# Behind Team USA (+FOB): The Team that Brought You Worlds 2013



## Vincents (Aug 1, 2013)

Some Delegates have asked to talk a little bit about the organizational staff behind Worlds 2013. Here's some notes. (These notes may prove useful to current and future competition organizers as well).

Tyson actually ran through a couple of the main things that make us function so well at the delegates meeting, so some of it might be rehashed for some of the Delegates who attended. There's more little tweaks we've made, but here are some of the biggest things:

*Team Structure and Communication
*
This year's staff can be split into two basic levels: organizers and staff.

Organizers:
Tyson Mao
Tim Reynolds
Jim Mertens
Bob Burton
Kian Barry
Felix Lee
Ilkyoo Choi
Vincent Sheu
Shelley Chang

Staff
Jim's Team
Aaron Abramowitz
Ashley Couch
Chester Lian
Evan Liu
James LaChance
Kit Clement
Natan Riggenbach
Shaden Smith
Sarah Strong

Bob's Team
Anthony Hsu
Chris Hardwick
Daniel Lo
Dene Beardsley
Jennifer Tang
Kevin Zhou
Zheng Li

Kian's Team
Tim Sun
Jasmine Lee
Peter Still
Nathan Kearney
Dave Campbell
Ian Winokur

Felix's Team
Jonathan Cookmeyer
Corey Sakowski
Nick Rech
Arthur Adams
Harris Karsch
Ajay Mysore
Richard Meyer

Ilkyoo's Team
Jeong Jong-Ho
Jun Doo-Young
Kim Jae-Min
Mike Hughey
Marie Hughey
Rebecca Hughey
John Brechon
Sébastien Auroux
Oscar Alberto Ceballos Contreras
Radu Făciu
Jean-Louis Mathieu
Sylviane Mathieu

Vincent's Team
Jeremy Fleischman
Steven Xu
Ryan Lim
Chia-Wei Lu
Nick Young
Patricia Li
Amy Tai
David Gomes
Michael Young
Alex Ho
Everest Shi
James Hamory
Courtney Louie
Richard Jay S. Apagar

Shelley's Team
Ambie Valdés
Casey Pernsteiner
Chris Krueger
Chris Dzoan
Dan Dzoan
John George
Lucas Garron
Patrick Kelly
Shonathon Collins
Shotaro Makisumi
Toby Mao
Fangyuan Chang

- Until 2011, Tyson had pretty much coordinated the entire staff team (then around 30-50 people) on his own. This was less-than-ideal for two reasons: 

1. It is very difficult to keep track of the individual project threads of 30 people on your own and keep them on task;
and,
2. If you try, you will end up very, very exhausted.

- In 2011, the Staff Team integrated the roll of Organizer into the staff team. Organizers led Staff teams of 6 (Kian's Team) to 15 (Vincent's Team) people. Instead of the pre-2011 model of delegating tasks (of varying sizes) to regular staff members, tasks were now delegated to Organizers, who had the flexibility and team to get more interesting things done. Staff Teams, today, are arranged roughly by both familiarity and geographic proximity. For example, Jim Mertens's team is composed mostly of KOII people; my team is composed mostly of Berkeley people. Invites were (mostly) at the discretion of each Organizer, who had considerable leeway as to the composition of his/her own team, though we tried to invite trusted speedcubers who had extensive experience judging/organizing at the local level (as opposed to volunteers who had never touched a cube, or members of the audience - it cannot be overstated how much things like being able to quickly determine a misalignment penalty play over the grand scheme). Each team was also mostly autonomous. Tyson and Tim, as de facto Organizers, did not command teams this year (Tim commanded one last year, I believe).

This structure provides several advantages:
- Instead of 1:40, the organizer:staff ratio is now roughly 1:10. This makes it far easier to keep track of tasks and people.
- Organizers can assigned Staff members and mini-groups (within their teams) to work on various tasks. This reduced load at the top by allowing the Head Organizer to check in with a single point of contact with regards to various tasks. For example, on Thursday (Setup), I only needed to assign Kian's Team and Bob's Team (as opposed to naming Kian, Bob, Anthony, Dan Lo, Dene, Jennifer, Kevin, Zheng, etc.) to work with Tim on Shipping and Registration to know that Tim would have all the resources he would need to get everything done. Assigning Ilkyoo's, Shelley's, and my team to work on setting up Staff round meant that the entire room was set up in about 15-30 minutes (mostly painlessly, too!)
- Familiarity between Staff members of a single Team make work more efficient. For example, organizing the Staff rounds on Thursday were much easier this year, as all the Berkeley cubers already had connections and email lists in place suitable for that type of work.
- Issues can be compartmentalized. One concern we had a few years back was the amount of email being pushed into the Staff level, much of which only affected small numbers of staff. The "simple" solution of pushing email out to relevant staff is difficult to achieve because you then have to keep track of every Staff email. Now, Organizers are kept abreast of all issues. Emails can be pushed out to individual team mailing lists, or, if necessary, to all staff.

2. In addition to basic structure, we also incorporated the use of an opt-in staff "chatter" list - not all messaging has to be relevant, but we wanted to avoid spamming people who weren't ready for it. "Chatter" enabled things like planning meals, showcasing interesting videos, or simply getting to know one another.

3. We had as many staff as we could download the "GroupMe" app - this enabled us to send out messages and chats that could quickly reach most of our Staff. Through this, we planned informal get-togethers, called meetings, arranged airport trips, and sent out clarifications about anything and everything.

4. All important projects and communications went through the wc-organizers list - this meant that I usually had about 25-50 Worlds-related threads to keep track of a day, but better the 9 of us than all 76 of us...


*Competition structure*
I'm going to split this into two parts: staff structure and physical structure.

_Staff Structure_
1. Roles: Judge, Scrambler, Judge, Caller
- Scrambler: Receives solved cubes and scrambles. Leaves scrambled cubes ready for pickup. Checks integrity of cubes (e.g. for cube illegality)
- Runner: Picks up scrambled cubes from the scrambling table. Calls competitor name. Ascertains the next available timer, calls the competitor's name, brings the cube to said timer, and guides the competitor to the timer. Also, runs solved cubes from timer stations back to the scrambler. May also act as crowd control if necessary.
- Judge: Sits at a single timer and judges.
- Caller: Also known as MC. Calls heats, lays out scoresheets for competitors to drop cubes off onto, and moves cubes from drop-off area to scrambling area. May also act as crowd control if necessary.

