Thoughts and Themes
Over the past few weeks we’ve been listening to feedback from you, our community, that our selection of a gambling-based theme for this year may limit the ability for various institutions to participate. After several internal discussions and idea sessions on potential approaches to enhance this inclusivity, we have decided to change our theme for this year from The Lucky Croissant Casino to a family destination hotel and resort. To be clear: the new theme will not have any gambling components, this is not a hotel attached to a casino. We have already developed a story and fictional location that we’re excited to share with you in-character over the coming months.
As this feedback came in the middle of our development cycle, we felt that it was important to preserve the efforts of our volunteer team while also replacing the core theme. Thankfully, much of the infrastructure and application development thus far had been focused on our core systems, reducing our lost work. Our volunteers love the challenge of developing these applications, infrastructure, services, and environments; and have risen to the challenge of refocusing on a new theme. As an all-volunteer organization, we are always looking for something that excites us as much as it does you, the competitors and community.
As always, more information will become available through our team signups, Request for Proposal (RFP), and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) processes over the next few weeks. We are still working hard internally, but also know that all of you prepare, research, and scavenge the Internet looking for information on the upcoming competition. Because of this, we wanted to inform everyone within our community as soon as possible about the change, to give you as much time as possible to prepare.
Additionally, we are happy to announce the dates for the upcoming in-person CPTC8 2022 – 2023 season regionals:
October 15
Central, hosted at Tennessee Technical University
Great Lakes, hosted at Baldwin Wallace University
October 29
Europe, Middle East, and Africa, hosted at RIT Dubai
November 19
Canada, hosted at East Concordia University
New England, hosted at the University of New Haven
Southeastern, hosted at Augusta University
Western, hosted at Stanford University
Finally, we are also proud to announce that we will be supporting a virtual “At-Large” Regional the weekend of November 19 for those institutions that are unable to compete at any of the in-person events. Institutions that choose to compete in the At-Large Regional will need to compete from their university. We encourage everyone to participate in-person in regionals, but understand that may not always be possible. First place winners at each of the in-person events will be guaranteed a spot at Finals. In recognition of the efforts of our regional hosts as well as all of the teams traveling, first place in the At-Large Regional will not be guaranteed a space at finals. The remaining finals spaces will be filled using the combined top eight scores from all of the regions, including the At-Large Region.
As always, we will be available on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Discord. Team signups will open in the next few days, please keep an eye out here, as well as in on Twitter and Discord, for information on how to sign-up.
