EIGHTH ANNUAL VANCOUVER ESTIVAL TRIVIA OPEN SATURDAY, JULY 15, 2006 HARBOUR CENTRE, DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER, B.C., CANADA The Vancouver Estival Trivia Open (VETO) is our nation's longest-running annual quiz bowl tournament. Again, a mirror in Toronto is being planned, and we're also hoping to have a championship match between the site winners. For up-to-date information, check the web page http://caql.org/events/veto06.html and the weblog http://veto.caql.org VETO will be run "guerrilla" style, meaning: * each team must bring an original packet of questions, which will not be edited by anyone else associated with the tournament; * participants must moderate and keep score during rounds when they aren't playing. As always, this event is FREE of charge. Links to detailed reports of VETO in previous years can be found here: http://caql.org/results.html === WHO CAN PLAY === VETO is an "open" tournament in the sense that we don't exclude anyone because of age, student status, degrees obtained or not obtained, nationality, inability or unwillingness to pay us money, etc. However, recognizing that people come to VETO with vastly different levels of experience, we'd like to give priority to those who have a history of providing good questions in the tossup/bonus format. So instead of accepting teams on a "first come, first served" basis until space fills up, this is what we'll do: * Any team that has won VETO in a previous year has an automatic invitation to play this year. * Any other team must apply to the VETO Invitation Committee. * Applications are simple: just e-mail two OLD full-length quiz bowl packets (at least 20 tossups and 20 bonuses in each), such that the majority of the questions in both packets were written by members of your prospective team. * If some of your team members have written a lot of questions separately but you don't actually have two packets to which you've together contributed a majority of the questions, then just send us 20 old tossups and 20 old bonuses that were all written by your members. * Within a few days of receiving your application, the Invitation Committee will inform you of its decision either to accept or to defer your application. If your application is not accepted, you may appeal by sending us more old questions that you've written. * Teams whose applications are deferred, either because they didn't have enough questions to show us or because their questions didn't meet our standards, will have another chance. After July 1, deferred teams will be allowed to play if there is still room. The Invitation Committee will decide whether each deferred team should write questions. Don't feel intimidated by this application/invitation procedure. The point is to make sure that the people who will be writing the questions for VETO have experience writing questions. This is important because it's a guerrilla tournament, and nobody else will be editing. As for how high our standards are: the vast majority of the packets in the Stanford Archive would meet our criteria for acceptance. Even if your team doesn't write questions, we expect you to have enough familiarity with the quiz bowl format to be able to staff games during your bye rounds. A team can have any number of players, but no more than four can play at a time. If you don't have a full team of four, we can match you up with other players. Solo teams are OK, too: we'll set the schedule so that other teams will have byes and you won't have to staff more than one room by yourself. The size of the field is capped at 8 teams. There may be room for a 9th team if it rotates players in and out so that it can supply people to moderate games in every round. === WHEN === Saturday, July 15, 2006, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The night before, on Friday, July 14, regular VETO participant Bruce Lin will make his first appearance as a contestant on the TV show Jeopardy! Note that VETO is on the same weekend as the Game Show Congress in Burbank, Calif. It's two weeks before the Chicago Open with its mirror, the San Francisco Bay Area Summer Quiz Extravaganza. If you would like to participate in VETO, please notify us by July 1, 2006. This date should be easy to remember because it's Canada Day, a day when the media give us more than the usual amount of Canadian trivia -- which may become useful question material. === WHERE === In the heart of downtown Vancouver, B.C., Canada: Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St. This attractive, intelligent, and extremely convenient location is directly across the street from the Waterfront SkyTrain station, the SeaBus terminal, and, for those who really want to arrive in style on a Sikorsky S-76, the Harbour Heliport. By road, Vancouver is about: 3 hours from Seattle; 9 hours from Eugene, Oregon; 18 hours from Berkeley, California; 24 hours from Irvine, California, or Las Vegas, Nevada; 39 hours from Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Chicago; 60 hours from Fairbanks. All-day parking on Saturday runs up to about $5 at Harbour Centre. Vancouver International Airport is a premier global gateway served by more than 40 airlines with scheduled direct flights from 31 communities in British Columbia, another 33 locations elsewhere in North America, 12 cities in Asia/Pacific, and 3 cities in Europe. Devotees of Southwest Airlines or JetBlue may prefer to fly to Seattle/Tacoma and then take the Quick Shuttle or rent a car. Non-residents of Canada should have no problem driving an American rental car across the border, but anyone with a Canadian driver's licence is not permitted to do so. Also keep in mind that even if