- Why do we do it this way? The rate at which a competition can process competitors, assuming unlimited competent competition officials (judges, scramblers, etc.), is the number of timers. Timers are a limited resource. Having a runner move cubes to and from timers (instead of having the judge do it) increases the amount of time a timer is being used - the moment the previous competitor has finished an attempt, there is already another one ready to go.

- The runner role can be exhausting - be sure to switch out your runner often! Also, ideally the runner is one of your most experienced staff members. Keeping timers filled is an art. If you have an incompetent judge, only 1 of your 8 timers may be affected. If you have an incompetent runner, all 8 will be suffering. The ideal runner:timer ratio is about 1:4, but an experienced runner can cover 6 timers (and even 8 runners if absolutely necessary, with some loss of efficiency).

2. Accountability and Staff Role Assignments
- After asking each Staff member for preferences (e.g. Like to scramble 2,3,4,5; hate 6,7; Don't know Clock; minimal running), each Staff member was assigned specific roles, down to the nearest fifteen minutes, during the competition. This included duration, role, and location (down to the Stage color and Timer number!). Tim Reynolds is the brainchild behind this. His structuring, individual schedule print-outs distributed to each staff, and station printouts (e.g. Timer 8 would have a print-out of who was supposed to be at that timer) enabled us to quickly ascertain if there was a Staff member incapacitated. The increase in accountability when each Staff member has a specific role greatly added to the efficiency of our team.

- Sometimes, hiccups can happen - e.g. I was assigned to judge on Timer 5 on the last day, through 2x2x2 Semifinals - a round I ended up qualifying for. The addition of a few "Organizer-on-call" or "Staff-on-call" roles gives you a mini-army to fill in whatever holes pop up.

3. Staff Morale
- Things like hydration and nutrition cannot be overemphasized. As an organizer-on-call, I would bring a pitcher and cups to get 32 cups of water out to each of the timer stations, for example. Staff members were encouraged to ask for caffeine and sustenance through the GroupMe app (or to the organizer-on-call). If they needed it - we tried to bring it to them, even if it meant going shopping in the middle of the day. A happy staff is a productive staff.

_Physical structure_

1. Compartmentalization of the stage
- The timers this year were split into 3 stages of 8 timers each: Red, Blue, and Green. Each stage functioned somewhat autonomously as a "mini-competition" of it's own, with its own set of scramblers, judges, runners, and timers.. Competitors were called up to a single stage (the color-coding made this easy to see from across a room), and stayed in that stage area until they were finished. This way, they didn't have to run past 23 timers to get to the timer their cube was being brought to. Also, this kept competitors waiting in a small area, so that they could better hear their name being called. This also meant that you could run two events simultaneously in the same room without regard for overlap, judging expertise, or scrambling expertise.

2. Compartmentalization of each round
- We divided competitors into "Heats". Each Heat was assigned a certain time, which we didn't call early. This reduced the amount of confused competitors wondering when they would be called; it also made it easier for them to plan their day. Heats were sized such that they could smoothly be run on one of the colored stages (8 timers).

3. Side Stage
- We had a second stage of 8 timers off to the side of the main competition room, and placed one of our most experienced Organizers/Delegates, Bob Burton, on it. Keeping more unpredictable events like 7x7 off the main stage meant that you didn't have to delay the calling of the next heats/events if one happened to run over. This also enabled us to run an entirely separate 3x3x3 Consolation round just because we had the timers to spare. This was run by two Delegates - Vidar Klungre and Jean-Louis Mathieu, with minimal direction from the Organization Team.


tl;dr: Some themes that ran through: compartmentalization and efficiency. Compartmentalization of the Staff, Setup, and Projects/Tasks. Efficiency of your resources.


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## Mikel (Aug 1, 2013)

These ideas are nothing short of genius. The level of organization that went into WC 2013 was phenomenal. The thing that impressed me most was the following: 



Vincents said:


> _Physical structure_
> 
> 1. Compartmentalization of the stage
> - The timers this year were split into 3 stages of 8 timers each: Red, Blue, and Green. Each stage functioned somewhat autonomously as a "mini-competition" of it's own, with its own set of scramblers, judges, runners, and timers.. Competitors were called up to a single stage (the color-coding made this easy to see from across a room), and stayed in that stage area until they were finished. This way, they didn't have to run past 23 timers to get to the timer their cube was being brought to. Also, this kept competitors waiting in a small area, so that they could better hear their name being called. This also meant that you could run two events simultaneously in the same room without regard for overlap, judging expertise, or scrambling expertise.




I loved how even though you had 24 timers running on the main stage, competitors were able to be called upon and start their times with ease. I am excited to see what new organizational ideas the US Staff will think of next.


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## Robocopter87 (Aug 1, 2013)

These guys did such an awesome job.

Especially with the unprecedented amount of people that attended.

It was just an amazing experience, and everything went very smoothly.

One thing I noted was just how accurate the schedule was. If they told you that you had a heat at 3:20, then your heat was called within 5 minutes of that time. 

Great job, thanks so much.


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## Vincents (Aug 1, 2013)

Robocopter87 said:


> These guys did such an awesome job.
> 
> Especially with the unprecedented amount of people that attended.
> 
> ...




This comes with experience. Tim did a wonderful job of allocating competitors/heat that enabled us to stay on time.

One of the things you have to resist doing - even I nearly fell for this - is the urge to call up heats early. If your competitors can't trust your heat times, many things start falling apart.


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## Noahaha (Aug 1, 2013)

Really a perfect competition environment. Let it stand as a shining example for those to come.


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## Pedro (Aug 1, 2013)

Thanks a lot, Vincent.

Couple questions that come to mind:

How many scramblers did you have for each stage? 
Also, how big were the heats? 16 people? maybe more?

Oh, Tyson once told me he (or his team) would try to always have a scrambled cube on each table, and the judge would call the competitor once he was free. Was this used at this comp? Why or why not?
(I know this would require a very good runner, but seems to be more effective to me. It would also require that the heat size is more than 2x the number of timers).


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## Dene (Aug 1, 2013)

Thanks for the details Vincent. I'm going to talk to Tim McMahon about what things were like and see if we can replicate it on a smaller scale for Ausnats.


