountability when each Staff member has a specific role greatly added to the efficiency of our team.
- Sometimes, hiccups can happen - e.g. I was assigned to judge on Timer 5 on the last day, through 2x2x2 Semifinals - a round I ended up qualifying for. The addition of a few "Organizer-on-call" or "Staff-on-call" roles gives you a mini-army to fill in whatever holes pop up.
3. Staff Morale
- Things like hydration and nutrition cannot be overemphasized. As an organizer-on-call, I would bring a pitcher and cups to get 32 cups of water out to each of the timer stations, for example. Staff members were encouraged to ask for caffeine and sustenance through the GroupMe app (or to the organizer-on-call). If they needed it - we tried to bring it to them, even if it meant going shopping in the middle of the day. A happy staff is a productive staff.
Physical structure
1. Compartmentalization of the stage
- The timers this year were split into 3 stages of 8 timers each: Red, Blue, and Green. Each stage functioned somewhat autonomously as a "mini-competition" of it's own, with its own set of scramblers, judges, runners, and timers.. Competitors were called up to a single stage (the color-coding made this easy to see from across a room), and stayed in that stage area until they were finished. This way, they didn't have to run past 23 timers to get to the timer their cube was being brought to. Also, this kept competitors waiting in a small area, so that they could better hear their name being called. This also meant that you could run two events simultaneously in the same room without regard for overlap, judging expertise, or scrambling expertise.
2. Compartmentalization of each round
- We divided competitors into "Heats". Each Heat was assigned a certain time, which we didn't call early. This reduced the amount of confused competitors wondering when they would be called; it also made it easier for them to plan their day. Heats were sized such that they could smoothly be run on one of the colored stages (8 timers).
3. Side Stage
- We had a second stage of 8 timers off to the side of the main competition room, and placed one of our most experienced Organizers/Delegates, Bob Burton, on it. Keeping more unpredictable events like 7x7 off the main stage meant that you didn't have to delay the calling of the next heats/events if one happened to run over. This also enabled us to run an entirely separate 3x3x3 Consolation round just because we had the timers to spare. This was run by two Delegates - Vidar Klungre and Jean-Louis Mathieu, with minimal direction from the Organization Team.
tl;dr: Some themes that ran through: compartmentalization and efficiency. Compartmentalization of the Staff, Setup, and Projects/Tasks. Efficiency of your resources.
Tyson actually ran through a couple of the main things that make us function so well at the delegates meeting, so some of it might be rehashed for some of the Delegates who attended. There's more little tweaks we've made, but here are some of the biggest things:
Team Structure and Communication
This year's staff can be split into two basic levels: organizers and staff.
Organizers:
Tyson Mao
Tim Reynolds
Jim Mertens
Bob Burton
Kian Barry
Felix Lee
Ilkyoo Choi
Vincent Sheu
Shelley Chang
Staff
Jim's Team
Aaron Abramowitz
Ashley Couch
Chester Lian
Evan Liu
James LaChance
Kit Clement
Natan Riggenbach
Shaden Smith
Sarah Strong
Bob's Team
Anthony Hsu
Chris Hardwick
Daniel Lo
Dene Beardsley
Jennifer Tang
Kevin Zhou
Zheng Li
Kian's Team
Tim Sun
Jasmine Lee
Peter Still
Nathan Kearney
Dave Campbell
Ian Winokur
Felix's Team
Jonathan Cookmeyer
Corey Sakowski
Nick Rech
Arthur Adams
Harris Karsch
Ajay Mysore
Richard Meyer
Ilkyoo's Team
Jeong Jong-Ho
Jun Doo-Young
Kim Jae-Min
Mike Hughey
Marie Hughey
Rebecca Hughey
John Brechon
Sébastien Auroux
Oscar Alberto Ceballos Contreras
Radu Făciu
Jean-Louis Mathieu
Sylviane Mathieu
Vincent's Team
Jeremy Fleischman
Steven Xu
Ryan Lim
Chia-Wei Lu
Nick Young
Patricia Li
Amy Tai
David Gomes
Michael Young
Alex Ho
Everest Shi
James Hamory
Courtney Louie
Richard Jay S. Apagar
Shelley's Team
Ambie Valdés
Casey Pernsteiner
Chris Krueger
Chris Dzoan
Dan Dzoan
John George
Lucas Garron
Patrick Kelly
Shonathon Collins
Shotaro Makisumi
Toby Mao
Fangyuan Chang
- Until 2011, Tyson had pretty much coordinated the entire staff team (then around 30-50 people) on his own. This was less-than-ideal for two reasons:
