Australian Nationals 2016 (Sydney)

Yea sorry Bryson, I did my best but that's the way it panned out. Originally I had 4 and 5bld on Sunday, but it wasn't working; we simply don't have enough time.

Unfortunately we can't swap FMC and multi because we need both stages for FMC (with 50 people competing, we need more than 6 tables!)
 
Dene said:
Yea sorry Bryson, I did myt that's the way it panned out. Originally I had 4 and 5bld on Sunday, but it wasn't working; we simply don't have enough time.

Unfortunately we can't swap FMC and multi because we need both stages for FMC (with 50 people competing, we need more than 6 tables!)
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All good hopefully i can forget all my memo in my rooms then so i can stills
Dene said:
Yea sorry Bryson, I did my best but that's the way it panned out. Originally I had 4 and 5bld on Sunday, but it wasn't working; we simply don't have enough time.

Unfortunately we can't swap FMC and multi because we need both stages for FMC (with 50 people competing, we need more than 6 tables!)
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Dang all good though worth a shoot in asking :). Hopefully i forget my memo in rooms for multi otherwise my 15+ attempt will turn into like 8 haha
 
Dene said:
tbh, what you're saying doesn't really make much sense. Nothing obliges a national competition to have every event. Since when was the "whole point" of nationals to find the best in every event? Also, fyi we've never had feet at nationals but I don't see you fighting for that.

Why shouldn't we call it nationals? You're right, it is just a name. None of it means anything, other than a few people being able to say, if they so desire, that at the competition we decided to call "nationals" they won a particular event. The only thing that really differentiates it from other competitions is we deliberately make the time to do more events, more rounds, and have better prizes and things. Other than that there's nothing special about it.
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When people hear "national championship", what are they going to think? They're going to think that this is the biggest competition of the year, and that the purpose is to find the best people in each event in the country. Could you at least attempt to go along with that? By the way, I would be advocating for feet as well, but I figured it would be way too difficult to convince you there.

Sure, it might not mean anything, but people expect it to. Call them stupid for having false expectations, but that's what they're going to think. So of course they'll think that the winner of nationals is the national champion. The least you could do there is have a national champion for every event.
 
I guess we are learning that as competitions get bigger there are greater organisational and logistic challenges. Maybe we are getting to a stage where we need to look at our 'Nationals' being three day competitions? And with that should we mirror Europe etc and only have them every two years? Food for thought...
 
megaminxwin said:
When people hear "national championship", what are they going to think? They're going to think that this is the biggest competition of the year, and that the purpose is to find the best people in each event in the country. Could you at least attempt to go along with that? By the way, I would be advocating for feet as well, but I figured it would be way too difficult to convince you there.

Sure, it might not mean anything, but people expect it to. Call them stupid for having false expectations, but that's what they're going to think. So of course they'll think that the winner of nationals is the national champion. The least you could do there is have a national champion for every event.
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I dunno... you're the only one complaining, so I don't know if too many other people are thinking "every event". Certainly I expect people to think "big competition" "lots of people" "lots of events/rounds", and other things along those lines, but who knows?

I mean, you can whinge all you like because we're not doing clock, but what you're saying is out of touch with reality. Might I direct you towards US Nationals, one of the biggest yearly events on the planet, which still never does feet? Or perhaps Dutch Nationals this year, delegated by the one and only Ron van Bruchem, which doesn't even have half the events?

The WCA has no rules for what dictates something to be a "national" competition. If such rules exist in the future we'll follow them, but until then we can do what we like. I gave everyone the chance to prove that doing clock would be feasible and the Australian community didn't pull through, which makes me think the Australian community doesn't generally care.

At the end of the day, nothing's stopping you having a chat with Ray and organising a competition with multiple rounds of clock yourself. You never know, you might even get enough people to have three rounds ;)
 
Looking from the outside, so therefore without an inside knowledge, there are a few things I have to comment on:

