Hey everyone,

I thought it would be a good idea to note down everything that was discussed in the pre-SM dinner and also after the finals of Sudoku Mahabharat, and then maybe further the discussion. I've categorized it into five different topics. If anyone feels I missed anything, feel free to add.

1. Sudoku Mahabharat and such non-sponsored events:
- 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.

2. Puzzle Ramayana and IPC
- The idea of Puzzle Ramayana was given a bit more solidity, with suggestions that it will also act as the National Puzzle Championship to determine the Indian team.
- There were some concerns about whether participants would be as willing to spend time/money on puzzles. Either way, growth has to start somewhere.
- There were some concerns about it coinciding with the GP and adding constraints on Indians wishing to participate in both events. This can easily be avoided by having a monthly timeline for Ramayana and a monthly timeline for Mahabharat where each round of the total 14 will be 2 weeks apart, allowing for the GP weekends (which are spaced in the same way) to fall in between the 2 weeks.
- There were some concerns about an offline IPC being unfair to participants who cannot travel. An alternative was suggested where 1 winner will be selected simply based on the online rounds' total, whereas two more will be selected from the Ramayana finals (we assume, and urge, whoever gets the wildcard to step back and help in organizing this event and holding their place on the Indian team - I am prepared to do this if I'm the one with the wildcard again).
- If we are going to do SM and PR, the obvious way to organize the finals is to place it during Saturday and Sunday of the same weekend, while providing accommodation options.

3. General thoughts
- It would be nice if LMI had an interface for puzzles. It might encourage more people. This requires a lot of effort so we can't commit on it right now.
- Our participants were of the opinion that they would practice a lot more with books rather than online sites - an LMI book has been in the plans for some time, so we should build up on that. However, looking at point 1 and 2 together, we should also stress that printing out a PDF and binding it has the exact same benefits as buying a book.
- It was stressed that the existing LMI organizers/admins/etc. find it difficult to reach out for help, as we already have a full enough schedule to just keep doing it and not go beyond that. Participants were encouraged to step forward and offer something they can help with in their own line of expertise, be it sponsorship, communications, technical support, etc.
- Gaurav Kumar Jain has already stepped up about finding sponsors, if we can provide him with a PPT - we need someone working on this, updating recent events like Sudoku Champs and Sudoku Mahabharat.
- Some suggested that LMI contests be increased to a week, since different people have holidays/free days on different days (as evidenced by so many of the SM rounds being extended upon request). This won't take much effort from the LMI website team, and should be implemented.
-It was also suggested that online solving be made possible after competitions are over. This wasn't committed to, and can still be discussed.
- We will attempt to have general meetings in Bangalore among Sudoku & Puzzle enthusiasts. This is ideally going to be open to anyone to attend. These meetings need not be limited to solving/creating puzzles but can also be used to discuss broader topics and get some of the work done that has been discussed here. We encourage other cities to co-ordinate similar meets among themselves.
- There was some discussion here and there about a plan to bid for the WSC/WPC 2017 and the venue/necessities/manpower/etc. for this potential massive event. Nothing concrete enough to go into detail for as of now but we should probably dedicate an internal forum topic to this soon.

4. Times Sudoku Championship
- ToI and some of the LMI members share a concern that there isn't enough turnover in the rankings each year, and so not many new participants are given an opportunity (ToI may word this differently :) ). The suggested solution is to divide participants into Experienced and Inexperienced, with inexperienced defined as someone who has never experienced the WSC (A/B team is irrelevant here).
- The possible scenarios that come from this are as follows:
a) A separate online ISC is held like the last two years. The TSC finals select 2 Experienced and 2 Inexperienced solvers to be sponsored. ISC selects the remaining 4 best Indians. If said best Indians are better than any of the TSC top 4, they will slot into the A-team.
b) A separate online ISC cannot be held. A 2+2 ratio in the finals may not be the best way to select the best four Indians for the A-team. In this case, possibility of 3+1 (3 being experienced) was discussed.
- Note that each of these scenarios will mean the local rounds will also have the same 2+2 or 3+1 ratio. Also note that these participants will be sponsored and publicized, but LMI will still be inviting the top 4 national solvers for the A team. Lastly, note that all of this depends on what ToI agrees with and doesn't agree with.
- The biggest concern here is, if an A team not publicized by the Times achieves a historic ranking, they will not be publicized for it, some other participants will, which is directly demotivating the A-team to achieve this.
- Another concern shared by ToI and LMI (a bit more definitively than the first concern) is that the current structure only encourages the top Indian solvers to practice for TSC, and maybe WSC if they are really passionate. This is in direct contrast to most of the world's best solvers who are active throughout the year, and funnily enough this can be proven by their frequency in participating in LMI contests. In general, the concern is whether the Indians selected for the team are motivated for the WSC, or just want to avail the sponsorship/publicity/etc. that come with it (not necessarily the case that any of us are like this, but the structure definitely is flawed here).
- A suggestion was made that any person who is 'Experienced' must be a regular participant on LMI through the year, otherwise LMI reserve the right to select someone with that regularity in favor of them. This may be implemented, but definitely not this year, since a formal announcement needs to be made. Participants who have connectivity issues can reach out to come to a solution. Note that this is only for the 'Experienced' category, who have already received the WSC experience. Also, regularity doesn't necessarily mean 100% participation. We can discuss the parameters here.
- A relevant point made here, not related to TSC itself (thanks to K. Ravichandran for this suggestion), is to have a place for handing out pamphlets about Sudoku Mahabharat and other LMI events during the TSC local rounds. This sounded like a very doable idea, so the same person taking up the PPT for sponsors mentioned above can also probably take up this pamphlet (or just edit and update the current LMI brochure).

5. Sudoku Champs
- We talked at length about Sudoku Champs as it was conducted this year, to let people know the work that goes into it and encourage volunteers to step up. The work discussed was reaching out to schools, setting dates for contests/workshops, co-ordinating with the schools in registrations, and organizing the events themselves on the set dates.
- We encouraged LMI members from the cities which didn't have strong participation to volunteer, since the cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata appear to have gotten the "higher" participation.
- We already have a person volunteering - Manikodi Rathinam. She said she will co-ordinate with Rakesh and Varun in Chennai this coming year.
- We need to plan with the schools in a better way, preferably negotiating for weekdays and avoiding exams in a better way than we did this year.
- We need to discuss whether we have a workshop first, then contest approach, stick with this year's approach, or some other structure. That we have the workshop base done now, and the fact that we will be sending 6 good (and hopefully trained) solvers to the WJSC, should give us a greater base to work with than we had this past year.

I suggest we make a different thread for each item of discussion otherwise it can be chaotic.