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Webmaster's 5 cents:
Well I was not really suprised, that all the slots are allready filled, even more, I was sure that it is going to happen even faster. Great, that there are still slots reserved for countries that were on the EUDC in the past.
This EUDC is going to be great, knowing the org.com, I know that all is going to be good. I hope that all of you that wanted to go have allready registered. If not, good luck in the 2nd phase.
Dear debaters!
It was a pleasure to see how fast registration happened yesterday
from 12:00 GMT onwards. Though for us it's great to see so many people
interested in EUDC 2008, I know that for you this has raised some
question concerning registration of teams and adjudicatrors.
Here's what happened yesterday and is actually happening currently.
According to the EUDC Constitution, we're obliged to hold one team
slot for every country who has participated in previous Euros. This
means that while you were all registering, the system was counting
countries. Right now we're holding slots for 5 more countries that
haven't registered their teams, meaning 5 team slots altogether.
This has created a situation where you see that there are 116 teams
registered and you would like to register more teams, because you know
that the team cap for Phase 1 is 120 teams. But actually we're
holding places for 5 more countries. If we get a „No" for
participation from them, we will at once make those places available.
But as long as there are more or the same amount of countries (that
we're holding slots for) than there are free team slots before reaching
the 120 team cap, you cannot register any more teams. Furthermore,
we're waiting for confirmation from universities that accidentally
registered twice, so we could delete one of the registrations and give
that place free. If it happens that some places will be made available
to everybody (not only the countries we're holding places for), we will
notify you over the EUDC and British Debate lists and on our website
straight away with a short notice and on the basis of first-come-first-serve somebody gets the place.
Please note that it is not possible to put your teams on a waiting
list. There is no waiting list in Phase 1 of registration, so you'll
just have to keep your eyes open and try to register if and as soon as
some new places will be available.
Concerning judges. The adjudicators cap for Phase 1 was 100. If we
find any adjudicators registered twice or any faults in the
registration information we will notify the registrants and delete
their registration (this has already been done). If you see there are
less than 100 adjudicators on the registration list, you can register
your adjudicator. Since this happens more often than with team places,
we will not notify you about this over the lists, you just need to keep
track from our web-site.
We will inform you about how many places will be made available in Phase 2 after Phase 1 of registration has closed.
We have also received a lot of question concerning Bar Ilan
University teams, since there was initially four and now there's three
of them left in the list. Here's a explanation of why this is so.
First two Bar Ilan University teams were registered at 14:08
(without names, with contact name). The second two teams from the same
university were registered at 14:12 (with names).
The fact that they got the chance to register 4 teams instead of two
was overlooking on our part regarding the system. What happed was that
the person who filled in the second registration form didn't get the
message that already two of the teams from that university were
registered before. This was due to both registrants entering the data
of their participants on exactly (!) the same moment. This was the only
case during the registration that this happened. For Phase 2 this
problem will be fixed.
We have a very strict rule (that we have communicated several times)
that we will delete any double registation forms. However, as the
current situation was partly our resposibility, we made a proposal to
them that we will let one team of the later registrants in and only
delete one team's and one judge's registration (i.e. eventually leaving
three teams in). The fourth team and judge were deleted last night.
But there is also a restriction accompanying this exception - Bar
Ilan University won't be able to register more teams during Phase 2 of
registration.
***
Here are a few of the more frequent questions answered:
Registration confirmation. Every registrant should
have received a registration confirmation, which also includes your
login code for Phase 3 of registration. In case you have not received
the confirmation by now, it may be that you have accidentally
(hopefully not intentionally :)) entered an invalid or wrong e-mail
address. In this case please contact me and we will resend you the
confirmation with all the necessary information.
Checking payments. Many teams have already asked us
to confirm if their payments have come through. We thank all
participants who have already had the possibility to make the payment
of participation fee. Considering that payments for registrations in
Phase 1 are due on 23 March, we will not start checking your payments
right away. Let us wait until registration for Phase 1 closes on 16
March, after which we will check for further inconsistencies and
correct the list of participants, if needed. We will check payments
then and assign the „Confirmed" status to all participants who have
paid the fee.
Credit card payments. It has been asked if and when
will we automatically take money off your credit card, if you have
provided us with your credit card details. As said above, we will start
checking payments and debiting credit cards only after 16 March. In
case we have already received a bank transfer from a participant, we
will of course not be debiting his/her credit card again.
Late payments. The deadline for payments for
participants registered in Phase 1 is 23 March and it is imperative
that you follow it! We will not be granting any exceptions, so late
payments ar not allowed. Failure to pay the participation fee by 23
March will result in deleting the participant from the list.
New institutions. We have had many registrations
from institutions that have never before participated in the Euros. We
will be contacting all the newcomers individually to inquire about your
institution, because we need to make sure that you are indeed an
institution in the meaning of the EUDC Constitution, i.e. a
„university, college or other institution of further education awarding
degrees or other qualifications as recognised by the laws of the
country in which the aforesaid are situated". If your institution does
not meet these criteria, you are not eligible for this tournament and
we will delete your registration. Therefore – newcomers, please be
prepared to furnish proof that your institution indeed meets these
criteria and is elegible to compete. Also, it would make our and your
own lives much easier if you would start thinking about this already
now, and if possible, send us information about your institution and
prove compliance with the aforementioned criteria.
Payment details. You will find the account number
on the invoice that you were supposed to receive after registration.
Please also pay attention to the reference number, which must
be marked on the payment order. If you have any questions regarding
payment details, please contact Piret Poopuu at
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***
Hopefully this made some things more clear and aswered some of your
questions. The rest of the questions have been answered personally or
will be answered in a Q&A sheet that will be sent out later today.
We're sorry for any inconvenience that the quick registration
process in Phase 1 has caused. But once again - be prepared for the
same thing happening in Phase 2.
With best regards,
Maarja Teder
Communications Director
EUDC 2008 Tallinn
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