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## Vincents (Aug 1, 2013)

Pedro said:


> Thanks a lot, Vincent.
> 
> Couple questions that come to mind:
> 
> ...



This is called "queuing", and is one of the small tweaks we use sometimes. Basically, you "queue" or "line" up a cube at a busy timer station. When the previous competitor is finishing his solve, you call the next competitor over and line him up behind the timer station. This means that you can get an abundance of scrambled cubes out of the scrambling area.

This also means that you've called too many people - your timers aren't processing solves as fast as you're scrambling the cubes for them, or they are being solved/scrambled at the same rate, but you have too many cubes in the system.


# of scramblers is dependent on the event. E.g. you'll want a bare minimum of 3 for 5x5; 4+ is preferred. Bare minimum of 2 for any event per 8 timers (for us, per coloured stage). It is always better to err on the side of too many scramblers. The extra scramblers can always act as "staff-on-call" and fill other roles (e.g. relieve judges who need to use the restroom). Too few scramblers and you have a big problem.

Heats also varied in size. It would depend on the event, and Tim can chime in here. A larger heat size means more time per heat. I believe heats were usually sized at around 20.


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## Vincents (Aug 1, 2013)

Dene said:


> Thanks for the details Vincent. I'm going to talk to Tim McMahon about what things were like and see if we can replicate it on a smaller scale for Ausnats.



No problem. Let us know how things go, and if there's anything you think we should change!


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## keyan (Aug 1, 2013)

Pedro: You need enough scramblers so that there are always cubes ready for runners. For many of the events, while extra scramblers might be needed right at the start of the heat for the big group of cubes coming in together, most of the time two scramblers was enough. 
In my experience, having a little more than twice as many competitors as timers for a heat works well. It depends on the length of the event, for something fast you get through cubes quicker, and will want more competitors to keep timers constantly full. 

For runners, it requires keeping an eye on all of the timers and having a cube ready at the station as soon as the previous competitor finishes. Each station was numbered with a sign attached to the back of the display, so the runner could call the competitor and the station number while they were delivering the cube. The work involved is related to the speed of the event. I was able to run eight timers myself for 5x5, but for 2x2 and pyraminx I think even the three runners we had wasn't enough. 

I remember not being convinced it would help much the first time we used the runner system back in '06(?), but it really would not have been possible to do a 600 person competition on 24 timers in three hours without it.


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## Andrew Ricci (Aug 1, 2013)

I have a question that I've never really received a good answer to, but I'm sure that someone in this thread is more than capable of explaining: Why are competitors called up one at a time to do their solves rather than having them stay there and simply complete their solves all at once? And if the problem is due to the wait between the solve being finished and the next scrambled cube being brought to the solver, why aren't two people called up to a station at a time with one solving and one on deck?

It just always seems like such a cluster**** with 20+ people sitting/standing in one area to move back to the same place that they just were. But like I said, I'm sure there's a good explanation.


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## Pedro (Aug 1, 2013)

theanonymouscuber said:


> I have a question that I've never really received a good answer to, but I'm sure that someone in this thread is more than capable of explaining: Why are competitors called up one at a time to do their solves rather than having them stay there and simply complete their solves all at once? And if the problem is due to the wait between the solve being finished and the next scrambled cube being brought to the solver, why aren't two people called up to a station at a time with one solving and one on deck?
> 
> It just always seems like such a cluster**** with 20+ people sitting/standing in one area to move back to the same place that they just were. But like I said, I'm sure there's a good explanation.



That would probably be because people have different speeds. And while you know some (or most) solvers, you don't know everybody. So you may end up lining a sub-10 solver with a 2-minute solver, and the first guy would wait for a long time between solve, while he could go to another timer and just get done very quickly.

I know it can get kinda messy with a lot of people, and that's why we use the running and rotating thing when we have the proper space available. If you don't have a big stage or competition area, it's probably not the best idea to have many cubers and runners going around.




keyan said:


> Pedro: You need enough scramblers so that there are always cubes ready for runners. For many of the events, while extra scramblers might be needed right at the start of the heat for the big group of cubes coming in together, most of the time two scramblers was enough.
> In my experience, having a little more than twice as many competitors as timers for a heat works well. It depends on the length of the event, for something fast you get through cubes quicker, and will want more competitors to keep timers constantly full.
> 
> For runners, it requires keeping an eye on all of the timers and having a cube ready at the station as soon as the previous competitor finishes. Each station was numbered with a sign attached to the back of the display, so the runner could call the competitor and the station number while they were delivering the cube. The work involved is related to the speed of the event. I was able to run eight timers myself for 5x5, but for 2x2 and pyraminx I think even the three runners we had wasn't enough.
> ...


Indeed, the beginning of heats/events is usally messy with all those cubes coming to the scrambling table. And it gets extra good with people that don't come when called or didn't attend.

From my experience, good scramblers can handle something like 6 timers for an event like 3x3. Faster things like 2x2 or pyraminx would need probably more scramblers (and runners, as you said).
Big cube scrambling is almost always a pain, specially for 6x6 and 7x7 (oh, man, I just hate those). Fortunately there are less people on this, or things could really go wrong.

The runner system is much better (if you have the proper space and more that 6 timers, I'd say) because there's less people moving around. And while you may need a couple extra staff, it's well worth it. 

What you guys did was really very impressive. That's like a thousand solves/hour. Of course there was a lot of fast people competing, but still, that's almost 70k seconds of solving time(if I did the right math from the WCA export). If the total time was 10800 seconds (3 hours), than the average (solve+delay) time was 91 seconds. That's very very good, considering the size of the competition.

Do you have information on the actual time each event took and possible delays? I remember the 3x3 final was scheduled to start at 4:30 PM, but I think it was more like 5 something (different time zone, I may be wrong here).


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## blade740 (Aug 1, 2013)

Wow... you guys have really got this thing down to a science. It was simply amazing to me that you ran a competition twice the size of nats 2012, with basically the same timeframe (possibly less if what I hear about not getting access to the venue is correct). Now I can see why. Simply amazing.


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## Tim Reynolds (Aug 1, 2013)

Heats were mostly 16 people for 8 timers, but I put a few more in the quick events like 2x2.

Last year I had 2 runners for 8 timers for 2x2. This year I put 3. Next year we'll try 4.