  • Speedcubing Australia and UNSW Rubik Society are the organizers of this competition, so they are responsable for what events take place or not, the schedule and the venue. The delegates (there are 4 for this competition) are also involved in this decision and their decision should be respected. Organizing a competition with 200 competitors is not an easy task at all and you have to deal with a lot of pressure with scheduling and having enough people to help and have things run smoothly, so there is no doubt some sacrifices that have to be made, either in number rounds or events to take place.
  • There is no regulation (official or unofficial) at this point in time that says that a "National" or "Continental" championship should have all events or any events for that matter. It is up to the organizer(s) and delegate(s) to decide what to hold or not to and in what duration. There is also no written convention at this time in naming competitions to have special connotations (besides the unwritten rules of common sense). So even though it is called "Nationals" it should not be understood any differently than any other competition (even if the common competitor feels differently about this competition or attracts more spectators and media, and competitors are more compelled to do good at it).
  • In national championships (as advertised), it is however common practice in WCA competitions to do it at most once a year (as you can't repeat competition names within the same year) and with a duration of two or more days. It is also common to only give out awards to local competitors and call them national champions. However this is not mandatory, but again up to the organizer(s)/delegate(s).
  • Some organizers and delegates prefer to focus more on popular events and offer more rounds of said events for more people than holding all or most events, where eventually other fewer people would participate in. It doesn't go against the WCA spirit and mission, as long as it's done fairly.
  • Even though the delegates and organizers have the ultimate power to decide, I think they also have to be open to criticism and suggestions in a non condescending way from members of the community and take it as a chance to improve their procedures for future events.
  • I have to say it has been very awkward to read this thread, regarding the addition or not of the Rubik's Clock event. Again, from the outside, reading this thread seems like it's a single man's competition that holds all the power to do whatever the hell he wants with it, regardless of what anyone might say or do and everyone else is an attention demanding child. This doesn't look like a very healthy and desirable public approach to me, be it true or not, and does not help solve any problem or explain anything.
  • I've also found very awkward the search for multiple fast scramblers as the reason to not hold an event, considering the argument of very few people interested in clock solving. Fast clock scramblers should not really make a difference because not a lot of competitors would participate anyway, from what is inferred, and there is always the possibility to cap the number of competitors that participate in any given event. I have found that clock is the easiest puzzle to teach how to scramble, even to people that do not use english notation and are under 6 years old, so the only reason I can find that it's hard to find people to scramble clock to be people that just don't know how to solve it in the first place. If you know how to solve clock, scrambling should be obvious, if you know the english abbreviations for directions and can count to 6. Also, considering that this competition has 4 WCA Delegates participating, I don't really like to see that an event wouldn't take place just because one couldn't find a scrambler, fast or not, either being for not knowing the notation or unwillingness to cooperate in such a way.
  • I get the feeling, true or not, that one of the reasons this event is not held is because if it was, lots of people would consider registering, without really caring for the event, just to try it out in what could be considered a giant time waste. I don't think this in itself should be a reason to disregard the event, as for some people only competing can you get motivated by comparing to others and these competitors end up having fun and compete. And if people register to it, well, it seems people actually care enough to register for it. It can always be controlled by stricter time limits and cutoffs, beyond competitor limit. I think a much more valid justification for not holding this event would not be lack of popularity, but could primarily be the lack of proper clock covers and the time and difficulty to verify clock hardware legality. Poor venue conditions or not enough qualified judging could also be a factor, but not so much.
  • Regarding the events choice and scheduling, again I'm sorry to say, but I have to agree that it does look odd, after this whole discussion, to see 1h30m of competition scheduling time be dedicated exclusively to only 7 registered competitors, for big blinds and 30 minutes for a workshop, without any concurrent events. I will assume the lack of concurrent events be because of not having side room or timers or not enough staff?
  • Despite that, none of the decisions that have been taken are illegal under the current regulations. They may be questionable, but that judgement can only really be made by individual members of the local community, but they don't violate any rules that are set at this time. Delegates are supposed to decide in the best interest of the community and use fair judgement even if it sometimes goes against their personal choices. You can't however punish delegates or organizers for choosing certain events in favour of others.
  • megaminxwin, I cannot but feel bad for you or really any fast competitor that puts enough time to practice and get really good at any given event, isn't able to compete, improve his times and explore their own limits with the regularity of others, just because their event of choice is not popular enough comparatively.
  • However, if you are really interested in competing in this event and have the chance to compete for a national title for Rubik's Clock, I would like to suggest you to find a venue, gather a team, contact a delegate and organize a competition, and that you call it "Australian Clock Nationals" or something similar, where the winner of the event receives a national champion trophy in that event. If the current Australian Nationals competition does not hold this event, it should not prevent the existence of a national title to be given at another point in time, in another competition. In fact, you can think a Clock Nationals competition name (as was said before, competition names are just that, names, as long as they are pertinent to the competition details) would be much more impactful than just holding it with the rest of the other events. You could hold other side events and put clock as main event. I understand it's not desirable, but it is a possible solution for this or other less frequently attended events.
  • As you've seen, it's not easy to have an event in competitions when not a lot of people are interested in it, or a competition at all without support. Therefore, I think it would be a nice opportunity to try to make more people interested in the event, practice and getting good times on it. I would like to suggest that if you organize a competition with Clock, you establish worthwhile prizes for the event (monetary or puzzles) to people who achieve a certain goal, say for all achieving a sub-10 or sub-9 average or to the top 5 averages.

