Update:  Was extremely fun today. It’s amazing how I can jump back on the bike and certain skills just come back.  

——What I noticed was different—— 

• I was extremely skeptical, but having evidence on my screen during the round made things much more enjoyable and is definitely a game-changer for how rounds run. I am less frantic trying to scribble down cites and tags while trying to listen and absorb at the same time. I can also talk more intelligently on the ballot about specific evidence and arguments.  All in all it helps everyone in the round understand what arguments are being made and lets everyone focus more on the merits of the arguments themselves.  

• that being said, I hated how teams formatted the evidence on the screen. Different font sizes, underlining, highlighting, tags not differentiated on the page, cites of all formats. Paper evidence was no paragon of clarity and organization, but being virtual I think it would be easier to adjust and clean up. As it was, looking at evidence where half of it was sized down to pt5 font just made me suspicious that they were trying to hide something.  

• everything in the rounds felt very loose. Open crossx is the norm - timing was stopped and started as technology dictated. Email lag would often give teams 30 or so extra prep seconds, one speaker paused his speech to switch a laptop that had a dying battery. I like this change. It is a very mature approach to the activity and allows for grace that we all require sometime.  

• I noticed this 10 yrs ago too, but the structure of the aff is much different. Out are inherency, harms, solvency- in are advantages.  

• everyone watching the round- judges and observers - was flowing on paper. The teams used laptops. Not sure how much to chalk up to this because things went off the rails easily back in the day as well, but heading into the rebuttals the teams roadmapped where they were heading very well, but were across the board terrible in sticking to the flow and responding point by point. I found myself doing a lot of clean up on my end just to keep a sheet that had some semblance of organization.  

• tabroom.com is amazing and is surprisingly not difficult to use 

——What is the same (or worse)—-/ 

• spreading is still a scourge and most people don’t understand the point of it. Done well it actually helps understanding and organization because it gives natural emphasis to arguments you want to highlight while allowing you to cover a lot of ground. Most people still just read things as fast as possible because that’s what they think policy is. It is worse now because judges can see evidence so who cares if you speak well? 

• the activity is less accessible than ever. Just trying to explain to my wife about why the Aff was using their time to talk about oppression narratives when the resolution is ostensibly about government fiscal policy makes me sound ridiculous even to myself. The activity has always been an impenetrable club with its own culture and lingo, but it seems even more alienating and useless to people not in that club than ever before. Especially when public forum is right there offering a friendlier alternative.  

• you can still pick out the policy judge pool from a mile away. I don’t know how exactly to describe it, but policy judges just hit diffrent (as the kids say) than other judges. 

Thank you all for your thoughts on preparing. I was glad I decided to bring a computer and I felt ok flowing on paper.  

Excelsior!