Compititions in Ireland?

[D3LuK4]

Hey. I'm an Irish speedcuber and I was wondering if the WCA will ever have compititions in Ireland.

[DanCohen]

The WCA doesn't exactly "hold" competitions. They approve competitions being held by individuals. Try and get in touch with other Irish cubers and see if a competition can be put together.

[D3LuK4]

Ok cool mate but its going to take a lot of time and work.

[Radu]

You should contact a WCA Delegate, of course who is leaving near Ireland.
http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/node/316
The best choice for you, at the moment is Dave Hedley Jones (UK), as he is the most active. He will definitely want to help you.

[r_517]

Glad to see another Irish cuber.
It's not that hard to organise one. The problem is we can't summon a number of domestic cubers, which will certainly result in the difficulty of finding sponsorships, so that the venue, timers, displays (even the batteries required) will be a big burden.

There are three to five competitions in England every year, which I think the only and the best way at present.

[D3LuK4]

I know that's the problem. I'm only 16 so it would be difficult to organise an event on my own. Why haven't competitions been held in Ireland before? It would make things a lot easier. There are even a few Irish cubers registered on this site.
Lol the national 3X3 record is 16.84 and my PB is 13.23.

[TimMc]

Why haven't competitions been held in Ireland before?

It's probably just due to a lack of motivation to organise one and that solving puzzles can come and go as a fad while you're a teenager...

Community events
We have around 32 regulars that attend competitions in Melbourne, Australia since we started. But event organisers in the rural town of Benalla, which is 3 hours away from the nearest major city, managed to get 136 participants to solve a Rubik's Cube and break the Guinness World Record for the most amount of people solving a Rubik's Cube in an hour. The record attempt was held during their annual three day festival so they had lots of locals that were out and about and ready to have some fun. They got sponsorship from a local toy store and charged an entry fee of AU$10, which included a store-bought Rubik's Cube. All the money raised went back into a fund for the community to continue to conduct similar projects to benefit the area. If you're in a town where they've similar festivals then you could try talking with one of their event organisers to see if they're interested in attempting to break the same world record. It's not exactly hosting a WCA competition but it'll build up interest in the community and might be a way to raise funds for timers and displays.

Funding for equipment
Initial equipment might consist of:

• Competition Timers
• Tournament Displays
• Stopwatches
• Pens

Possible sources of funding:

• A local university or student union who might be interested in sponsoring a Rubik's Cube Club.
• Large companies that support youth projects in the community.
• Government funding for the integration of young migrants through community activities.

Ongoing costs
Other than the main equipment there are some other things that might be purchased for each competition:

• Certificates
• Posters
• Name Tags
• Lanyards
• Stickers (Prizes)

Venue
Sometimes a venue can be the most expensive thing involved in organising a competition. It'd strongly recommend trying to find a sponsor or venue for free to reduce the cost.

Some venues that might be free and suitable:

• Lecture theatres or classrooms at universities booked by student clubs or staff members with public access permitted.
• Function rooms owned by the city.
• Shopping Centres that are looking for some free entertainment for their shoppers.

You (or someone) really need to work out a budget and figure out how many people will attend. It's ok to run it at a loss the first time but you may need a few more competitions with an appropriate entry fee to cover ongoing and main equipment costs. Once the equipment has been paid off you can lower the entry fee. But don't feel pressured into doing it all by yourself. I'd recommend holding some regular meetups and finding out if some other people can help organise a competition. It took us about a year or two in Melbourne to build up a cubing community here. There'd often be 2-5 people at meetups on weekends when it started out, and we had a few unofficial competitions consisting of only 7-8 people, but now we usually have 10-15 people at meetups and 30-40 at competitions. I only mentioned Benalla before as they achieved this by building up a community of over 100 cubers in just two months by conducting a world record attempt.

I hope some of this information helps. Maybe some organisers could get together to create a comprehensive wiki entry on how to finance and run competitions for different regions. Some of my advice is region specific... so some input from local organisers (England) might be better.

Tim.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that Public Liability Insurance worth $20 million with world-wide coverage is worth having if you're organising the competition. I know not everyone goes to such extremes as to dot their i's and cross their t's but if you can get it for free through a university or another company by organising it under their name on their behalf with written consent then why not? We've some extreme regulations when it comes to interacting with children in Australia so I even went to the extent to ensure that the main organisers here have a "Working With Children Check" to avoid being fined and prevented from running competitions in the future (it ensures that you haven't been convicted of any crimes which could otherwise imply that you're a risk to children). <-- this stuff might seem complex but it only takes a few weeks to sort out

[r_517]

It's not that difficult to summon 20-ish competitors coz Europe is so small that there shouldn't be any problem going to another country, especially if (and most likely) the venue is in Dublin.

And it shouldn't be a big problem to borrow equipments from Seven Town (hopefully:))

I had wanted to organise one since 1 years ago, until I realised it's illegal for International students to be involved in any business related stuff under the European laws, and the only active cuber I know besides you and me is Blake, who is also a secondary school student like you. So unless we can find another active cuber, I don't think a competition would be here in short time.

[MadsMohr]

I'd come to a competition in Dublin. It's cheap to fly from Denmark and I really enjoyed the Guinness last time I was there

[D3LuK4]

It would be cool to hold a competition in Dublin. If you guys know any Irish cubers you could see if they would like to hold one there. Another possibly is if a competition could be held in Northern Ireland. As it is part of the United Kingdom and the cubing society is hugely supported in England maybe a English delegate could hold one there. Surely it wouldn't be that difficult.

[Ron]

I think the first step is to get more organised in your country. Make a(n online) community and have some local meetings.

Once we have a large enough local community, I am pretty sure that an existing WCA delegate (like me) is willing to travel to your country and co-organise a competition.

[D3LuK4]

That would be awesome but wouldn't holding a competition in Belfast be so much easier? It is part part of the UK at the end of the day