Most of us are facing a new reality in which we cannot travel to tournaments and we can’t have people come to our institutions to compete. I know our team has canceled more than six competitive events. 

In tragedy, my officemate and I see an opportunity to do something to fill the emerging gaps in the debate community. We are working really fast to put together a proposal for a big online debate competition, and are looking to get it sponsored by a high profile tech firm. This event will be in the vein of Civic Debate Conference events: It will be public facing in that will likely involve students, faculty, and high profile practitioners in the educational tech field who will come together to debate and evaluate debates. 

Participants in the Civic Debate Conference have spent the year experimenting with online debating, and while we’re still developing finalized best practices, we are in a good position knowledge-wise to successfully carry out an online competition, and now is the time to strike if we want to get something big off the ground.

We’re looking at putting together a proposal and delivering it to our potential partners over the next two to three weeks. One piece of information we’ll need to present to them is demand. If your institution is interested in an event like this please indicate your interest and level of demand on this google form https://forms.gle/iTV2rTkNT6GYgEug6https://forms.gle/iTV2rTkNT6GYgEug6. 

This is not a finalized commitment. You are enabling me and Martin to approach our potential partners with a solid indication that there is demand for this type of event. Please fill out the google form as soon as possible. The final cut off for this form will be Friday, March 20 at 6 p.m. Pacific Daylight Savings Time. 

JP