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WUDC 2010 Koc Website and announcements |
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sreda, 20 maj 2009 |
To the global debating community,
It gives us pleasure to launch the website of the Vehbi Koc World Universities Championships 2010 at http://www.kocworlds2010.com/ to the entire global debating community. We have gone through a second period of testing in which we have solved most technical issues. Before we highlight some of the most important aspects of ongoing work, we want to take this opportunity to ask every member of our debating community to go to the website and ensure that you can access the page. Different countries around the world have different access issues and we need to solve this before registration kicks off in June. If you do have problems, can you send a mail to our Registration Officer, Hasan, at
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. Now to some important announcements.
Registration
You will notice that the timings of the different phases of registration remain in line with previous rounds of the Championships. One major change, and something we flagged at Council, is the introduction of a compulsory pre-payment at Phase 2 of registration. This is a direct response to challenges faced by Cork last year where demand for places at Phase 1 massively exceeded supply, only for over 100 teams to drop out when payment was demanded. This meant that many teams were only able to purchase flights one month in advance of the tournament, massively increasing their costs. We have decided to follow the model set by Monash for Australs and will expect institutions that register to make a financial promise to us. If they do not, we can pass on their places to others in good time for them to buy flights. We realise after some discussion with debating clubs that some institutions can only pay for tournaments in single installments and so will offer such clubs the opportunity to pay their entire balance in Phase 2 of registration if they so wish.
One further note is that the exact time of Phase 1 of registration on 22nd June 2009 has changed by one hour due to concerns raised from the East Coast of North America that they will need to stay up until 3am in the morning. This will mean that IONA registrations need to be made at 7am. These changes will be made to the website as soon as possible.
Transport
Although Antalya is served by many direct flights from Europe, it is likely that most of you will need to purchase flights that route through Istanbul or Ankara. We would advise that you compare flight prices for Istanbul or Ankara returns with Antalya transfers bought separately with transit flights for both price and suitability. We have a comprehensive list of companies that fly or drive to Antalya on our website so that you can make your plans well in advance. We will pick everyone up from the airport and coach station in Antalya but this will be dependent on your filling in your personal details at Phase Four of registration.
Budget and Accommodation
Those of you in Council will remember that we had some budgetary problems at the time of our ratification. We are pleased to announce that we have renegotiated with many of our suppliers and that our budget is now in far better shape. We will be staying in the hotel outlined in our original bid delivered at Council in Thailand, 2008. However, as indicated in Council in Ireland, 2009 we will need to charge registration at 390€ per person to cement our budgetary position.
Adjudication
We have set aside funds, as promised in both 2008 and 2009, to offer registration waivers and some flights for independent adjudicators. Our Deputy Chief Adjudicators will be in charge of this process for each of their regions and will be allocated a budget to organise judges from their region. If you are an independent judge, we would ask that you get in touch with your regional DCA. We should note that decisions regarding funding will reside with the DCAs and will be based on assessment of your CVs and suitability to Chair at the tournament. Our aim is to have 120 outstanding chairs through both the n-1 and independent pools so that we have flexibility in judge allocation and regional representation. We are currently solving a couple of spam related issues with our DCA's e-mails and will post them to the website.
Consular Assistance and Invitation Letters
We realize that many of you need to get funding from your universities before the July recess. If you need letters of invitation or have questions regarding visas or other consular issues, please get in touch with Cem Hot at
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. You will need to send such mails from university addresses so that we can ensure that we are sending letters to bonafide and eligible people. A letter of invitation does not mean that you will definitely be accepted to debate at Worlds - this will be dependent on your registration. If you need a letter of invitation to be sent by post, you will need to cover the associated cost and allow 15 working days for arrival. Otherwise, faxes and e-mail scans will take five days. We can only address letters to institutions rather than people as we cannot take the risk of formally inviting individuals about whom we have no certain information.
For now, that is everything that we would like to announce. We look forward to welcoming you in Turkey this December. Letters of welcome, from us as convenors and from Neill Harvey Smith as Chair of Worlds Council, will go onto our website in the next week.
Please get in touch about anything that concerns or excites you.
Warm regards,
Fatih Mehmet Inal and Suleyman Onay
Co-Convenors of the Vehbi Koc Worlds Universities Debating Championships 2010
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