European Youth Championships

[DenisO]

The 20th European Youth Championships start next week (13 to 20 july) at Riccione in Italy. Yet I can't find any info on Internet vugraph coverage - nothing seems to be scheduled on BBO, Swan or E-bridge :(

 

I wonder why this should be - do the organisers not favour internet coverage or has there been no communication with the Vugraph providers? This is is an important event and I'm sure we would all like to see these talented Junior teams - I'm sure there will be many of our BBO members taking part.

 

Denis

[Walddk]

I have been touch with Vincenzo, our contact in Italy, but unfortunately I can't deliver good news. Finding operators is the problem, and not the European Bridge League. They would be happy to let us broadcast.

 

However, we are still trying to get something from Riccione. Bo Nilsson (Booze) from Sweden is working on it. Whether he succeeds or not remains to be seen. We would all love to have the juniors on vugraph, and you are quite right when stating that we have many BBO members taking part in the event.

 

No promises, but we haven't given up just yet.

 

Roland

[DenisO]

Thanks Roland - Hope you can sort something out ;)

 

Denis

[Walddk]

I am happy to announce that we have now got a couple of volunteer operators for Riccione, so we are quite hopeful that we will be able to broadcast at some stage. However, it is still a bit vague, so it will be unwise to list anything on our vugraph schedule page.

 

We suggest that you pay attention to (possible) public announcements on BBO. My guess as I am writing this post is that we should be able to broadcast from at least one table from Sunday the 17th and onwards.

 

The link to the official web site is

 

http://www.eurobridge.org/competitions/05R...ne/Riccione.htm

 

Roland

[Walddk]

More good news. We will have two laptops in Riccione from Saturday and enough operators it seems (one from Sweden, two from Netherlands). Diane and David Greenwood from Ireland will also be there to render practical help.

 

Where there's a will, there's a way.

 

Roland

[DenisO]

Great news indeed :rolleyes:

 

Before I saw this I contacted the EBL asking why there was no coverage scheduled by any of the three Vugraph providers. Their (webmaster) response was that none of the companies had asked.

 

Am I being naive to think that the EBL should be taking the lead in promoting their tournament? .... and what better way to promote youth bridge than by broadcasting it on the Internet where there is such a large potential audience of young people.

 

Denis

[Fluffy]

I'll be there, hopefully the spannish team doesn't do it as badly as always and they don't put us out of the vu-graph as last year hehe.

[Booze]

HI

 

I hope I will get some more inf tonight, but I know we can broadcast at least one table starting this Sunday, hopefully we can get a schedule soon.

 

Booze

[mrdct]

The first daily bulletin indicates that there is an onsite vugraph show, but it doesn't appear to be run on the Swan software.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing how the European teams that have qualified for Sydney fare. Interestingly, Israel (one of the Sydney qualifiers) got pumped by Sweden (who haven't qualified) in the first round.

[Walddk]

It's Baldi's (Italian) old programme. Seems to work ok, David Greenwood (jtr) of Ireland tells me. He and Barry Rigal, USA, are the on site commentators.

 

With a little bit of luck we should be able to broadcast from Sunday at 10.00 Paris time, 4:00 am New York, 6:00 pm Sydney. David has arranged a meeting with our operators on Saturday (day off).

 

As to which match(es), we shall have to wait until Barry Rigal selects his for the on site vugraph. David will try to get something out of him before the rest day on Saturday where everyone will be on an outing.

 

Roland

[fred]

I can't imagine why the tournament organizers would arrange to use the Baldi program for on site vugraph when they could have used BBO for that purpose (and, as a consequence, had an Internet vugraph show as well).

 

FIGB (Italian Bridge Federation) sometimes tells us that they do not have any money to pay for vugraph operators (which is just about the only expense they have to incur when they use BBO for vugraph). However, the Baldi program requires operators as well so if they can afford to pay those operators, they might as well pay BBO operators.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[coyot]

I can't imagine why the tournament organizers would arrange to use the Baldi program for on site vugraph when they could have used BBO for that purpose (and, as a consequence, had an Internet vugraph show as well).

I don't know if you're familiar with the Baldi program. I happenned to be one of the operators on the last Euro Youth champs...