I can explain the process of assigning heats at some point. The goal is to have people not have conflicting events, which is easy in competitions with 1 event at once but difficult when you have 3.



theanonymouscuber said:


> I have a question that I've never really received a good answer to, but I'm sure that someone in this thread is more than capable of explaining: Why are competitors called up one at a time to do their solves rather than having them stay there and simply complete their solves all at once? And if the problem is due to the wait between the solve being finished and the next scrambled cube being brought to the solver, why aren't two people called up to a station at a time with one solving and one on deck?
> 
> It just always seems like such a cluster**** with 20+ people sitting/standing in one area to move back to the same place that they just were. But like I said, I'm sure there's a good explanation.



As Vincent mentioned the main resource that we need to optimize for is number of timers. If we had you sit on a timer, then while your cube is being run and scrambled, there's a timer not being used.

That said, in 2x2 there may be a more efficient setup, and we can experiment with that. For longer events, though, wasting about a minute of timer time per solve is inefficient.


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## Andrew Ricci (Aug 1, 2013)

Pedro said:


> That would probably be because people have different speeds. And while you know some (or most) solvers, you don't know everybody. So you may end up lining a sub-10 solver with a 2-minute solver, and the first guy would wait for a long time between solve, while he could go to another timer and just get done very quickly.
> 
> I know it can get kinda messy with a lot of people, and that's why we use the running and rotating thing when we have the proper space available. If you don't have a big stage or competition area, it's probably not the best idea to have many cubers and runners going around.





Tim Reynolds said:


> As Vincent mentioned the main resource that we need to optimize for is number of timers. If we had you sit on a timer, then while your cube is being run and scrambled, there's a timer not being used.
> 
> That said, in 2x2 there may be a more efficient setup, and we can experiment with that. For longer events, though, wasting about a minute of timer time per solve is inefficient.



If that's the case, would the two-to-a-timer setup I mentioned work better than the way it's currently done, as long as the two people are reasonably well matched up? Or would that also be inefficient?


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## Kian (Aug 1, 2013)

2x2 was the only event that ran much over its intended time. Every other event stayed on schedule (many could have been ahead, but I did not call up any heats more than 2 minutes early for the main stage) for the entire weekend. We kept the timers full and the runners were great, there was just physical no way to get 2x2 done quicker the way we handled that.

As for Andrew's question, I don't really believe that would be feasible or more effective. I could be wrong, but everything I know about running a competition leads me to believe that would be much less efficient for 450 competitors.


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## Vincents (Aug 1, 2013)

theanonymouscuber said:


> If that's the case, would the two-to-a-timer setup I mentioned work better than the way it's currently done, as long as the two people are reasonably well matched up? Or would that also be inefficient?



This would work if you had dedicated scramblers to each timer. Otherwise, the runner has to keep track of which cubes to bring to which timers, which is much more taxing and prone to mistakes. It's much easier to call "ANDREW RICCI, 6."

I should note that for the staff round 1 heats, it was much easier for us to pair up and get each other through (on different sets of scrambles) on the same timer for certain events where scrambling was easy (e.g. 2x2) than to have the runner/scrambler system, because the latter takes a bit more effort to set up.


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## fastcubesolver (Aug 1, 2013)

Noahaha said:


> Really a perfect competition environment. Let it stand as a shining example for those to come.




Agreed 100%. Awesome competition, thank you so much to everyone who helped out to help make this possible.


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## shelley (Aug 1, 2013)

theanonymouscuber said:


> If that's the case, would the two-to-a-timer setup I mentioned work better than the way it's currently done, as long as the two people are reasonably well matched up? Or would that also be inefficient?



The judge, if they're doing their job properly, can't be scrambling while judging. You'd need to dedicate a scrambler to each station or every two stations, which requires more staff (12-24 scramblers as opposed to 6-9 plus a few runners) and is more difficult to coordinate (where would they sit?)


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## blah (Aug 1, 2013)

Kian said:


> 2x2 was the only event that ran much over its intended time. Every other event stayed on schedule (many could have been ahead, but I did not call up any heats more than 2 minutes early for the main stage) for the entire weekend. We kept the timers full and the runners were great, there was just physical no way to get 2x2 done quicker the way we handled that.


To reinforce the point being made here, 2x2x2 was the only event for which I *needed* help with data entry. Thanks to Kevin Zhou for helping me out there. (I had help for some other events, but unlike for 2x2x2, I didn't feel like I would've died without the help.) Before the competition, Tim told me that there would be a new scorecard to enter *every 10 seconds*. He wasn't kidding.

For the sake of comparison, consider the three largest first rounds:
2x2x2: 445 scorecards, 2225 results * ~3 digits/result = ~6675 digits
3x3x3: 568 scorecards, 2840 results * ~4 digits/result = ~11360 digits
4x4x4: 362 scorecards, 1306 results * ~5 digits/result = ~6530 digits

I was able to handle the *volume* of scorecards for 3x3x3 and 4x4x4, and had all the results entered within about 20 minutes of the end of each round. But the *frequency* of scorecards for 2x2x2 was completely ridiculous. With Kevin and I working non-stop at the data entry station, we were still b*tching about how it should've been more than a two-person job, whereas 3x3x3 and 4x4x4 were both one-man jobs (with Tim and Jim keeping the flow going during my bathroom breaks). The frequency for pyraminx was slightly lower than 2x2x2 but still higher than 3x3x3, but the significantly lower volume made it manageable. If there _were_ a way to get 2x2x2 done quicker, we would've needed at least 3 people doing data entry to keep up with it.

WC2013 2x2x2 round 1 is the gold standard for what throughput should be, that is, until we come up with a better model. I'm not even saying it has the best throughput considering the size of the competition; I'm saying it has the best throughput we've ever seen in any cubing competition - one new scorecard every ten seconds is unheard of. Awesome, awesome job, guys.


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## Dene (Aug 1, 2013)

keyan said:


> I remember not being convinced it would help much the first time we used the runner system back in '06(?), but it really would not have been possible to do a 600 person competition on 24 timers in three hours without it.



If my memory serves me correctly (it does), we actually burned through 3x3 in two and a half hours :tu (although if you take out staff it was closer to 500 I think).