This is more of a general reflection and not exactly directed to this thread or community in particular, but I think this is a good example of the importance to stress that everyone should learn how to properly judge and scramble and help out whenever they can, so that competitions can have more events and rounds and organizers have less arguments to cut down because of time constraints.
 
AlexMaass said:
I think this is the first year that they decided to not do feet (excluding like 2004 era or whatever)
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Ah, I'm too old school. I was under the impression that the old rule of never doing feet had continued to apply since I had been there but I guess not. But this definitely isn't the first year.
 
cubizh said:
  • Even though the delegates and organizers have the ultimate power to decide, I think they also have to be open to criticism and suggestions in a non condescending way from members of the community and take it as a chance to improve their procedures for future events.
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Yes indeed, exactly why we dropped clock, after it went abysmally last time we tried.

cubizh said:
  • I've also found very awkward the search for multiple fast scramblers as the reason to not hold an event, considering the argument of very few people interested in clock solving. Fast clock scramblers should not really make a difference because not a lot of competitors would participate anyway, from what is inferred, and there is always the possibility to cap the number of competitors that participate in any given event.
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The problem is we have a history of problems with the event. In short, the responsibility of scrambling has tended to get dumped on me, and I would consider myself to be subpar at best. I'm a slow clock scrambler, and I never practise it so I'm a slow solver too (which is necessary when I inevitably scramble it wrong). Trying to scramble for 20 people by myself will take a very long time (as is what happened a couple of years ago (although I had a couple of helpers back then, they were worse than me!))

cubizh said:
  • I get the feeling, true or not, that one of the reasons this event is not held is because if it was, lots of people would consider registering, without really caring for the event, just to try it out in what could be considered a giant time waste. I don't think this in itself should be a reason to disregard the event, as for some people only competing can you get motivated by comparing to others and these competitors end up having fun and compete. And if people register to it, well, it seems people actually care enough to register for it. It can always be controlled by stricter time limits and cutoffs, beyond competitor limit. I think a much more valid justification for not holding this event would not be lack of popularity, but could primarily be the lack of proper clock covers and the time and difficulty to verify clock hardware legality.
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Clearly what you're saying is void because we had registration available for clock (fyi 20 people registered; 10% of the total competitors). Also if that was the reason, we wouldn't do skewb or 2x2 either. And it's not due to lack of popularity, because we're holding less popular events. In short, what you're saying just doesn't make any sense.

Oh btw, what made the competition a couple of years ago so heartbreaking to me was that I had invested many hours of my time making these awesome clock covers which have never been used since because I was let down by the so-called clock lovers.

cubizh said:
  • Regarding the events choice and scheduling, again I'm sorry to say, but I have to agree that it does look odd, after this whole discussion, to see 1h30m of competition scheduling time be dedicated exclusively to only 7 registered competitors, for big blinds and 30 minutes for a workshop, without any concurrent events. I will assume the lack of concurrent events be because of not having side room or timers or not enough staff?
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You'll notice that time is overlapping with registration and the welcome ceremony, which tbh is a bit of a slap in the face to those competitors, but we had to do it or miss out entirely. Anyway, if you made me pick between clock or 4+5bld, I would always choose the latter, because we have a small, yet dedicated community here that have proven their commitment to those events over the years. The same can't be said for the clock "community" (which appears to be one person).

As for the workshop, that's just a little extra thing we're considering (which may or may not go ahead). We have to have the venue completely cleared out by 7pm, so we absolutely have to stop all competition by 6. It's easy enough to have a little something extra going on out of the way, but we can't be running events that close to closing time.