 

The Baldi's software is a complex suite that does a LOT of things aside from two-table broadcast to the auditorium... In fact, it does practically EVERYTHING, mainly scoring.

 

Apart from approx 4-5 vugraph operators (it is a very tedious task and I would not recommend trying to pull the show in 2 :) for the two rooms, there must be two more to enter the score strips into the system and verify them.

 

The system produces score sheets for each session, various types of ratings, Butlers etc.

 

The main VG auditorium contains three screens - one for video from open VG room, one for "digital" from open VG room (hands, bidding and play) and one with running results for all the matches.

 

BBO broadcast last year was realized via another 2(3) operators sitting in the auditorium and retyping what they saw into the BBO...

 

Unless I am missing out a lot of BBO capabilities, BBO could cover approximately 10% of what the Baldi's old software does. (Very old software. You cannot imagine what we went through when Baldi's colleagues by mistake failed to ship his main Novell server and we found that on a Saturday afternoon with the show starting Monday morning :))

 

On the other hand, to take a little revenge on the EBL - last year the whole staff was volunteers. We did everything for free (and our BF still ended in red numbers) - so if they use the lack of VG operators as an excuse, they should instead say that this year's event organizer has lack of commitment :-)

[fred]

Thanks for clarifying, Coyot.

 

I understand the FIGB (and/or EBL) decision to use the Baldi software for scoring purposes, but that doesn't mean it has to be used for vugraph as well. The Baldi vugraph operators are not required as far as scoring goes. They could be spending their time as BBO vugraph operators instead.

 

Sorry if I am missing something due to unfamiliarity with the Baldi program.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Walddk]

This may not be the right forum, but I will do it anyway. The EBL (in particular) and the WBF both need a Public Relation Officer, full time even. It's actually not BBO's job to approach them, but their job to approch us before major championships.

 

A missed opportunity to promote bridge I am sorry to say. Why would we not have any broadcast for the first 3 days of this important event: the future of all bridge worldwide?

 

We had to take action when we realised that nothing was done in this respect. We are likely to succeed, but it should not be necessary to make it this complicated for everyone concerned.

 

I have lost count, but believe me when I tell you that I get dozens of private chat messages every day with this question: "Why do we not have broadcasts from the European Youth Championships"?

 

Good question, and I reply politely to all of them by giving them the link to this thread. I would no doubt have received more if I hadn't been invisible most of the time.

 

All other organisers contact Fred and/or me before a local broadcast. Should EBL as far as Italy is concerned (as was the case regarding Tenerife) be an exception? I can't see why.

 

Roland

[DenisO]

Well said Roland !

 

When I contacted the EBL asking if I had missed the info on Internet coverage, I suggested that a great opportunity for promoting youth bridge had been overlooked.

 

I received a response from their webmaster saying that the EBL doesn't have the facilities, that none of the companies had shown any interest in covering the championships and that I should contact the companies(ie BBO, Swan and E-bridge) directly.

 

I find out now (from Daily Bulletin) that the webmaster was none other than Panos Gerontopolous who is Chairman of the European Youth Committee. It looks to me as though Internet coverage wasn't even considered by the EBL or their organisers FIGB. This is a sad state of affairs.

 

Anyone know how to improve it? I replied to Panos expressing my disappointment and the view that the EBL should be taking the lead in getting their events covered on the Internet where there is such a large potential audience especially among young players. but I fear I may be a lone voice crying in the wilderness :lol:

 

Denis

[Walddk]

A preliminary schedule is now listed on our vugraph page:

 

http://online.bridgebase.com/vugraph/sched...?order_by=event

 

To answer a couple of relevant questions you may have in advance:

 

Which match(es)?

We don't know yet.

 

Are you sure you will be able to broadcast all this?

No, but if not, it's not BBO's fault. We have the staff we need on site.

 

Roland

[mike777]

Well said Roland !

 

When I contacted the EBL asking if I had missed the info on Internet coverage, I suggested that a great opportunity for promoting youth bridge had been overlooked.