it's cheaper to fly to Sea-Tac, if you factor in the time and money you spend on the 3--4 hours ground transportation each way, it may work out to be more worthwhile to take Air Canada or another airline directly to Vancouver. === FORMAT === VETO 2006 will be run "guerrilla" style, without central editing and will be staffed by players. We'll play at least a full round-robin, as many rounds as packets from the two sites, likely ending in a site final (which some may consider an unfair format). Games will be conducted according to NAQT rules, except that matches will be untimed, with 20 tossups per round, and there will be no 15-point "power" tossups. === TORONTO MIRROR === As in previous years, we're planning a mirror in Toronto, and a packet swap. An announcement of the mirror will be forthcoming. === QUESTION PACKETS === Detailed question guidelines are on a separate web page: http://caql.org/events/veto06q.html which includes a section with many, many useful reference links categorized by subject. Rounds will be untimed, with 20 tossups played in each. But you will have to write more than 20 tossups and 20 bonuses, because you may need tie-breaking questions, or you may end up having to throw out some questions because of game errors or because they ask for information that already came up in somebody else's packet. So your packet should include (at least): * 24 tossups, each worth 10 points -- no 15-point "powers"; * 22 bonuses, each worth 30 points -- but no single-part, single-answer questions. Use the following subject distribution for both tossups and bonuses: Science, Math, Technology 3 -- 4 History 3 -- 4 Literature 3 -- 4 Geography 2 -- 3 Current Events 2 -- 3 Fine Arts 1 -- 2 Religion, Philosophy, Mythology 1 -- 2 Social Science 1 -- 2 Popular Culture, Games, Sports 1 -- 2 General Knowledge 0 -- 3 Canadian content quota: Of the first 20 tossups, at least 4 must refer to Canadian people, places, things, events, and created works. The same goes for the first 20 bonuses. But overall, don't exceed 50% Canadian content in your packet. Your Canadian questions should also cover diverse subject areas and not be clustered in Geography or Literature, etc. Tossups should include at least two separate clues, preferably at least four. Multiple-choice bonuses should be used sparingly, if at all, and should provide at least four choices. In order that we can keep to a reasonable schedule, questions must not be too long: * No tossup question, and no part of a bonus question, should exceed 6 lines if using a fixed-width font with 79 characters per line. * No bonus question should ever require more than four separate team conferrals. To promote fun and variety, teams are encouraged to bring multimedia questions (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory). These tend to work better as bonuses than as tossups. Let us know if you plan to have any audio questions, so that we can arrange enough of the proper equipment to play them. Every packet must contain at least one multimedia question: It can be as simple as presenting a printout of a picture you found through http://images.google.com and asking a few questions about the picture. For our further amusement, we encourage rounds with hidden themes. Last year, for example, in one round, every tossup answer was also the name of a school that had participated in the SmartAsk TV game show; in another round, every answer contained the name of an animal. Aim for a difficulty level approximating that of NAQT sectionals. === PRIZES === The leading individual scorer at VETO will take over the title of West Coast Dominatrix of Relevant Knowledge (WC-DORK). Anyone may sponsor a prize and select a winner according to any criteria. Last year, there were 11 prizes awarded to individuals and teams. === OTHER STUFF TO DO IN VANCOUVER === Separate studies released by the U.K.-based Economist Intelligence Unit (October, 2005) and the U.S.-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting (April, 2006) both concluded that Vancouver offers a higher quality of life than any other city in the entire world (or the world outside Switzerland, according to Mercer). We are not exaggerating; check the links yourself: http://store.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=pr_story&press_id=660001866 http://www.mercerhr.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml/dynamic/idContent/1173105 The 29th Annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival will take place on the same weekend as VETO. The 10-day 18th annual Dancing on the Edge Festival ends the day after VETO. You will also enjoy spotting the artistically painted life-size fiberglass Spirit Bears on display this summer in prominent public spaces in the city. See http://www.tourismvancouver.com for more information about Vancouver, including links to special promotions. Unfortunately for American visitors, the Canadian dollar has risen in value by 45% against the U.S. dollar over the past four years. (Blame the economic policies of our recently deposed Liberal government, which built up recklessly large budgetary and trade surpluses.) But according to the Economist's latest Big Mac Index (May 25, 2006), a Big Mac still costs only 1% more in Canada than in the U.S. === CONTACT === If you are interested in participating, please contact Peter by July 1, 2006, at pmcc_at_... (pmcc at alumni.sfu.ca). Updates will be posted on the web page http://caql.org/events/veto06.html Also check the weblog http://veto.caql.org "A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all." - John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps
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