China Ultimate

Not to bog you fair readers down in the boring minutia of minutes -- god forbid we're turning into a bureaucracy that holds meetings -- but for those interested in keeping up with developments in the planning of China's national tournament, this is for you.

This Saturday’s meeting was very good. I cannot wait to work with all of you on this tournament over the spring. Let’s increase our use of email and continue to communicate over CNY.

Ken, sorry that we were unable to connect. Let’s Burger lied about their internet connection… and that was the second location we had gone to…

As for the meeting here are some notes that I took. Mike has others. This is not an exhaustive list of what we talked about (Tao’s brackets is one area, and what the foreigners should do on Saturday –nines?) and I encourage you to add or correct what I have written.

In attendance (clockwise from door):

Mike

Jeff

Shen

Tao

Kelly

Steven

Location/time: Let’s Burger (tasty food) from 8:00 until 10:00pm (Kelly could only count this as one hour if she is counting : ) ) on Saturday, Feb, 6, 2010.

These notes are not in the order as discussed at the meeting:

Sponsorship:

This is an area that is difficult but we were happy that if we continue to plug away we may find some good news. We all agreed that at this point we should organise the tournament as if we were not going to receive any sponsorship. However, that does not mean that we should not try to get merchandise and money as sponsorships. Some areas where we may be able to get sponsorship:

n Nokia – we have helped them put on clinics (Kelly will invite them to participate in our spring league and use that discussion to slowly bring up sponsorship opportunities)

n ISB – in addition to the free fields in the spring we may be able to get some sponsorships since they are sending teams

n KPMG – I want to get tents from them like they did in SH

n Mike’s company – a little bit o’ cash?

n Other companies that we are involved with

n Eric Wu’s father – we discussed trying to see if funds were available from him or PWC. Eric indicated that this might be a possibility

Mike, Gareth and I have been working on a sponsorship pack and we will send it around when ready so each of you can approach companies that you feel may be helpful in this regard.

Also Zahlen will continue to help support us. We will talk about jerseys for early-bird registration like two years ago.

Team sponsorship:

We also want to provide sponsorships to teams so we can increase turnout especially from teams in the south that have to travel all the way across China to get here. I would love if we could provide some sponsorship for the tournament fees but really try to get it so everyone pays roughly the same price in travel costs (if everyone took trains). For example if train tickets from SZ are 600-800 we could off set the cost over 300 or so. (These numbers are made up off the top of my head.) I know this is not really possible but it can be a goal.

Price for the tournament:

In addition to other early-bird registration deals we discussed having a discount on price per player. Most at the meeting felt that a fifty kuai increase in price might be justified especially if we have some team sponsorships like last year. So the prices would work out to:

Foreigners 350RMB

Chinese 250RMB

Chinese students 150RMB

These increases could be explained by our increased cost of fields (for more teams, and increased sending on sponsorships).

Early-bird registration:

We thought an early-bird period for registration would be beneficial. For those teams registering before this date would have a fifty kuai discount on the above prices and may be able to get cheaper or free jerseys. The dates for early-bird registration were not set in stone but April 10^th and the first of May were mentioned. We talked about not allowing registration after the first of May.

Direction and priorities of the tournament:

I wanted to emphasize that while we want to encourage teams to register as early as possible and may have these favourable prices and merchandise for them we have to remember that the most important aspect of the tournament is that we get the most amount of Chinese nationals to attend.

The website:

Was discussed. We talked about the need for it to be simple and easy to use. Mike will lead on this front and Jeff will send him what he will need from last year to get the website running in the next few weeks.

Mike has more on this.

Rules for participation:

We talked about allowing teams to have unlimited numbers and we reached a tentative agreement on using the old rules for foreigner participation on the Chinese teams (under 30% with only two allowed on the field at once). Mike brought up allowing a lower number of foreigners might help the level of play and overall comfort of the Chinese nationals. In the end it seemed that the old rules were agreed upon. Right, Mike?

The ratio was set at 5/2, 4/3 offense decides.

Everyone agreed that it was too early for WFDF rules as the Chinese nationals needed more time to grow on their own. As it isn’t clear there will be a viable WFDF organisational committee around Chinese in the near future nationals can concentrate on promoting the sport among the locals.

Theme:

We were a little baffled at what Balance wanted when he was talking about more people mingling at the Saturday night party. Jeff was worried what he would have in store for the SZ tournament.

Some theme ideas that we talked about:

A pajamas theme

三国

Transformaters

Blizzard games (i.e. world of warcraft, starcraft, etc.)

Movie theme

As last year some ideas for games were talked about and some icebreaking games would definitely help people mingle as many of the Chinese players are shy and do not drink like the foreigners.

Fields:

At this point the fields are settled on the weekend of May 15^th and 16^th. We will use their lunch and water services again as they were fine and convenient. After CNY Jeff will confirm the details with Zhouyan, our contact at the fields.

Media:

We agreed that media was important for this year especially highlighting the competitive play and good spirit of the tournament while downplaying the drinking.

We will:

- Put together a pack for media consumption talking about the game and media pieces that have already covered the sport in BJ (Tao and Shen?)

- Approach Casey about CCTV involvement

- Tao also has media contacts that we can pitch to.

Hotels:

We were hoping to find good hotels with a party stop like last year within walking distance. We all agreed that the format of the party last year was good (with a dinner and drinking all in the same location near the hotels) and hope to repeat it. Wudaokuo was a location suggested for the hotels this year as it is close to the fields and will probably have cheap hotels for students.

Future meetings:

We agreed that future meetings can take place on Sundays either around eleven (ie before pickup) or in the evening (after pickup). Steven’s cafe is available in the future.

We agreed that we don’t have to meet again until the first weekend in March and then meeting twice in march and up to four times in April and then weekly in May.

To do:

n The website needs to go up and Jeff and mike will prepare a version for comments.

n A general role call of teams around china and their contact people should be taken and this includes a formal announcement of the date and venue. (who?)

n More discussion on the rules that we have adopted so they can be finalised.

n Sponsorship opportunities need to be approached

n Hotels need to be found (Mike and his company offered company time to support this effort)

n Priorities of the tournament need to be thought about. What best favours increasing Chinese turnout that we can reasonably do

n And jeff will finish up sponsorship packet

n Media packet – Tao?

I would also like to talk to leaders around China so we can find a way to agree where next year’s nationals will be held and make a fair way of picking locations in the future. Hopefully, we will already know the next location before this year’s tournament so they can get the most out of our expertise and their time at the tournament.

This may have to be developed in tandem with a Chinese national Frisbee organisation. I will put out an email for this.

Ok. Rock on. We will meet again in March and I will set out an email about that but before that I hope to see a good email discussion.

上周六的会开得很不错。我已经等不及在春天和大家一起努力了。