 

I received a response from their webmaster saying that the EBL doesn't have the facilities, that none of the companies had shown any interest in covering the championships and that I should contact the companies(ie BBO, Swan and E-bridge) directly.

 

I find out now (from Daily Bulletin) that the webmaster was none other than Panos Gerontopolous who is Chairman of the European Youth Committee. It looks to me as though Internet coverage wasn't even considered by the EBL or their organisers FIGB. This is a sad state of affairs.

 

Anyone know how to improve it? I replied to Panos expressing my disappointment and the view that the EBL should be taking the lead in getting their events covered on the Internet where there is such a large potential audience especially among young players. but I fear I may be a lone voice crying in the wilderness  :)

 

Denis

Great and informative post.

 

The bridge authorities in charge seem great at listing all the problems but cannot pick up the phone and call bbo or other sites and try and find a solution or give it a shot.

Thanks for going out of your way and making the extra effort.

 

Since they expect you to call all the companies maybe you can also do the vugraph, put up the money, hire the people, run the computers. Perhaps in your spare time you can take care of hotel, air and do the tourney scoring also...:lol:

 

Agian thank you and thanks to Roland for all the headaches and hoops it sounds you guys jumped through.

[hrothgar]

One additional comment:

 

One "issue" that BBO might be encountering is (what appears to be) a relatively de-centralized structure for supporting VuGraphs. Case in point: I know for a fact that the World Youth Bridge congress in Sydney has been plotting their VuGraph coverage for months (I had time to organize a trip to Australia just to take part in the joy that is data entry). In contrast, it appears that the EBL didn't engage in the same planning process.

 

I suspect that the difference in priorities is primarily a function of the individuals who are in charge. I doubt that there are are formal policies in place regarding coverage. Accordingly, the degree of support very much depends on how comfortable local individuals are with Vugraph.

 

Its worth remembering that we're still in the early days of electronic Vugraph coverage. Roland and BBO are amassing a great track record for VuGraph coverage. I suspect (hope) that coverage will become much more comprehensive as time progresses...

[Walddk]

I suspect (hope) that coverage will become much more comprehensive as time progresses...

More comprehensive? Did you have a close look at our schedule from January 7, 2005? Every single week, and very often more events simultaneously for several days!

 

Did you also notice how much we have in store in the weeks and months to come? All events are not even listed yet of course.

 

It can hardly be more comprehensive than it has been for the past 6 months. We can get better, sure, always room for improvement, but there is a limit regarding how much we can accept at a time.

 

The reason is quite simple. Organisers are not always very good at giving us the notice we require. But they will learn I am sure.

 

Roland

[mrdct]

I wonder if any thought has been given to covering the Bermuda Bowl in Estoril in a few short months from now?

[fred]

I wonder if any thought has been given to covering the Bermuda Bowl in Estoril in a few short months from now?

BBO is going to be used to provide vugraph for live audiences at the playing site in Estoril. That means we will have at least 2 live tables on BBO at all times. Most likely, in order for there to be more tables, we will have to find volunteers to work as operators. Given that we have a lot of members from Portugals and that a lot of BBO members rate to be going to this tournament, I think the chances are good that we will be able to feature more than 2 live tables at once.

 

If everything goes according to plan then up to the minute provisional standings, board by board results, and scoreboards for every match will be available directly through BBO.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[doofik]

Can't wait :P Great job.

 

doofik

[coyot]

Thanks for clarifying, Coyot.

 

I understand the FIGB (and/or EBL) decision to use the Baldi software for scoring purposes, but that doesn't mean it has to be used for vugraph as well. The Baldi vugraph operators are not required as far as scoring goes. They could be spending their time as BBO vugraph operators instead.

 

Sorry if I am missing something due to unfamiliarity with the Baldi program.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

You're welcome :P

 

In theory, Baldi's Vugraph operation could be replaced by BBO, no doubt about that. You would only have to enter the results from the vugraph rooms to the system (just as results from any other table).

 

Edit: The Baldi's VuGraph (called Rama) is an integrated part of the system - when the operators finish "playing" the board, the result is automatically updated... But it should be no problem to configure the system as "no Rama shown" and simply collect the results from the VG rooms just as any other results and enter them into the system separately...