[SBU Board] Bothell sectional

[Tim White]

Hi Janet,

Thanks for your email and comments.  I'm including Seattle Unit Board members as cc's hereto.

Only after much discussion and consideration did the Board decide to TRY OUT the morning and early afternoon start times chosen for Saturday of the July Bothell tournament.  This is the first time for these session start times in a Seattle Unit sectional (at least in recent years) and it is an experiment.   Effects, via word of mouth, written feedback, attendance figures and attendance figures by locale will be gathered, reviewed, discussed and considered going forward.   We are able to review ACBL reports that tell us the number of attendees from each city within the Seattle Unit as well as from cities outside the Unit's (King County) boundaries.

The Board is trying out various things to understand how best to service the membership.  We review, evaluate and re-evaluate venues, session start times, session events and other aspects of tournaments.  During May we held a tournament in South King County for the first time in several years.  We also tried slightly earlier session start times, which you might have noticed are continuing for the Friday sessions at Bothell in July.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome.  In addition, empirical attendance data are helpful in indicating folks' preferences.  The Board performs a joint post mortem following each tournament -- using feedback, attendance data, financial data and our own after-action observations -- which helps in planning for future tournaments.

Please understand there are no hidden agendas at work here.  Seattle Unit Board members themselves often have differing views on issues; there is open debate and there are votes to resolve matters and decisions.  Meetings are open to visitors.  Meeting minutes are kept and available.  Board members understand their duty to service the entire membership and the game of bridge at large.  We value tournament attendance by league members, as well as non-members, from within and beyond (in many instances well beyond) unit boundaries.

I'm sorry the Saturday start times in July do not work for you.  I hope you will consider attending future sessions of Seattle sectionals when start times fit your schedule and plans. 

Tim



On Jul 9, 2015, at 3:22 PM, "Janet Geoffroy" <geoffroyjg at gmail.com> wrote:

> I just got the email about the Bothell sectional on July 24-26 & clicked on the link for the flyer.
> 
> I see the Seattle unit has now joined the trend of having the start times at 10:30 & 3:00 on Saturday.
> 
> So it looks like we will now never be checking out the Bothell playing site (which seemed like it would be a convenient location for us), because we boycott all tournaments with those ridiculous start times.
> 
> I guess these must be the times that most of the local people want, so this is democracy in action.
> But did anyone ever consider the impact on attendance by people who have to drive a distance to get to the tournament?
> If someone is a 2-3 hour drive away, they would have to get up very early in the morning to leave home early enough to arrive in time & get parked, etc.  Or they would have to drive here the night before & pay for an extra night in a motel.  Neither of which is a very appealing option.
> 
> I’ve always suspected that the hidden agenda for some tournaments, especially in some of the more remote smaller communities, is that having start times like 10:00 & 3:00 (sometimes even on weekdays) will discourage people from out of town from coming to the tournament by making it inconvenient for people from other places a distance away to drive there on Saturday morning, so the locals can win more masterpoints.
> 

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