[adpowell]

Hello all!

The NPDA is looking to hold a development conference and would like to start soliciting items for discussion! Feel free to use this forum to talk through issues you’d like to see raised at the development conference, share ideas, and get feedback. The purpose of the development conference is to talk through big picture issues, solidify what NPDA debate is and should become, and what changes the activity can make to encourage growth and participation. The hope is that we would discuss these bigger thoughts to then produce bylaw proposals for the Fall Business Meeting that aim to bring some of the changes discussed to fruition. In addition, be on the lookout for a survey to determine what time of year is most preferable so we can get something scheduled! Happy NPDA to all!

[brentnicholson]

I’m really excited to get to work on this. I think there’s a few primary areas for us to emphasize when we try to determine what NPDA is or will be.

1. Curricular focus. We need to figure out what we teach, why, and how. Having that in writing is going to help sell what we are to outsiders, solidify our core, and give us something to build around.
2. Novice focus. We don’t have novice debaters for the most part. Most tournaments don’t offer novice divisions and the ones that do don’t make. Most teams can’t field true novices because of that. We need students to do the activity if we want the activity to grow and one easy pathway is by increasing team sizes by including more students.
3. Student-run focus. We have a few excellent student-run teams and could be an activity designed to support them more fully. I’m no expert in the needs of student-run programs, but I think a subcommittee of our conference should focus on what these teams need and how we can meet those needs as an organization.
4. Service/professional focus. The NPDA circuit has an abundance of excellent coaches and educators and we need to tap those resources more effectively and get people doing professional debate work, whether that is service, publishing, or any other thing that raises the quality of our work as a collective. This is going to make our institutions more supportive, make our CVs better, and help us draw attention and resources that let us grow. One of the easiest ways for us to win programs to NPDA is to send good coaches out into the world with good CVs to get hired at new institutions.
5. Collaborative focus. This group is broadly willing to work together and we’re going to need to do that to make this work. While we compete in rounds, I think we need to structure this circuit around a collaborative, cooperative mindset that should be ingrained in the NPDA learning process. I would like to see more scrimmages, sharing of or interacting with each other’s social media, co-writing, file sharing, or anything else that can make this format more communal and less siloed by institution.

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