1. It is very difficult to keep track of the individual project threads of 30 people on your own and keep them on task;
and,
2. If you try, you will end up very, very exhausted.
- In 2011, the Staff Team integrated the roll of Organizer into the staff team. Organizers led Staff teams of 6 (Kian's Team) to 15 (Vincent's Team) people. Instead of the pre-2011 model of delegating tasks (of varying sizes) to regular staff members, tasks were now delegated to Organizers, who had the flexibility and team to get more interesting things done. Staff Teams, today, are arranged roughly by both familiarity and geographic proximity. For example, Jim Mertens's team is composed mostly of KOII people; my team is composed mostly of Berkeley people. Invites were (mostly) at the discretion of each Organizer, who had considerable leeway as to the composition of his/her own team, though we tried to invite trusted speedcubers who had extensive experience judging/organizing at the local level (as opposed to volunteers who had never touched a cube, or members of the audience - it cannot be overstated how much things like being able to quickly determine a misalignment penalty play over the grand scheme). Each team was also mostly autonomous. Tyson and Tim, as de facto Organizers, did not command teams this year (Tim commanded one last year, I believe).
This structure provides several advantages:
- Instead of 1:40, the organizer:staff ratio is now roughly 1:10. This makes it far easier to keep track of tasks and people.
- Organizers can assigned Staff members and mini-groups (within their teams) to work on various tasks. This reduced load at the top by allowing the Head Organizer to check in with a single point of contact with regards to various tasks. For example, on Thursday (Setup), I only needed to assign Kian's Team and Bob's Team (as opposed to naming Kian, Bob, Anthony, Dan Lo, Dene, Jennifer, Kevin, Zheng, etc.) to work with Tim on Shipping and Registration to know that Tim would have all the resources he would need to get everything done. Assigning Ilkyoo's, Shelley's, and my team to work on setting up Staff round meant that the entire room was set up in about 15-30 minutes (mostly painlessly, too!)
- Familiarity between Staff members of a single Team make work more efficient. For example, organizing the Staff rounds on Thursday were much easier this year, as all the Berkeley cubers already had connections and email lists in place suitable for that type of work.
- Issues can be compartmentalized. One concern we had a few years back was the amount of email being pushed into the Staff level, much of which only affected small numbers of staff. The "simple" solution of pushing email out to relevant staff is difficult to achieve because you then have to keep track of every Staff email. Now, Organizers are kept abreast of all issues. Emails can be pushed out to individual team mailing lists, or, if necessary, to all staff.
2. In addition to basic structure, we also incorporated the use of an opt-in staff "chatter" list - not all messaging has to be relevant, but we wanted to avoid spamming people who weren't ready for it. "Chatter" enabled things like planning meals, showcasing interesting videos, or simply getting to know one another.
3. We had as many staff as we could download the "GroupMe" app - this enabled us to send out messages and chats that could quickly reach most of our Staff. Through this, we planned informal get-togethers, called meetings, arranged airport trips, and sent out clarifications about anything and everything.
4. All important projects and communications went through the wc-organizers list - this meant that I usually had about 25-50 Worlds-related threads to keep track of a day, but better the 9 of us than all 76 of us...
Competition structure
I'm going to split this into two parts: staff structure and physical structure.
Staff Structure
1. Roles: Judge, Scrambler, Judge, Caller
- Scrambler: Receives solved cubes and scrambles. Leaves scrambled cubes ready for pickup. Checks integrity of cubes (e.g. for cube illegality)
- Runner: Picks up scrambled cubes from the scrambling table. Calls competitor name. Ascertains the next available timer, calls the competitor's name, brings the cube to said timer, and guides the competitor to the timer. Also, runs solved cubes from timer stations back to the scrambler. May also act as crowd control if necessary.
