Here's the deal: after Thursday night's keynote event featuring Gov. Dean, Sen. Durbin and Markos Moulitsas, the round tables of the main convention room will be turned over to me for the most ass-kicking event in the history of YearlyKos, the First Annual YearlyKos Political Pub Quiz.
What is this Pub Quiz? As the press release will say, more or less:
Most disagreements among the netroots cannot be easily settled -- which candidate would best bring change to Washington? What region of the country hosts the most active political grassroots? What website has the most interesting analysis?
On Thursday, August 2, however, some of these scores will be settled, albeit in another realm. That night, YearlyKos will host its first annual Political Pub Quiz, a trivia contest in the British tradition to allow teams of 4-8 to test their knowledge of current events, civics and American history in a fast-paced, fun format. Without the aid of Google, which teams will remember the purpose of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, or the number of the Constitutional Amendment which bars Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer from running as a ticket for the presidency?
The event will consist on multiple themed rounds of trivia questions of increasing difficulty to test the teams' knowledge of fundamental and arcane facts. Teams can organize on whatever basis they choose -- preferred websites, regions of the country, preferred candidates -- and the organizers will also form teams onsite for unaffiliated participants as an exciting opening night icebreaker event.
Prizes will be awarded for the winning teams. They will be shiny. More importantly is the title of "Biggest Nerds In The Blogosphere," which the winning team may trumpet until YearlyKos 2008
Problem is, I can't quite do this all myself, and I will need some assistants on-site. These are some of the tasks for which I could use some help (and these responsibilities will overlap):
- Team/individual registration and assignment
- Distribution of answer sheets
- Scorekeepers
- Narcs. I need folks to police the room to prevent the use of outside reference tools (PDAs, laptops, cellphones, etc), and to prevent folks who leave the room during a round from reentering until it's completed -- because no one wants to test how fast you and your friends can Google.
If you're interested in volunteering, please let me know here, and when you have a chance email me at throwingthingsblog (at) hotmail dot com so I can contact you closer to the event and get organized. The number of volunteers I'll need will depend on the number of participants.
Speaking of which: it's never too early to start organizing your teams.