Kian said:


> (many could have been ahead, but I did not call up any heats more than 2 minutes early for the main stage)



Darn you and your cellphone running 30 seconds behind my watch >.<


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## Akash Rupela (Aug 1, 2013)

Since I dint find an explicit mention of this,
What about the staff's solves? How was that distributed?


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## Pedro (Aug 1, 2013)

Vincents said:


> This would work if you had dedicated scramblers to each timer. Otherwise, the runner has to keep track of which cubes to bring to which timers, which is much more taxing and prone to mistakes. It's much easier to call "ANDREW RICCI, 6."
> 
> I should note that for the staff round 1 heats, it was much easier for us to pair up and get each other through (on different sets of scrambles) on the same timer for certain events where scrambling was easy (e.g. 2x2) than to have the runner/scrambler system, because the latter takes a bit more effort to set up.



One thing we did once was having a piece of paper with the timer number attached to the cube cover. That way the cube would always go to the same station, and the person would react and go to the timer quickly. But I think we kept people seated on the timer until they did all 5 solves. But it could work with rotating too. Of course that works a LOT better on later rounds, where people have about the same speed. As I said, if it's a huge first round, with times ranging from 10 to 150 seconds, that's not the best option.

Regarding cube covers, what did you guys use? How many of them? I saw black and red covers in the final. Was it divided by colors too?


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## Vincents (Aug 1, 2013)

Pedro said:


> One thing we did once was having a piece of paper with the timer number attached to the cube cover. That way the cube would always go to the same station, and the person would react and go to the timer quickly. But I think we kept people seated on the timer until they did all 5 solves. But it could work with rotating too. Of course that works a LOT better on later rounds, where people have about the same speed. As I said, if it's a huge first round, with times ranging from 10 to 150 seconds, that's not the best option.
> 
> Regarding cube covers, what did you guys use? How many of them? I saw black and red covers in the final. Was it divided by colors too?




Good input on the rotation. I could see that working in theory - I'm not sure how efficient it would be without doing some experiments and dry runs.

Cube covers were matched to stage colour - red/red, blue/blue, green/green.


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## dlo (Aug 1, 2013)

Akash Rupela said:


> Since I dint find an explicit mention of this,
> What about the staff's solves? How was that distributed?



Staff did their first round solves on Thursday so that we wouldn't have to worry about that during the main event times.


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## Pedro (Aug 1, 2013)

Vincents said:


> Good input on the rotation. I could see that working in theory - I'm not sure how efficient it would be without doing some experiments and dry runs.
> 
> Cube covers were matched to stage colour - red/red, blue/blue, green/green.



Oh...it's green. It looked like black in the cubecast transmission, though. But what are they made of? Where did you get them?

We usually have just one stage (biggest so far was 14 tables), but we try to make 2 rows, one being a little taller than the other. And we use different color covers (they're actually plant pots like this) to separate which cubes go to the top or bottom row.


I forgot to ask about the multi bld, big bld and FM. I'm pretty sure it was a separate room. How was juding done there? I saw Eric Limeback using a music stand for his multi, but I guess not everybody was comfortable with that. Did you give people the chance to choose? How many judges were involved?


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## CarlBrannen (Aug 1, 2013)

It's important that the person who announces the cube be loud enough that they can be heard by the competitors and understood. This was done pretty well this competition.

Some crazy ideas for improving heats: How about having some identification of the box hiding the cube so the cuber knows that his cube is up. For example, if you had enough boxes that you had one for each competitor in a heat, you could number the boxes and the box would stay with the competitor for the heat. This would eliminate the moving around of boxes that I noticed took some effort. And instead of announcing the (possibly difficult to pronounce) name of the competitor, you just announce their number and hold up the box. The competitors in a heat know their number. And when the competitor misses the call and the box ends up at the judging station, now the competitor can look at the box and see that it's his number. So he goes over there and solves without having to ask. I also like the idea of having the competiton slip be somehow attached to the box so it doesn't get lost. You could do that by adding a clip to the box.


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## Dene (Aug 1, 2013)

CarlBrannen said:


> Some crazy ideas for improving heats: How about having some identification of the box hiding the cube so the cuber knows that his cube is up. For example, if you had enough boxes that you had one for each competitor in a heat, you could number the boxes and the box would stay with the competitor for the heat. This would eliminate the moving around of boxes that I noticed took some effort. And instead of announcing the (possibly difficult to pronounce) name of the competitor, you just announce their number and hold up the box. The competitors in a heat know their number. And when the competitor misses the call and the box ends up at the judging station, now the competitor can look at the box and see that it's his number. So he goes over there and solves without having to ask. I also like the idea of having the competiton slip be somehow attached to the box so it doesn't get lost. You could do that by adding a clip to the box.



I think this would not work at all in practise. The first major problem is that many competitors don't pay attention to boxes going up to the solving stations. They're chatting to their friends or practising solves while they wait. The second problem is, if this were to work, competitors would have to be watching boxes, which would eventuate in competitors watching the scramble table, which is definitely not what we want. The third problem is keeping the right cube with the right box, which could easily get mixed up and throw everything out of whack. The fourth problem is the de-personalisation of things by turning competitors into a number; names might be hard to pronounce, but learning how to pronounce them is a good way to introduce yourself to people. Also, assuming it is experienced competitors running and judging, and assuming it is new competitors with the names no one knows how to pronounce, it would be a good way for experienced competitors to get to know the up-and-coming generations.

As to your final note, the issue with this is the slip needs to be written on for each solve. So the slip would have to be detached and re-attached to the box every time. I don't see this working in practicality. Simply putting the slip inside the box alongside the cube works fine.


Sorry to throw your ideas completely down, but I think "crazy" was the right description


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## dlo (Aug 1, 2013)

CarlBrannen said:


> This would eliminate the moving around of boxes that I noticed took some effort.



In theory, there shouldn't be much effort in moving around boxes. Runners bring back a box with a solved cube, so after scrambling there should be boxes available for it.



Pedro said:


> I forgot to ask about the multi bld, big bld and FM. I'm pretty sure it was a separate room. How was juding done there? I saw Eric Limeback using a music stand for his multi, but I guess not everybody was comfortable with that. Did you give people the chance to choose? How many judges were involved?



FMC was done in several rooms with 1 or 2 judges for each room. It's not too hard to judge since the ways to cheat are pretty blatant.