- Judge: Sits at a single timer and judges.
- Caller: Also known as MC. Calls heats, lays out scoresheets for competitors to drop cubes off onto, and moves cubes from drop-off area to scrambling area. May also act as crowd control if necessary.
- Why do we do it this way? The rate at which a competition can process competitors, assuming unlimited competent competition officials (judges, scramblers, etc.), is the number of timers. Timers are a limited resource. Having a runner move cubes to and from timers (instead of having the judge do it) increases the amount of time a timer is being used - the moment the previous competitor has finished an attempt, there is already another one ready to go.
- The runner role can be exhausting - be sure to switch out your runner often! Also, ideally the runner is one of your most experienced staff members. Keeping timers filled is an art. If you have an incompetent judge, only 1 of your 8 timers may be affected. If you have an incompetent runner, all 8 will be suffering. The ideal runner:timer ratio is about 1:4, but an experienced runner can cover 6 timers (and even 8 runners if absolutely necessary, with some loss of efficiency).
2. Accountability and Staff Role Assignments
- After asking each Staff member for preferences (e.g. Like to scramble 2,3,4,5; hate 6,7; Don't know Clock; minimal running), each Staff member was assigned specific roles, down to the nearest fifteen minutes, during the competition. This included duration, role, and location (down to the Stage color and Timer number!). Tim Reynolds is the brainchild behind this. His structuring, individual schedule print-outs distributed to each staff, and station printouts (e.g. Timer 8 would have a print-out of who was supposed to be at that timer) enabled us to quickly ascertain if there was a Staff member incapacitated. The increase in accountability when each Staff member has a specific role greatly added to the efficiency of our team.
- Sometimes, hiccups can happen - e.g. I was assigned to judge on Timer 5 on the last day, through 2x2x2 Semifinals - a round I ended up qualifying for. The addition of a few "Organizer-on-call" or "Staff-on-call" roles gives you a mini-army to fill in whatever holes pop up.
3. Staff Morale
- Things like hydration and nutrition cannot be overemphasized. As an organizer-on-call, I would bring a pitcher and cups to get 32 cups of water out to each of the timer stations, for example. Staff members were encouraged to ask for caffeine and sustenance through the GroupMe app (or to the organizer-on-call). If they needed it - we tried to bring it to them, even if it meant going shopping in the middle of the day. A happy staff is a productive staff.
Physical structure
1. Compartmentalization of the stage
- The timers this year were split into 3 stages of 8 timers each: Red, Blue, and Green. Each stage functioned somewhat autonomously as a "mini-competition" of it's own, with its own set of scramblers, judges, runners, and timers.. Competitors were called up to a single stage (the color-coding made this easy to see from across a room), and stayed in that stage area until they were finished. This way, they didn't have to run past 23 timers to get to the timer their cube was being brought to. Also, this kept competitors waiting in a small area, so that they could better hear their name being called. This also meant that you could run two events simultaneously in the same room without regard for overlap, judging expertise, or scrambling expertise.
2. Compartmentalization of each round
- We divided competitors into "Heats". Each Heat was assigned a certain time, which we didn't call early. This reduced the amount of confused competitors wondering when they would be called; it also made it easier for them to plan their day. Heats were sized such that they could smoothly be run on one of the colored stages (8 timers).
3. Side Stage
- We had a second stage of 8 timers off to the side of the main competition room, and placed one of our most experienced Organizers/Delegates, Bob Burton, on it. Keeping more unpredictable events like 7x7 off the main stage meant that you didn't have to delay the calling of the next heats/events if one happened to run over. This also enabled us to run an entirely separate 3x3x3 Consolation round just because we had the timers to spare. This was run by two Delegates - Vidar Klungre and Jean-Louis Mathieu, with minimal direction from the Organization Team.
tl;dr: Some themes that ran through: compartmentalization and efficiency. Compartmentalization of the Staff, Setup, and Projects/Tasks. Efficiency of your resources.
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