Nerd95 wrote:Chalker, I understand that you are working with the 2013 National Tournament, so I would love to get your feedback on the event and how I could work to have it run as an official trial event at the tournament in May. I will not be competing in Science Olympiad in the upcoming year as a competitor, but I am associated with a high school, so let me know if there is a conflict of interests that I might need to work out.
Thanks for taking the initiative to write up rules for a new event. Unfortunately, now the 'hard part' starts. You're going to have to champion the event in more places than a single thread on SciOly.
The general process is to first get interest from a couple tournament or state directors, and have them run it at invitational or state tournaments. Once that's happened, bring it to the attention of the relevant national Committee Chair (which often occurs naturally) and it can be discussed at the annual rules meeting. At that point, it can potentially be inserted into the official event rotation charts, which are typically projecting 2-3 years out. If need be, it might also be run as a trial event then at a National Tournament. There is virtually no chance it will be run as is as an official trial event at Nationals next year. We generally only run trials that are slated to rotate in the following year or two as actual events.
So the big question then is how to get the initial interest. You've taken a first good step since many people do lurk on these forums and somebody might notice it. However, you will need to be more proactive. First I'd contact your state director (see http://soinc.org/state_websites ). I'd also suggest reaching out to some of the State Directors that are active on SciOly, but not necessarily in the bio forums (i.e. bearasaraus, janderson, etc). I'd also suggest searching for invitationals that are close to you and contacting the tournament directors of those.
Also keep in mind that in order to adopt this event, another event needs to be displaced. So you should be prepared to explain why that would be appropriate. Looking at the Life Sciences chart, it would likely have to replace Ecology/Water Quality (and as an aside, in 2016 Ecology is tentatively listed as being Deserts and Grasslands).
Finally, to get it posted to the trial events page, you typically need to show it's be run once or twice. At that point you can just email it to the SO national office via the contact info on the soinc.org website.