For multi-BLD, there was the option of using music stands or harmonica holders with a paper sheet. One judge was in charge of 4 competitors. Similar to the main events, there were scramblers and runners as well (maybe 2 of each). I believe there was somewhat of a heat system so that we would expect a few competitors to show up every 15 minutes or so.


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## JBCM627 (Aug 1, 2013)

Pedro said:


> Oh...it's green. It looked like black in the cubecast transmission, though. But what are they made of? Where did you get them?


http://www.papermart.com/Product Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=5484&SubGroupID=5485



Pedro said:


> I forgot to ask about the multi bld, big bld and FM. I'm pretty sure it was a separate room. How was juding done there? I saw Eric Limeback using a music stand for his multi, but I guess not everybody was comfortable with that. Did you give people the chance to choose? How many judges were involved?


~1 judge per 3 competitors, not including a few scramblers. We got to the point where 1 judge would be responsible for watching ~4 competitors at 2 adjacent tables, and a couple judges would 'run', meaning getting competitors started, helping arrange music stands, etc.

Competitors had the option to use music stands or harmonica holders. If used correctly (as by Shelley in that picture), the harmonica holders tend to be particularly effective. However if a competitor uses either option incorrectly (like here), this sucks up unnecessary staff resources (notice the extra piece of paper being held).


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## Pedro (Aug 1, 2013)

But did someone not use either option? How would that work if, for example, 3 of the competitors at a judge's table chose not to use?

Oh, another thing (sorry for being kinda annoying...).

Did you have 8 cube covers per heat, (i. e., cubes gets out of box to be scrambled, and only goes back into box when a solved one arrives) or each cube had its own cover at all times?

We never tried having cubes floating out and into covers, but that may save quite a bit of resources (and also require a bigger organization at the scrambling tamble, which is not always that big).


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## dlo (Aug 1, 2013)

Pedro said:


> Did you have 8 cube covers per heat, (i. e., cubes gets out of box to be scrambled, and only goes back into box when a solved one arrives) or each cube had its own cover at all times?



There were more covers than cubes so there was always a cover for a scrambled cube to go into.


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## Pedro (Aug 2, 2013)

Hmm...I'd think you only need the same number of cubes and covers, no? 

Re-reading James' post


> Competitors had the option to use music stands or harmonica holders.



So that means they only had those 2 choices? No option for "I just want a judge to hold the paper"?
That sounds nice (from an organizing point of view)


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## CarlBrannen (Aug 2, 2013)

Dene said:


> I think this would not work at all in practise.


 Thanks for replying.

I'm not suggesting changing the system, I'm suggesting adding a very simple layer of redundancy. Redundancy is how engineers design safe systems. I've made a good living doing this for longer than you've been alive.

<<The first major problem is that many competitors don't pay attention to boxes going up to the solving stations. They're chatting to their friends or practising solves while they wait. The second problem is, if this were to work, competitors would have to be watching boxes, which would eventuate in competitors watching the scramble table, which is definitely not what we want. The fourth problem is the de-personalisation of things by turning competitors into a number; names might be hard to pronounce, but learning how to pronounce them is a good way to introduce yourself to people. Also, assuming it is experienced competitors running and judging, and assuming it is new competitors with the names no one knows how to pronounce, it would be a good way for experienced competitors to get to know the up-and-coming generations.>>

I'm not suggesting a change here. The names still get called out. Let me spell it out:

(0) When the heat is called, the competitor drops his cube and his paper into a box. If he can't hear too well, he might want to remember the color of the box so he can recognize his box sitting lonely by a judge later, in the event he misses his name being called.

(1) The box is given to the scrambler. The scrambler examines the paper to determine the appropriate scramble and applies it to the cube. The scrambler puts the scrambled cube, with paper, back into the box and hands it to a runner. The runner shouts out the name and drops the box at an empty judge.

(2) The competitor hears his name, or notices his color box next to a judge. He goes up and solves. After the last solve he leaves with his cube. The judge puts the paper (and possibly the cube) back in the box. The runner picks up the box and if there's a cube in it, takes it to the scrambler, and if there's not, takes it to the place where the completed papers are kept.

<<The third problem is keeping the right cube with the right box, which could easily get mixed up and throw everything out of whack.>>

Most people will simply wait for their name to be called and so this won't effect them. But now that you mention it, it's possible for the wrong person to respond to the calling of a name (as well as the color of the box). But with two pieces of information, box color and name calling, the chance of this happening should decrease. This is the advantage of redundancy.

So has anyone ever sat down to solve and discovered that the cube under the box isn't their cube? And that the piece of paper doesn't have their name on it? I would think that this is something that already happens every now and then. If this is a problem, you need to have the judge read the name off the paper to the competitor when they sit down. As in "Carl Brannen, are you ready?" If they're not Carl Brannen, now would be a good time to fix things *before* the competitor discovers that the cube doesn't seem to turn like it used to and that his name isn't on the paper.

As it turns out, I've scrambled cubes at a competition. It was a wonderful way of learning how other people's cubes feel (and how clean their hands are, LOL). The cubes come in sitting on their corresponding paper but the two don't always stay together. This results in the question "whose cube is this?" Having the cube put with the paper in a box seems to me to make it more likely that the cube stays with the paper which is the important thing.


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## flee135 (Aug 2, 2013)

Pedro said:


> Hmm...I'd think you only need the same number of cubes and covers, no?
> 
> So that means they only had those 2 choices? No option for "I just want a judge to hold the paper"?
> That sounds nice (from an organizing point of view)


Having extra cube covers is safer. Plus we've had some cube covers being destroyed in the process (I have no idea how...) so we were fortunate to have a lot more cube covers than cubes.

We made exceptions for those who did not want to use music stands or harmonica holders, but these competitors would have to let us know in advance, and also not take too long, otherwise too many of these requests would drain the amount of staff we had running the event.


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## dlo (Aug 2, 2013)

CarlBrannen said:


> (0) When the heat is called, the competitor drops his cube and his paper into a box. If he can't hear too well, he might want to remember the color of the box so he can recognize his box sitting lonely by a judge later, in the event he misses his name being called.



I don't like the idea of competitor's dropping cubes into boxes. This opens up the possibility of cheating by dropping a pre-scrambled cube into a box.



