First of all, great to see your enthusiasm and eagerness to organise a competition. However.... having read the two threads you've made, I increasingly get the idea that you haven't got a clue what you're doing, because:
1. You haven't got a venue
2. You haven't got a date
3. You first say Bob Burton is going to be the delegate, and then say you made a mistake and that Chris Krueger will be the delegate. If you can't get this simple piece of information right the first time round, I very much doubt everything else will go smoothly. For example, you really don't want to announce the competition, only to find out you've announced the wrong date.
4. I find it hard to believe a delegate has firmly committed to be a delegate for a competition organised by someone who has never been to one and doesn't even have a venue or a date.
Normally the order of things to do to organise a competition is this:
1. Decide to organise a competition and around what time you want to have it. Decide on how many competitors, what events and how many rounds, etc. Make a provisional schedule.
2. Look for a suitable venue and make a provisional reservation for several dates.
3. Contact a WCA delegate with your idea and ask whether he's available and willing to be the delegate and which of the available dates suits him best.
4. Confirm the reservation with the venue.
5. Make a website or have one made at Cubingusa.
6. Contact the WCA delegate again to tell him the venue is booked and the competition is ready to be submitted to the WCA board for approval and announcement on the WCA website. (The WCA delegate will take care of that)
7. Get registrations in and process them as they come in.
8. A week before the competition, contact the venue again to confirm you're coming, start making scoresheets, certificates, set up an account with Cubecomps for score taking etc.
9. On the day of the competition, arrive at least 30 minutes before registration to set up and after the competition, be prepared to be the last one to leave when everything is as you've found it.
What you've done is:
1. Announce here that you want to organise a competition (which by the way is fine)
2. Contact a delegate with the idea of a competition.
3. Effectively opened registration, while you don't even know where or when the competiton will be. (I know it's not the official registration yet, but why do you need people's e-mail addresses?)
Other things you should think about:
- Do you know what type of venue you need. Not only size, but also lightning, shape of the room, enough tables and chairs, preferably big windows with lots of natural light.
- Do you know how much time each event takes, including turnaround times? You don't want to have to scrap events because you've scheduled in too little time for events, nor do you want to have huge gaps between events, although this is less of a problem.
- Do you have enough timers and displays? And what about cube covers, pens, etc. Yes, the delegate may have them, but he also may not have them. One set (timer + mat + display) will cost you around $120 and you'll probably need around 8 sets. How are you going to get them? It's your responsibility to make sure the timers are there. Not the delegate's.
- When deciding on a venue and number of competitors, do you take into account possible guests they're bringing? You might have a venue suitable for 40 competitors, but if all competitors bring two guests, you'll need room for 120 people.
- The delegate may help you during the competition to get things running as smoothly as possible, but that's not his job. His job is to provide scrambles and to make sure everything is done according to the regulations. The running of the competition is ultimately your responsibility. So if everything goes great, by all means take the credit and be proud of a job well done. But, if things go horribly wrong, there's only one person to blame: you, as the organiser.
I'm not trying to put you off, but I do want to encourage you to think twice about organising a competition even before you've been to one yourself. I know from experience that going to a competition as an organiser is much less enjoyable that going to one as a normal competitor. You're busy all day running around, making sure everything runs on schedule, chasing up people for judging and scrambling, entering scores or trying to get people entering scores. You hardly have time to practice so the only solves you'll get to do that day are your official solves.
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