[SBU Board] Lynnwood regional feedback

[Eric Sieg]

Hi all,

I really enjoyed our recent regional in Lynnwood. It was my first 
regional in 6-7 years and it was a lot of fun having a solid week of 
bridge that was within easy driving distance of Seattle. Before the 
regional began, I started a thread on BridgeWinners asking about 
regional schedules which can be found here: 
http://bridgewinners.com/article/view/acbl-regional-schedules-previous-experiments/ 
. This was prompted by two things. First, I overheard some discussion 
about the schedule with people wishing for changes. Second: several 
people I really enjoy playing with could only play at night but I wanted 
to play 2 session events which meant we weren't able to play together.

Throughout the regional, especially at the start, I had a variety of 
people come up and express appreciation for the bridge winners thread. 
While the opinions varied somewhat, the #1 consistent thing I heard 
throughout the week is that people really wished there was some sort of 
survey to ask their opinion. I, too, really wish there was a survey 
because there seemed to be a lot of things that were done really well 
and some things that I was unhappy about that I wanted to communicate 
upwards in hopes of something changing in the future.

There are even some things I heard people complaining about but might 
not if they knew the reasons. For example, the catering was pretty 
sparse. However, my understanding is that this is because they don't let 
us bring things in and its super expensive to pay them to cater. If that 
was a survey question: "Catering at Lynnwood is currently limited 
because it is unusually expensive. Would you prefer better catering with 
a higher entry fee?" that might help people feel like they are part of 
the decision. A local club sent out a similar survey when raising entry 
fees and I think it ameliorated any minor grumbling that might have 
occurred.

Absent that sort of survey, here is my personal feedback:

1) Partnership was amazing.
2) The credit card thing was really awesome. I didn't even realize it 
was there until the end, but that's really cool and I'll use it in the 
future. I had to make a special run to the ATM at one point because I 
thought I needed cash.
3) The bulletin was super awesome. I didn't even realize it existed 
until Saturday - is there any way to get the word out better? Maybe word 
of mouth is fine and in future regionals I'll know and be able to inform 
others.
4) I was disappointed that pair events earlier in the week had 33 boards 
in play. This resulted in less overlap which made the duplicate aspect 
less relevant and also made comparing with friends harder since we 
frequently had 12 boards not in common. Talking to the directors, they 
said it's an organizer decision and if they have more pre-made boards 
they can run a web so everyone is playing the same boards.
5) I overheard people complaining that the 199er event Thursday evening 
was folded into the main side game. The people discussing it said the 
199er event had 4 full tables and that they were added in a line so that 
some people played them all and some people did not which skewed 
results. I was unable to confirm the 4 full (it looked like 3.5 but had 
a strange gap, maybe a pair decided to leave?), but it did look like the 
last tables had the 199ers in a row.
6) I wish the schedule was more in line with what Atlanta is doing this 
year. Specifically: Horizontal events in the evening, and 2 session 
events during the day. My personal preference would be 10:30, 2:30, and 
7:15. Not only does this let the evening people play in 2 session 
events, but it also makes it easier to play in 3 session events. 
Starting at 9AM the next day was brutal when I have to plan 45 minutes 
for the commute (and many people commute to this regional) and I would 
hesitate to do that again in the future. An extra 1.5 hours of 
sleep/relaxing at home would be fabulous if trying to play 3 sessions. 
Finally, the gap between 1 and 7:15 felt gigantic and on some days we 
finished dinner and going over boards and still had 1.5 hours to kill 
before the evening session started.
7) It would be fun to perhaps see some unusual events scattered in 
there. For example, what about a "Canada vs USA" 64 board match on 
Sunday that is hosted in Lynnwood and Vancouver in alternating years? Or 
maybe north vs south or Seattle vs Vancouver or some similar lines. A 2 
session BAM also sounds really fun.

Note: sending to unit and district, so my apologies if you received this 
long email and don't feel it applies.

Eric