Hi everyone,

I'm writing about two important Worlds Council issues, the first of which
is particularly time-sensitive. Please read carefully if the Berlin break
or Worlds Council issues in general are of concern to you:

*1. Worlds Break - special session*
Pending a vote at pre-Council, it is possible that there will be a vote to
reconsider the break at a special session held after pre-Council (any
changes would affect the break at Berlin). As you may be aware, the current
break is for all teams on 18+ points to break; England has proposed a
48-team break instead, but the other commonly floated alternatives (a
return to the 32-team break or a larger expansion to a 64-team break) also
will be up for consideration if this session is held. For reference,
schools voted to support the 18+ teams break proposal from Canada (and
originally, Steve) at caucus last year.

It may be difficult to meet as a group in Berlin prior to pre-Council, so
we'll conduct an online vote, as we did earlier in the year when
determining the US vote for the 2014 host of Worlds. I know some people ran
into trouble with the forum last time (and there's no sense in making you
register for another site to vote), so please vote through the Google form *by
December 25th at 11:59pm, Eastern time:*

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHYxRlNsc1VDLVYzSnl6cmNpanJFNVE6MQ#gid=0

Votes submitted after the deadline will not be counted, one vote per
school, etc. For transparency, the results are viewable here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ao1UYdwsq4cmdHYxRlNsc1VDLVYzSnl6cmNpanJFNVE#gid=0

*2. US Caucus in Berlin prior to Worlds Council*
As was the case last year in Manila, we'll meet for a US caucus at some
point during the tournament to discuss the major issues that will come up
at Council and what the US position should be on each of them. I've been in
touch with the Auckland bid about attending the beginning of caucus to
answer questions and better inform our decision, and I plan to extend the
same invitation to Malaysia. Please bring your questions about the two bids
to that meeting, so that (assuming things work out), we can clarify
anything with the two bids before our internal discussion.

It's impossible to know now when and where this meeting will take place
right now, so I'm writing also to encourage you to listen for an
announcement between rounds (which is when we and most other countries
communicated information about caucus times and locations). Obviously
there's a risk that not everyone who's interested in attending will be in
the room / be listening at the time, so please try to spread the word to
other US teams once we finalize a time and place, so that everyone who is
interested in contributing to the discussion and voting on likely topics
can attend.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you all in Berlin!

Best,

Coulter