Anyway, hopefully that gives you a bit more insight (although my vague responses may have left you with more questions than answers :p
 
Dene said:
The problem is we have a history of problems with the event. In short, the responsibility of scrambling has tended to get dumped on me, and I would consider myself to be subpar at best. I'm a slow clock scrambler, and I never practise it so I'm a slow solver too (which is necessary when I inevitably scramble it wrong). Trying to scramble for 20 people by myself will take a very long time (as is what happened a couple of years ago (although I had a couple of helpers back then, they were worse than me!))
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Tomas scrambles quite quickly, and I can scramble maybe sub-14ish on average, and I'm sure we'd both be willing to scramble. I still respect your decision though, since you obviously know much more than me about organising competitions.
 
Dene said:
Anyway, hopefully that gives you a bit more insight (although my vague responses may have left you with more questions than answers :p
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No, some of your replies and answers were informative and to the most part understandable from an organizational point of view. I wish you could have made some of them sooner or right off the bat, so it would prevent some of the ensuing replies that were made in this thread.
Dene said:
The problem is we have a history of problems with the event. In short, the responsibility of scrambling has tended to get dumped on me, and I would consider myself to be subpar at best. I'm a slow clock scrambler, and I never practise it so I'm a slow solver too (which is necessary when I inevitably scramble it wrong). Trying to scramble for 20 people by myself will take a very long time (as is what happened a couple of years ago (although I had a couple of helpers back then, they were worse than me!))
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Dene said:
Oh btw, what made the competition a couple of years ago so heartbreaking to me was that I had invested many hours of my time making these awesome clock covers which have never been used since because I was let down by the so-called clock lovers.
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This is undoubtedly one of the worst feelings an organizer can get and it does make one angry and upset with people, wanting to never hold certain events again. It's really not easy when you're pressured with time and have responsibilities towards the venue and having to carry the whole thing. Only when you endure it, you really know how hard it is to manage. I have felt this myself, not exactly with Clock, but with other events, so I perfectly understand where this comes from.
However, I think it should be fair to point out that it's not ideal that future competitions and competitors should always have to pay for mistakes made in the past, without any chance for redemption and to do things right on a bigger competition like the Nationals. I am not saying this should be done right now, but it's something to always keep considering and re-evaluating. I have had some success in the past in this regard.
Dene said:
Clearly what you're saying is void because we had registration available for clock (fyi 20 people registered; 10% of the total competitors). Also if that was the reason, we wouldn't do skewb or 2x2 either. And it's not due to lack of popularity, because we're holding less popular events. In short, what you're saying just doesn't make any sense.
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Dene said:
(...) because we have a small, yet dedicated community here that have proven their commitment to those events over the years. The same can't be said for the clock "community" (which appears to be one person).
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Unless I am missing something you are not saying, given that, as you said, 20 people registered for this event, it's very strange that you are reducing these 20 people to only 1 actual person. How are you measuring this? Is it because how vocal they are for missing the event or that they are not generally fast enough? Or are these other people that registered known for not helping out and have a general feel of disregard for helping procedures of the event?
If the latter is the case, and if you want to reduce people registering for events without any care or desire to help out, I would like to suggest that you could, at event registration, for all or just certain events, where you have witnessed this in the past, you create a checkbox saying something like: By registering in this event, I am fully aware and familiar with the current WCA notation and know how to scramble with it for this event, and understand that I can be disqualified from the competition if I am called and can't properly scramble (by 1f2)).
If people are made aware that they must know the notation and scramble before they register for the event, given the history, and that notation information is given to them, it could deter people not really interested enough in the event or helping out with scrambling to not register for it at all, and if they still do it, I don't think it's infeasible to start applying 1f2) in this case.
Even if you don't hold the event, it can probably give you a more precise indication of how popular and how committed people are in having the event than a feeling that may (or may not) be accurate.

Of course, it's just an idea that the organization team could possibly introduce in the future to make things more clear and minimize the development of negative interactions and comments regarding certain tough choices that are made by the organization and more easily answer some of the natural questions that inevitably always appear about them, without letting posts escalate into people potentially thinking that delegates/organizers are biased, and competitors asking questions just being annoying little kids that can't shut up about it.

The last point I would like to reiterate is that people should really get motivated to help judging and learn how to scramble well for the events they participate in and use them while practising. It is proven that with hand scrambling only, you end up not doing a really good job at it, and you don't get the proper distribution of cases that a random state scramble can give you, so technically you are missing out on some of the fun by only hand scrambling.
 
@Dene slightly unrelated to aus nats (which look real good btw), but I have secured a venue for a Christchurch comp in december, its a really good venue. you choose the weekend in december and we can make this comp happen. I think you'll have to be the delegate as alex is vary busy till next year.
 
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