CarlBrannen said:


> (1) The box is given to the scrambler. The scrambler examines the paper to determine the appropriate scramble and applies it to the cube. The scrambler puts the scrambled cube, with paper, back into the box and hands it to a runner. The runner shouts out the name and drops the box at an empty judge.



The easiest way to figure out which cubes need to be scrambled is to remove them from the box. Having both scrambled and un-scrambled cubes in boxes often leads to runners bring up un-scrambled cubes.



CarlBrannen said:


> The cubes come in sitting on their corresponding paper but the two don't always stay together. This results in the question "whose cube is this?" Having the cube put with the paper in a box seems to me to make it more likely that the cube stays with the paper which is the important thing.



I haven't seen any issues with the cubes and paper being separated. At least with the national team, this doesn't seem to be an issue we currently have.


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## Pedro (Aug 2, 2013)

dlo said:


> I don't like the idea of competitor's dropping cubes into boxes. This opens up the possibility of cheating by dropping a pre-scrambled cube into a box.



Funny that this is how we pretty much always do it. Of course there's always a person next to the boxes (the person calling people, mostly) to make sure people don't put scrambled cubes in there. We once collected all cubes on top of the scorecards (back in 2009), but that got a little messy.



> I haven't seen any issues with the cubes and paper being separated. At least with the national team, this doesn't seem to be an issue we currently have.



Me neither. As you said, the cube comes inside the box, and we check the paper, take the cube, apply scramble, put it back. I guess maybe heavy wind or dropping the cover could lead to confusion, but that's not that common.


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## dlo (Aug 2, 2013)

Pedro said:


> Funny that this is how we pretty much always do it. Of course there's always a person next to the boxes to make sure people don't put scrambled cubes in there. We once collected all cubes on top of the scorecards (back in 2009), but that got a little messy.


Hm, yeah we've been doing cubes on top of score cards in the US. This also helps in keeping scrambled cubes separate from un-scrambled cubes since the new dropped of cubes are not in boxes. What got messy when you tried it?


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## Dene (Aug 2, 2013)

CarlBrannen said:


> lots stuff



I can see where you're coming from, but I still feel that, at the very least, problems two and three that I brought up still apply (problem four is a more general thing which we can put to the side). 

Now to be fair, problem two is already something that can happen with competitors looking out for when their cube is getting scrambled. However having colour-coded boxes can only add to the problem if it already exists...

As for problem three, the issue is scramblers getting boxes mixed up. In the original scenario, it would only be possible for a scrambler to match up the wrong cube with the wrong scorecard. In your new scenario, it is also possible to mix up the wrong cube with the wrong box, which would only lead to confusion further down the track.

Also another problem occurred to me (I should do this for a living, I bet I could get paid good money to find all the problems with ideas people come up with  ). Problem five is that competitors will forget which box they put their cube in (let's assume the boxes are numbered rather than coloured, as having many different colours is logistically difficult and would lead to having similarly coloured boxes). It would be easy for a competitor to be waiting for box #3 to show up, only to realise later that they put their cube in box #3 in the previous event, and actually had #11 this time.

In a nutshell, I can see how redundancy would be good, but in this case it would just add confusion and more ways for things to go wrong rather than aiding the system. It would be good if we could come up with more ways to make the system work better, and you could be onto a good thing here. I would think about it some more, but it's almost 2am, I am tired, and I have a long flight ahead of me tomorrow so my brain has been switched off for the next few days


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## Pedro (Aug 2, 2013)

dlo said:


> Hm, yeah we've been doing cubes on top of score cards in the US. This also helps in keeping scrambled cubes separate from un-scrambled cubes since the new dropped of cubes are not in boxes. What got messy when you tried it?



Well, basically we collected all cubes at once (around 50), so it was kinda messy. Now we only get cubes for each heat, and I usually make heats that are bigger than 2*timers. That way, once someone is done with the 5 solves, we just call another person, since there is now a free cube cover.



Dene said:


> I can see where you're coming from, but I still feel that, at the very least, problems two and three that I brought up still apply (problem four is a more general thing which we can put to the side).
> 
> Now to be fair, problem two is already something that can happen with competitors looking out for when their cube is getting scrambled. However having colour-coded boxes can only add to the problem if it already exists...
> 
> ...



I don't see how scramblers would mess up the boxes (except for the cases I mentioned before).
I know the whole process can have a lot of differences around the world, but here's how it works at "my" comps:

1 - Get scramblers, judges and runners set up.
2 - Get the cube covers, lay them on a table, and start put scorecards into them and calling people.
3 - Competitor puts his *solved* cube into the cover which has his scorecard and goes to table/waiting area (this depends on wheter we have space for a waiting area or not).
4 - Someone (runner or me or someone else helping) takes covers which already have a cube inside to the scrambling table and people start scrambling
5 - Runner takes scrambled cubes to judges
* solving solving solving*
6 - Once cube is solved, scorecard filled and signed, runner takes the cube inside the cover back to the scrambling table.
7 - Scrambler takes one cover, checks scorecard to see which scramble to apply next, does that and puts cube back into cover.
go back to step 5 until someone is done with the solves.
8 - Once someone is done, the cover returns to scrambling table with only the scorecard inside (obviously)
9 - The MC/announcer takes the empty cover, places a new scorecard inside and calls the next competitor
REPEAT UNTIL EVERyBODy IS DONE (sorry, the y key is failing on my keyboard)


Another question to the US-WC-people:
How was the stage phisically set up? I mean, where was the scrambling table located for each colored stage, and where was the competitors waiting area?


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## Dene (Aug 2, 2013)

On a smaller scale that would be doable, but on the scale of WCs, trying to get through enormous amounts of people in a short space of time, things can get mixed up and moved around by any number of people at any time. 

What we did this weekend was the runners would come back and remove the cube and scorecard from the box. This way, scrambled cubes go in boxes, solved cubes stay out of boxes. This avoids the issue of cubes getting taken to the stations without having the scramble applied. Despite this, still on many occasions, when runners weren't doing their thing properly or were rushing too much, non-scrambled cubes were being left in boxes, and then taken up to the stations. This is the very thing the system was designed to avoid XD


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## AvGalen (Aug 2, 2013)

Pedro said:


> 5 - Runner takes scrambled cubes to judges
> * solving solving solving*
> 6 - Once cube is solved, scorecard filled and signed, runner takes the cube inside the cover back to the scrambling table.
> 7 - Scrambler takes one cover, checks scorecard to see which scramble to apply next, does that and puts cube back into cover.
> ...


