Board News > December Madness 2

December Madness 2: Digital Boogaloo (Starts 12/1/2014!)

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PSMKay:
The International December Madness Committee (IDMC) is pleased to announce the grand opening of the 2nd December Madness season! The first matches will start on Monday, December 1, 2014. SMNetwork will serve as the host for the games as in the 1st season.

For those of you who have joined since early 2013 and missed the first event, it was a bracket-style elimination tournament where stage managers voted on their favorite tool, gadget or office supply. It was a knock down, drag out battle that wound up with Paper winning the final match against Laptop, but Laptop scoring more points overall in the course of the entire tourney. You can see everything that happened on the archived board here.

After the scandal that rocked the Paper team in May of this year the IDMC has opted to focus the 2nd season entirely on Digital competitors. In the seeding this year are 32 digital tools that you might use to do your jobs. From Dropbox and Evernote to Qlab and Twitter, we'll be running the gamut of apps, websites, software and social media to determine the best, most useful digital tool for stage management.

Here's a quick refresher of how the game works:


--- Quote ---Much like with sports seasons, I've come up with a tournament order. I have attached the starting lineup and a bracket form to this post for anyone who is inclined to gamble on such things or wants to play fantasy football with the tools included. Pick your favorite and root for it as if it were your home team. It will make things far more interesting. Feel free to campaign for your favorite items, extol their virtues, and trash talk the other stuff. *evil grin*

Matches will be decided by poll. Four polls will run simultaneously for the first two rounds, each round lasting approximately half a week. This means we should be finished in early January. Give your relatives another reason to look at you strangely - stop by and cheer for your favorite all through the holiday season!

--- End quote ---

One special note for this year: the bracket due to limited space uses commercial software that's also available in popular free alternative versions. The use of a brand name is not meant to discount these alternatives - please include them in your considerations. The function matters more than the brand. (In other words, if you use LibreOffice Writer feel free to consider it in the place of MS Word when it's game time.)

Bracket is attached to this post. Feel free to print it out, post it on your office wall, carry a copy on your phone. If you're not familiar with any of the apps mentioned feel free to ask around here in the next week as we get ready to start... Decemberrrrr Maaaaadnesss!

(Note for those joining late: If you'd like to see the original blank bracket use the PDF dated 11-16-2014 attached to this post. If you want to catch up to the tournament's current position, use the "Current Bracket" attachment. It will be re-uploaded every time a new round begins.)

iamchristuffin:
In reference to your note about 'function matters more than the brand' - are Google Drive and Dropbox not exactly the same in that regard?

PSMKay:
Google Drive has a full office suite integrated into it. Dropbox does not. Whether that office suite is a strong enough product to differentiate it from Dropbox will have to play out in the matchups. :)

Tempest:
Oooooo, this one's gonna be good. As someone in a position where I typically am running the shows I'm "calling," I'm rooting for Qlab!

PSMKay:
I agree, Tempest. There's a lot of "teamwork" apps on here, but also a lot of apps that allow one person to do the job of many. Small shop SMs who work with one assistant/alone will push the entire tournament in one direction, while SMs who normally work in enormous teams will push it the other way.

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