Prasanna's post
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- We need funding to sustain these tournaments. This will be achieved by having a participation fee, similar to WSC/WPC events. The exact fee was not discussed.
- I'm adding something here: Considering this year's dropouts, I think, if there is a participation fee, it should be mandatory to pay at the time of confirming attendance itself - the food, the printing, and other potential expenses are decided based on the number of confirmed participants, so this should avoid the loss that comes from them dropping out.
- Discussion needs to take place on whether we are charging the online rounds, whether we will be making accommodation arrangements as part of this participation fee, etc.
- No one spoke out against payment, and in one-on-one conversations people seem to think its a good idea (obviously, these are people who are regular on LMI, so this may not be accurate for the masses).
- Should we charge the participants residing in the host city more? The usual reply was 'no'.
- Should we change the venue city? The ideal answer is 'yes' and there was a good argument made about the talent getting concentrated in South India if we keep holding it in Bangalore. However, there are costs and effort to consider, since this year's event was largely possible due to the fact that three organizers could do the legwork within one city.
- We need to be quicker with getting confirmations for the offline finals, which means a timeline for the online rounds to end a month earlier. So the suggested start is August. If we are quicker, we can also make confirmations result in extension beyond the top 50 to make up numbers.

- The host city should be able to invite wild cards (those who are not in top 50, but are interested)
- India is weak at team rounds. This was already discussed in Bangalore. So, I would like a (serious, not fun) team round(s) as well to be there. Team composition is something which needs to be discussed (SM ranks can be used for this). Teams of 4 ideally. How to assign points is something that can be discussed too. Such rounds will help the interaction between solvers as the individual rounds do not necessarily take care of this aspect.
- Next year, we can shoot for Chennai or Kolkata as the venue.
- I agree that the participation fee should be collected at the time of confirmation itself. The participation may go down but dropouts will be minimal.

This should be implemented without fail or much ado because this year, it was mostly the organizers and a few players who sponsored the whole capital.I don't think it would be fair if they are allowed to burn their pockets each year to conduct this event.I had a look at the expenses and it was close to Rs.40,000/-

This is a very tricky issue and unless an optimal fee is decided and also a good payment system is firmly put in place which lets participants pay without any hassles the whole thing will go askew.There are also important things which comes to my mind which can be discussed further.I am not sure about the exact number of SM contestants last year nor the age category in which they are concentrated .But the one thing that comes to my mind is if we do have a payment system in place for the Online rounds then unless some of the younger participants have a bank account (which seems unlikely)or a Debit Card(which seems even more unlikely)they wouldn't be able to pay or contest.But there is no doubt(atleast to me) that if the event is to become autonomous, a minimal participation fee is to be made mandatory even for the Online rounds.I have no idea though how this will affect the participation numbers.