1) So person A would do 5 solves before person B would do any solves although they are in the same group? That would make person B a very relaxed and warmed up cuber compared to person A and it would give person B a lot of information about "nice scrambles".
2) And while the runner is running and the scrambler is scrambling and then the runner is running again person A just waits while occupying a timer for no reason? That wouldn't be very good for bigger cubes or if the scrambler is busy


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## shelley (Aug 3, 2013)

The process should be happening simultaneously with multiple timers and multiple people. While Person A's cube is being scrambled, Person B's scrambled cube can be brought to the timers. When Person A's cube is ready, it will be brought to the next available timer.


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## Pedro (Aug 3, 2013)

Yeah, what Shelley said.

I forgot to make it clear that competitor solves, goes back to waitiing area, and another person solves.

We always try to do that, except for cases when we don't have enough space for people to wait between solves.


Quoting myself (maybe it got lost on the end of last page)


> Another question to the US-WC-people:
> How was the stage phisically set up? I mean, where was the scrambling table located for each colored stage, and where was the competitors waiting area?



And I know you guys had staff rounds earlier (thursday, I believe). But that's not always possible (actually most of the time it's not), so my question is:
What do you think is better: having 2 (or more) separate groups or having a group composed of 1 person and the other with the rest?
I'll explain...

First option -> suppose you have 100 people. You make 2 groups of 50, and each group has a diferent staff. So you go through the first group in whatever way you can (depending on the number of timers and space available). Then you change all the staff (because they'll need different scrambles) and do the 2nd group.

Second option -> you choose one person who's willing to have different scrambles from everybody else. Then you take another person and they scramble each other cube and do 5 solves. After that, they scramble and judge for 2 more people for the 5 solves. Then those 4 who are done scramble and judge for another 4. Then the 8 people done scramble and/or judge for X more (depending on the hardware and space). Once you have enough people, you make a complete staff and call all the remaining competitors.

We've done both ways, but since I'm dumb, I never remember to keep track of the exact time it took. Both ways have pros and cons, so I was looking for input from other organizers.


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## flee135 (Aug 3, 2013)

Pedro said:


> How was the stage phisically set up? I mean, where was the scrambling table located for each colored stage, and where was the competitors waiting area?



The stage was set up with three sections, as you know, and the scrambling tables were situated behind the stage in the middle of each section. The competitors waiting area was just off to the side of each scrambling table so that they didn't get in the way of the runners, and could still hear their names when called.




Pedro said:


> And I know you guys had staff rounds earlier (thursday, I believe). But that's not always possible (actually most of the time it's not), so my question is:
> What do you think is better: having 2 (or more) separate groups or having a group composed of 1 person and the other with the rest?


The reason our competition runs so well is because we have a staff round the day before, and we can utilize every individual on the day of the competition. Without doing this, half of our staff would be sitting out part of the time, which is a huge waste of time when you need to run a competition efficiently. A system like this is only really necessary for competitions on the scale of Nationals or Worlds, where I would highly recommend getting the staff out of the way prior to the competition.

That being said, if I had to pick one of your two options for a smaller competition, I'd probably take just enough people to run the competition efficiently and put them in group 2. Prioritize getting other staff members through first, and slowly have them replace the working staff members so that you can maximize the efficiency (making sure that the first group of people get different scrambles). It resembles the second option the most, except using more than only one person in a separate group.


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## shelley (Aug 4, 2013)

A small portion of the Worlds crowd that made their way to the San Francisco Bay Area got to experience a competition in Berkeley today. You guys should know that kind of chaos (well, minus the scrambling mishaps) is much more typical of our local competitions. We unfortunately can't plan out all our events for months in advance.


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## Pedro (Aug 8, 2013)

Another thing I forgot to ask.

How was the 3x3 with feet handled? Was the main stage used? Did you move chairs and tables back, to put the timers on the floor and such?


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## Tim Reynolds (Aug 8, 2013)

Pedro said:


> Another thing I forgot to ask.
> 
> How was the 3x3 with feet handled? Was the main stage used? Did you move chairs and tables back, to put the timers on the floor and such?



It was a side stage event. The side stage was already on the ground, rather than up on the stage, and we had enough room between the tables and the front row of chairs.


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## Yes We Can! (Aug 12, 2013)

It was the best organised competition I have been to. My favourite part is the separation scrambler/runner/judge. It seems super efficient.
At European competitions, the judge has to go to the scrambling table and get a scrambled cube, then find the competitor, then find an open timer, then judge him, then bring back the solved cube to the scrambling table. And then the same all over.
Of course the (imho much better) system used at Worlds only works if you have enough people that are willing/experienced enough to be judges at a fix timing station. If I was in charge, I would try to set it up like this every time.

EDIT: I almost forgot--huge thank you to all the organisers and the staff. I have organised one competition before, it wasn't a big one and I was still tired to death afterwards. I can't imagine how much responsibilty and stress it must have been to you. All my respect!


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## TMOY (Aug 13, 2013)

Yes said:


> It was the best organised competition I have been to. My favourite part is the separation scrambler/runner/judge. It seems super efficient.
> At European competitions, the judge has to go to the scrambling table and get a scrambled cube, then find the competitor, then find an open timer, then judge him, then bring back the solved cube to the scrambling table. And then the same all over.
> Of course the (imho much better) system used at Worlds only works if you have enough people that are willing/experienced enough to be judges at a fix timing station. If I was in charge, I would try to set it up like this every time.


The runner system is not very new, in France we have already used it for French Nats 2012 and 2013 for example. And yes it's fine for relatively large comps, but it's not really needed every time, small comps (20-30 competitorss) IMHO work probably better without..

And the runners, more than the judges, need to be experienced people: when you're judging, you only have to sit and wait for the competitors to come to you, when you're running, you not only have to call people, but also to try to feed all judging tables with competitors equally (I've experienced the situation when you're the judge sitting the farthest from the scrambling table and no runner comes to you for a while because there's always a closer free table; not only is it a bit annoying, but when you finally happen to have someone to judge, his cube then sits forever on your table and you end up bringing it back fo the scramblers yourself...)


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