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We went 28 months without a National Congress, far too long. Even then, we had to compromise with an on-line Congress. We were so lucky to have RealBridge as the medium we could use for our Congress, not like live but very much the next best thing.

We were very keen what you thought about the on-line Congress and as soon as it had finished, we sent out an on-line survey. We were delighted with the response we received and want to share the key points with you, our public, our players.

Today, we thus look back at our 2021 On-line Congress. As well as the survey, we would like to share with you some of the behind-the-scenes issues which challenged our back-room team. Murray Wiggins, Chief Director for NZ Bridge and for the Congress shares these with you.

We are planning the October 2022 Congress to be live at Bay Park Tauranga. On Monday, we will show you the programme and show that we will be acting on some of the points which came from the survey.

Thus, a big thank-you to all who took part in the survey, to our back-room team of directors and scorers and to Anna Kalma for producing and administering the survey, as well as summarising its conclusions.

Richard Solomon

 

Congress Feedback Executive Summary

NZBridge Online Congress February 2022

Total respondents was 227.   The link was sent out in a final email newsletter and followed up with a reminder on three local bridge social media sites.

 

Over 40% of respondents were ranked Grand Master and above so the elite players were well represented in the survey.    

Local Masters and Life Masters were the next highest respondent group.

 

Rating areas of Congress

 The Realbridge experience and directing team rated the highest for satisfaction.  The website info/ability to find information rated the lowest at 3.6/5 with cost of the event being the next lowest.   

A review of the comments included some common feedback which is summarised below:

Cost: Many felt the cost was too high for an online event

Format:  Not enough qualifying boards in pairs and many preferred 16 teams to qualify for the team knockout.    Prefer other events to be played (seniors, mixed pairs etc) instead of a rest day.     

Timing:   Several comments about late morning starts/incompatible with lunchtime or utilising a day off work fully

Information/communication:   bulletin/newsletter should be considered.   Links should be emailed out each day.   Website information confused many. 

Results/directing:   results slow on the website, no communication with delays, printable hand records would be good.  Understanding the process regarding undos would have been useful.

RealBridge:   Generally a lot of favourable comments about the RealBridge experience notwithstanding technical problems/storm outages.  Opinion divided on use of screens including some worrying comments about bullying behind screens.

47% of the participants would play at the next Congress regardless of whether it is online or face to face.    While nearly a quarter have yet to make a decision.    Those who would only play online mentioned that it was due to cost/convenience/vaccination requirements.   Those who preferred face to face felt online missed the social connection or felt online bridge tiresome.  NB:  we would expect a higher online preference having surveyed those who have taken part in an online event.

Commentary and the next National Congress

On Monday 21^st March, we will make some observations about some of the comments, suggestions made in the survey. Today, to conclude, here’s an insight into the “engine room” of the on-line National Congress. Murray Wiggins and his team of Caroline Wiggins, Kevin Walker, Kevin Hu and Lorraine Stachurski worked together from their Hawke’s Bay base and were joined by Matthew McManus from Australia.

It was not all “plain sailing”. Murray explains why.

The "engine room of Congress" with Murray Wiggins

The decision to move the 2021 National Congress online in February this year created several interesting challenges for us with just three weeks to organize the event even though preliminary planning had taken place.

While I was confident the event could be run on RealBridge, the live Bay Park programme was too full and complex and would create problems. Thus, we had to leave out some events.

RealBridge setup issues

The behind-the-scenes set up for an On-line Congress is more complex than either for a Tournament or face-to-face Congress. We had 10 events over 7 days, 35 RealBridge sessions. The set-up takes time, needs checking and double checking but for Real Bridge, can only be done 10 days in advance and could only be completed 2 days before the start of Congress.

On Tuesday, 2 days before the event was to start, RealBridge contacted me to say that they had a new version being released and that they would like me to use it. This would require setting all the events up again as soon as the release was available, which was scheduled for the Wednesday evening our time – 14 hours before the event was to start!

Fortunately, I was given early access (using a ‘test’ link) and was able to use it from 9 am on Wednesday. This was not the end of my problems though. I only had time to set up the qualifying rounds for the teams which, in retrospect was a good thing. RealBridge have their main server bank in Europe somewhere but have another server in this region (in Australia, I think) which significantly improves our performance. However, the ‘test’ link set up all the events up on the European servers not the Oceania ones. This was detected by the team at RealBridge and overnight they set up a 3^rd Teams Qualifying on the Oceania server.

I discovered all this early on Thursday morning which meant for the third time we needed to check (and recheck) the setup, upload the correct deal files to all the sessions, upload the appropriate config files, delete the player links from the website and upload the new links.

This is one of the reasons why the player links were not sent out in advance and were only activated shortly before play started.

Communication Issues

The biggest ongoing issue we had during Congress was communications occurring at several levels.

Communicating to players is not easy. I only had easy access to the email address of the person who made the online entry, so was unable to communicate directly with most of the players. I had to rely on information being forwarded to partners and teammates which for the most part did happen. We did receive feedback from a few players commenting that they had not received any communications.

A document was produced for each event with generic information and specific details and emailed out.

Communications from players also caused some issues especially when they were requests for late entry to events or changes of partner etc. By and large, these were received in a timely fashion, and we were able to accommodate player requests.

The biggest communication issues occurred during play. There were numerous and repeated calls to the table because players were dropping off the system. These could often be remedied by a refresh but when the player wasn’t there and we had no contact details it was impossible to pass that on. Often, it was simply a matter of waiting until they reappeared.

During the early part of the event, we had issues with players logging into the wrong session. There seemed to be 2 causes for this, either that the player hadn’t read the instructions and was using a link from an earlier session or, as often seemed to be the case, their computer was taking them to an earlier version of the website and they needed to refresh their browser and/or clear the cache to get to the correct page and therefore the correct link. This was not obvious to them and they thought they were seated in the correct session.

This issue caused quite a delay in the start of the afternoon session of the Teams qualifying. We were not clear at the time what the issue was and were troubleshooting whilst receiving repeated calls about players not being present and questions about why there was a delay. Having to address these calls obviously added to the delay while we worked on sorting it out.

The appearance of a cyclone was not helpful with several power outages creating havoc. We quickly exhausted our supply of standby players and were "scrabbling" to find others to help. Several players suggested and/or contacted friends to fill in and this was really appreciated.

Creating and sending out announcements to tables during these dramas is time-consuming and tends to be put to one side when we are all busy trying to resolve issues.

We have made changes and are now able to access email addresses of all contestants which will be helpful in communicating both before and during Tournaments.

There is no doubt that making an announcement in a room is much easier than trying to communicate with several hundred players scattered around the globe!"

Murray Wiggins

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