Some good suggestions here. I cba snip-quoting points above but thanks to everyone who's made some good suggestions.
Absolutely the several minute long rambling list of upcoming events becomes actively counterproductive for me. I find it incredibly tedious. Personally I'd be happy with a simple "lots of events upcoming include our next three in a, b, and c, and a nearby one later in the year in x. Full details on the FOCAL website" but I understand why event hosts want a bit more than that to promote their event. So I think by keeping it to 100% confirmed events with sign-ups open only, limiting it to the next few months of events and local events only, and an absolute maximum of 40 seconds per event of waffle time, this segment should be made less torturous and more engaging.
On the hosting of finals: agreed that more people should be given a go and that multiple hosts for the final may make things worse rather than better. It seems mad that (near enough) everyone at a lincoln style event has been capable of keeping score of a game they are hosting a few times already that day, but somehow on the final they can't do that and communicate it to the audience.
Now it's going to be difficult to make some of these points without some people reading it and thinking it might be motivated by them. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. If anyone reads this and thinks it's about you, feel free to ask me publicly or privately and I'll happily talk to you about it. But still on finals hosting and audience etiquette:
- For the duration of a final, the hosts are the single least important people in the room. Finals should either be about the two finalists, and celebrating their skill, or the audience, and putting on a showpiece for them. There have been finals recently where hosts seem to have been taking over the show and have become the centre of attention during a final. No more of that please.
- While audiences breaking into prolonged chatter after a round during a final is inappropriate, primarily for timekeeping purposes if not for consideration of the players' concentration, audiences asking valid questions such as "what is the score?", "what was that round?" etc, when that information has not been clearly displayed for them, is reasonable. They shouldn't be shouted down by the hosts. As above, the audience are more important than the hosts for the duration of the final.
- Similarly, while it may be necessary to get some quiet in the room to progress the final or at other times during the day, aggressive shushing and certainly angry screams of "SHUT UP!!!" are just fucking rude. It's not hard to say in a loud but calm voice "can we have some quiet please?" or similar.
- Sometimes it's necessary to tidy most of the seating away before the final, meaning seating (and especially seating with a good view of the final) is limited. Please have consideration first for those who may be less able/comfortable to stand, and then for those with impaired hearing/vision (which is also extremely important at Bristol-style events). Too often the limited seating at finals, and the front row of Bristol-style events, is taken up by able-bodied 20-somethings.
Some suggestions for how some of these improvements may be achieved:
- Have a display with the score of the final and, if possible, the selections/declarations. For Bristol style events this should be extremely simple. For Lincoln style, most events have a display monitor anyway for atropine stuff, and as there's no need for atropine stuff during the final, a simple notepad with the host or someone else operating works. People have used spreadsheets that give a fancy display before too and I'm sure a template could be whipped up with ease if this is something hosts want.
- For getting quiet in the room, rather than relying on COLIN's resident human foghorn, which while we all love him is still quite a disconcerting sound when unexpected, or resorting to rudeness as referenced above, it shouldn't be too difficult for hosts to have a speaker for their laptop that can be heard above the din. A simple loud but not jarring siren noise should suffice to play through a speaker. Having speakers on the host's laptop could also help in some other instances where sound is required and the volume is too low. I would expect bringing a small plug-in speaker for a laptop isn't too much of an ask for most hosts but if it is then maybe there could be a communal FOCAL one? It would be an incredibly cheap piece of equipment and shouldn't be as difficult to transport or as requiring of PAT testing etc as a full on sound system with mic.
- Where speakers aren't available or appropriate, and for seating-related issues, just be polite to people. That's the easiest suggestion to implement
A few other etiquette reminders while I'm already at risk of looking like a moaning miser:
- If spectating other players, please don't distract them. Even in between rounds. This includes standing in their eyeline, especially on a conundrum. You can normally read the conundrum better if stood behind them anyway
- If you're hosting a Lincoln style game, unless you're asked or are offering the maximum when players haven't got it and want to know, nobody gives a shit what word you got or what your numbers solution was. You're not playing.
- Any cars driven to/from co:events by attendees are the private property of their owners. They are not communal cars and access to them is granted only at the explicit discretion of the driver. If you require motorised transportation from A to B, you're in luck! Such excellent services as buses and taxis have been invented and are available in most places. You are not entitled to free favours from anyone.
- We're all touching the same letters cards all day so please wash your hands. As much as I regret my immaturity in printing "bloody big twat" on the back of those numbers cards I made, I am more regretful that more than one deck of them are now quite literally "bloody" as they are covered in actual bloodstains, and fear there are other, less visible, pathogens soaking into those cards at these events.
What needs to be clarified is the roles of people involved in the presenting side of a "Lincoln"-style final. There are up to four roles: the host, the board assistant, and the one or two Dictionary Corner members.
