After many hours of discussions amongst the WCA Board, Senior Delegates, and hearing wider Staff feedback over the past months, the Board will be changing the Competition Safety Policy (WCSP) in the following ways:

1. Local requirements and legislation will take the place of case counts in announcement determination. Relevant local requirements and legislations must be followed by organizers, Delegates, and competitors of WCA-recognized competitions.
2. 1 case per million population (7-day rolling average) will still remain as the restrictionless limit.
3. Competitions are still expected to follow the WCSP. For any deviations or exemptions from the WCSP, the Senior Delegate or Regional Delegate must approve these via the safety submission by the Delegate of the competition.

As conditions are starting to improve in areas well enough to hold a competition, we ask for your patience as local Delegates and organizers understand what new procedures will need to be followed to run a competition safely. Competitions may not return immediately once they are able and when they do, they may not be set up in the way competitions were run before COVID-19 was prevalent, so the community’s adaptability will be needed in this time of transition.

We thank you for your understanding so far and we hope to see you at our competitions again in the future!

Source:: worldcubeassociation

The WCA Quality Assurance Committee has implemented the Scramble Accountability Policy through discussion and collaboration with the WCA Regulations Committee (WRC) and feedback from the Board, Senior Delegates, and Committee/Team Leaders.

The purpose of this policy is to define standards of how official WCA Scrambles must be treated and will be enforced by the WRC. The policy is targeted towards WCA Delegates and competition organization teams for giving instructions on how they ensure scramble integrity through the standards of scrambles and scrambling, and venue setup standards.

We welcome your thoughts and questions through a post on the WCA Forum or an email to quality@worldcubeassociation.org.

Source:: worldcubeassociation

There will be an appointment of a new WCA Results Team (WRT) Leader, as Sébastien Auroux is stepping down from his position as the Leader of the Team. We would like to thank Sébastien for the work he has done in this position.

The application is open to all WCA members. Potential applicants do not have to hold a current position to be considered.

Candidates are expected to fulfill their terms (24 months) and to spend at least 5 hours per week on average to work for the committee. The qualities expected of candidates are:

• Strong leadership skills
• Attention to detail
• Analytical thinking
• Experience with SQL (MySQL) and programming are beneficial, but not strictly mandatory

The application period for candidates to submit their candidacy documents is from now until September 1st, 2021, 23:59 UTC. Interested candidates can send the application privately to the WCA Board (board@worldcubeassociation.org).

The candidacy documents must be in PDF format, and must include:

• Brief personal introduction.
• Summary of activities done for the WCA.
• Ambitions as the WRT Leader of the WCA.

Candidates are additionally asked to send a copy of their applications which can be made public at the end of the application period.

The rights and duties of the WRT can be found in WCA Motion 01.2021.10.

After the application period, the WCA Board will make a selection by voting and will announce the new Leader, after confirmation among Senior Delegates and sitting Committee/Team Leaders by voting, as described in Section 4 of WCA Motion 10.2021.0.

Thank you for your candidacies and support.

Source:: worldcubeassociation

The WCA Board has decided on the following guidelines in order for a competition to be approved:

Reference: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

Country case counts less than 1 per million:

• Senior Delegate may approve the competition restrictionless meaning the organizers do not need to follow the ‘holding of competitions‘ section of the WCA Competition Safety Policy
• Senior Delegates should consider the ability to travel from areas of more prevalent infection before approving a competition as restrictionless.

Country case counts less than 50 per million:

• Senior Delegate may approve the competition
• Competition safety plan should be reviewed showing consideration for the ‘holding of competitions‘ section of the WCA Competition Safety Policy
• A competitor limit may be approved to a maximum of 1 attendee per 2 square meters (1 competitor per 4 square meters)
• No action is required if case numbers rise above 50 per million (unless case counts exceed 100 per million) except checking that the safety plan is suitable for the increased number

Country case counts less than 100 per million:

• Board will be in charge of competition approvals
• Competition safety plan will be reviewed through our google form link and the plan should completely cover the ‘holding of competitions‘ section of the WCA competition safety policy
• Competitions will be approved up to a maximum of 1 attendee per 3 square meters (1 competitor per 6 square meters)
• If case numbers rise above 100 per million in the period of 2 weeks to 7 days before the competition then it will be cancelled except for when the following section applies.

Country case counts less than 200 per million:

• No new competitions will be announced if the country is above 100 per million cases.

• Already announced competitions may proceed provided they meet the following 3 requirements:

  • Greater than 50% of the population has received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
  • All attendees are required to have received the final dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at least 14 days before the competition or show a negative COVID-19 test from no more than 96 hours before the start of the competition. The organizer/Delegates must verify proof of this from all attendees before they enter the venue
  • All points in the WCA Competition Safety Policy are to be strictly adhered to throughout the duration of the competition.

• If case numbers rise above 200 per million in the period of 2 weeks to 7 days before the competition then it will be cancelled without exception.

Source:: worldcubeassociation

Dear community,

It is with the deepest regret that we inform you that there will be no WCA World Championship this year.

This week, the core team and the WCA Board came to the inevitable conclusion that we must cancel the championship. We are very sorry that we have to disappoint everyone who was looking forward to this event.

For a long time we were confident that the (postponed) championship in Almere could go ahead. However, the recent developments show us that this is no longer a realistic scenario.

One of the goals of the WCA World Championships is to have participants from as many countries as possible. Traditionally many of these participants travel a long distance, often with their families, to attend the event. Therefore we think that we should give the participants maximum confidence that the competition will take place, once they have registered and booked their trips.

Unfortunately now with less than five months before the planned dates of the World Championship we cannot give that confidence. We have to deal with ongoing uncertainty surrounding government regulations for major events in The Netherlands. Regulations are changing by the week and measures that have been relieved are again taken once the number of new positive tests is increasing. Usually the first measure to be taken is to cancel events with many attendants and such a measure is the last to be relieved again.

In addition to that, international travelling is still very limited and highly regulated. Even people who are fully vaccinated often need to be tested. Many countries have negative travel advice or require quarantaine when travelling. We know from several top cubers that they were not going to attend the World Championship because of these limitations. We have no control over these measures and no exceptions will be made for our World Championship.

Even if in December everything is looking better, there will still be a real risk that we have to cancel the competition if the number of new positive tests is increasing or if some countries give negative travel advice for The Netherlands. The conditions for the competition are also quite uncertain: we may be required to do daily testing for competitors and visitors. We have to deal with the risk of competitors and/or staff getting infected during the championship and not being able to participate or do their staff duties.

This definitively puts an end to our current plans for a large championship in The Netherlands. Next year there will be the continental championships in Copenhagen, Melbourne, Brasilia, Cape Town, Semey and Toronto. The next World Championship will be in Seoul, Korea. We wish the organizing teams the best of luck.

We wanted nothing more than to organize the best World Championship ever and give you a fantastic experience. As the organizing team, we are of course very disappointed. But it is what it is, unfortunately. We thank everyone who contributed to this championship. Together we put an enormous amount of effort into this. Many thanks, it was a pleasure to work with you.

Source:: worldcubeassociation