Updated list of allocations

This is the updated list of allocations. 30 teams will be added by the WUDC Berlin 2013 Scholarship. 19 slots are currently being processed. Most of these 19 have been offered to institutions on the waiting list yesterday.

If the emails you receive from Registrations say something else, you are kindly requested to believe them.

Last registration phase is opening

We have begun to confirm institutions to the last registration phase on FastRego yesterday. Please check with your institution representative to make sure your details get in there by October 21st 2012. All data provided after the deadline cannot be taken into account and we will not be able to accommodate your wishes and needs.

Dietary Requirements
Note that your decision is final. The option chosen by you here will be the only one available to you at Worlds.

Roommates
If you want a say in whom you will be sharing a room with, let us know your top three preferences and we will do our best.

Excursions
Choose from our excursion page. You will be able to book an excursion on site in Berlin as well, but your choice will be very much limited.

Language Status
Have a look at the previous post about language. It is very important that you indicate your language status so our Language Review Committee can take it into account.

Arrival
If you let us know when and where you arrive in Berlin, we will be able to plan welcome and transfer better.

Updates on general registration and scholarship

These are partially crucial security updates on the WUDC Berlin 2013 Scholarship and the general Berlin Worlds registration.

Registration

The full-payment deadline was last week. Participant Affairs has been busy sorting things out ever since. In the upcoming two weeks we will do three things: 

First, we will confirm all institutions that have made their payment on time in FastRego, our online registration system. This kicks off the last registration phase. We kindly ask you to fill in the participants' details into FastRego by October 21st 2012. If you don't do that we will not know and cannot take into account your dietary requirements, your roommate preference, the excursion you would like to book, your language status and many more important things.

Second, we will change your balances in FastRego to reflect the actual amount of money that has arrived on our bank account. Unfortunately a large number of you have not included transaction fees in their payment and will have to pay that open balance upon arrival here in Berlin in cash. Note that all speakers of institutions that have not paid their respective open balance by the end of December 28th, will not be able to compete on December 29th. Your institution representative will receive an automatic message from FastRego once we have updated that.

Third, we may be able to grant slots to the institutions on the waiting list. But we will only know after we have sorted out the payments. Please stay tuned if your institution is on the waiting list. Participant Affairs appreciates your patience and thanks you!

Scholarship

The application period for the WUDC Berlin 2013 Scholarship ended last night and programme coordinator John Eltringham reports the receipt of hundreds of emails, apparently containing more than 700 applications. We are happy that our efforts find this kind of appreciation.

Please be patient with us as the programme officers are working their way through the mountain of mail. They are concerned with evaluating each application with the appropriate attentiveness, which will take them a while. If you have applied, you will definitely get a response. When this process is completed, we will post a note about it. We kindly ask you to wait with questions regarding your application until then.

Entering the last registration phase, we are getting excited to welcome you all so very soon to beautiful Berlin!

Last call for the WUDC Berlin 2013 Scholarship

[application closed]

Registration update MMXIII

Before we suspend institutions that may not have paid up properly, we give our best to sort things out.

We have difficulties with the payment of some institutions and have received payments that we cannot safely assign to any institutions.

If you are from one of these institutions, please help us make sure your representative has received our email. Yes, there is the risk you lose your slots if we don't get a reply.

- Cape Peninsula University of Technology - Griffith University - Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Multimedia University Melaka - Maastricht University - Roosevelt Academy - University of Canterbury - Nanyang Technological University - Aberystwyth University - Islamic University of Technology - University of Western Australia - RRIS - University of the Witwatersrand - UCC Law - UCC Phil - Debate Club of University of Mostar - Open Communication / University of Belgrade - Singapore Management University (SMU) - De La Salle University - Ghulam Ishaq Khan Intitute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (GIKI)

Secondly, please email Head of Participant Affairs Dessislava Kirova if you can tell us where the following payments came from.
- 600€ by Mr/Ms Patel from India on June 19th 2012 - 400€ by Mr/Ms Tian from China on August 28th 2012 - 400€ by Mr Hersh and Ms Klein from the USA on June 12th 2012

Making informed choices: Excursions and Language

Here are two things you should know about in order to make wise choices on FastRego when entering your participant data.

As excursions concern everyone, let's start with them: On our brand new excursion page we present to you the choices you have. Consult with your friends, make your choice, and enter the number of your choice into FastRego. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with Filip Bubenheimer.

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The other thing is about language categories, which concerns only speakers but is arguably of greater importance than excursions.

As usual, WUDC speakers compete after nine preliminary rounds in three different categories of out-rounds. The definitions for these categories are based on exposure to English, which has been chosen as an indication of the barrier you have experienced learning English. You can be classified as an EFL, ESL or EPL speaker.

• EFL stands for English as a Foreign Language and represents the lowest level of exposure to English. 
• ESL stands for English as a Second Language and provides an in-between category to all speakers who have had some exposure to English. 
• Speakers will be classified as EPL, English as a Proficient Language, if they have spent a considerable amount of time in English language environments or if they are native speakers of English.

The full definitions are in Article 22 and 31 of the WUDC Constitution.

As for the procedure, you can indicate that you would like to get ESL or EFL status on FastRego. You need to do so to make sure they can be processed in time. Please answer the questions to the fullest extent possible. The Language Review Committee, which you have read about in Article 22, will use your answers to establish your language status. If the Committee deems the information you provided insufficient or has further questions, they will try to contact you before the tournament to request more information. If this is not possible, they will request you do an interview on site in Berlin. We will communicate our status decision to you and allow you to appeal, also on site in Berlin.

So, who, you may wonder, are these wonderful people who help us administering this process? Two out of three Heads of the Committee have already been appointed. They are Anne Valkering (Netherlands) and Michael Saliba (Germany).

Further Language Review Officers will join them to form a body as representative as possible of the whole of debaterworld.

If you have any language-related questions, email the Committee.

Almost there: the last registration phase

As the window for full payments closes in seven hours, here is what happens next: The institution representatives will receive conformations of payment by email. Note that your payment may turn out to be incomplete once it has arrived and we have sorted everything out (due to banking fees). In such a case we will get back to you asap.

The confirmation emails also open the last registration phase: the provision of participants' details, for which you have until October 21st 2012. We will post important details for this (language-status definitions, excursion options, etc.) here very soon.

If you have any questions, please direct them to Participant Affairs.

Save the date: Worlds Public Speaking and Worlds Masters'

We are currently in the process of recruiting Chief Adjudicators for the Public Speaking competition as well as the Masters' Cup at Berlin Worlds. As soon as we are done with that, we will give you some more details. However, we would like everybody to be aware of these two interesting side-events as soon as possible.

Public Speaking is open to all participants of our Worlds, speakers and adjudicators. It has come in a variety of forms over the years and we will change it once more to give a rather trendy twist. It should be fun to compete in or to watch.

The Masters' Cup is a debate competition for the adjudicators of Worlds. They shall, as the WUDC Constitution prescribes it, compete in "teams representing their country of origin". The format in Berlin will be a simplified version of Wartburg, a German specialty requiring countries to draft three speakers for their national teams and determining the opening side by lot at the beginning of each debate.

Incidentally, this is where things are getting interesting: Wartburg is not the format but the location of the German Masters' competition. The Wartburg is a UNESCO World Heritage castle, overlooking the town of Eisenach in the state of Thuringia. In that town and with a final on that castle, the German association of debate alumni DDG holds its annual Masters' Cup. Our photo shows Berlin Worlds Tab Master Jens Fischer speaking there.

For the time being, Communications Director Manuel Adams is the one to be addressed with any issues regarding the two side-events.