[SBU Board] Some ideas for next year's KO sectional

[Eric Sieg]

Hi all,

One thing I've noticed is that KO attendance has been fine but not 
spectacular. As the premier event of the Memorial Day weekend, I wonder 
what we can do in order to make the event more appealing for everyone. 
It'd be really exciting to see a fuller top bracket and 3+ brackets of 
the 2500 instead of 2.

Some ideas:

1) Pre-duplicated boards for the KO. I realize this makes it more 
expensive, but it makes post mortems between people on different 
teams/different brackets more fun. It also makes discussions amongst 
your own team easier since you have a reference. My general thought 
would be to run it one year where the board bears the expense and see 
how people like it and then have a conversation about how to offset the 
costs in the future.

2) Once we are using pre-duped boards, we could have a presentation 
between the Saturday afternoon and evening sessions. Something like 
having 1-3 charismatic/friendly A players do a quick talk about one of 
the hands from the afternoon that everyone played. Perhaps follow this 
up with a general Q&A about the hands for a bit where people can ask 
questions etc.

3) Perhaps have a more proactive partnership role specifically for this 
sectional? I spent a few minutes encouraging the Hellers to play and 
then found them teammates which added an open team, but that was only 
like 2-3 minutes of effort. If we were a bit more organized as a board 
and reaching out to people to encourage them to play, it seems like we 
might be able to get a lot more teams going. The feeling I have gotten 
is that team events sometimes need a bit more help since some are shy or 
don't know enough people to find teammates.

4) Is there some way we can help get people excited about winning, 
perhaps via extra recognition? The MP awards for KOs are not the 
greatest, especially in the lower brackets, so it seems like some sort 
of trophy/plaque/whatever might help offset the fact that the event 
doesn't pay the greatest (something we don't have an easy remedy for).

5) What about putting the open bracket finals on vugraph? We can 
probably find a volunteer either in town (Steve Beatty? Schermer?) to 
commentate or maybe someone out of town who isn't busy (Portland or 
Vancouver person?). In Magic the Gathering tournaments people were 
usually very excited to have a feature match and get streamed, so I 
wonder how bridge players would feel. I know I was pretty excited each 
time I had a match on vugraph. Maybe that would enhance the "premier 
event" aspect of it as well? Would need a vugraph operator or two, but 
Leah was willing to do it for the Open finals and it seems likely we 
could find one more. I have no clue how to run a vugraph thing, but we 
have a year to figure it out! Random aside: might also be fun to put the 
round robin finals on vugraph.

Anyway, just some ideas I wanted to throw out there. It is the KO 
sectional, so it'd be fun to see how we can get more people involved in it.

Eric