Hi Coaches!
It’s been busy over here preparing for Golden Gate Science Olympiad. Our team of nearly 150 organizers, event supervisors, and volunteers are BEYOND excited to welcome you all to Berkeley’s campus.
This email has critical updates including a lot of day-of logistics, so please read carefully.
For last minute questions or concerns (Friday evening or during the day Saturday), your first point of contact is Kevin. He can be reached at 702-688-1405.
Food Regulation Reminder: NO FOOD IS ALLOWED IN HOMEROOMS. We agree that this is a ridiculous and frustrating rule, but Berkeley’s Event Services has alerted us several times that custodians will be on patrol through our reserved areas. Similar student groups have faced fines on the order of $5000 for violating this rule. We’re hoping for great weather on Saturday, so we recommend a nice lunch outside or encourage students to visit any of the many cafes highlighted in the maps on our website.
Please consider the homerooms as a place to study and store equipment, but not a place to eat. Custodians will be passing by rooms as well as checking trash cans. No food should be brought back to or disposed of in homerooms.
Unfortunately, we feel obligated to enforce this rule harshly, since a university violation would prevent future GGSO tournaments from being possible (and violating schools may share financial burden of any fines). Teams with food in their homerooms and trash cans face possible point deductions on their score and blacklisting from future GGSO events. We deeply apologize for this inconvenience but hope that it’s not too troublesome.
Morning Check-in: Please check in to receive your coaches packet (including last-minute information, maps, and student wristbands). Check-in will be run in the outside of Wheeler Hall at Wheeler plaza and will begin at 8:00AM.
Campus Map: We’re digital this year! Check out our all-inclusive map here or on our website. Please share with your teams as well. Tap on locations to read more info or see what events are held there. For navigating between home rooms, events, and food locations, we recommend using Google Maps walking directions. Many said this was helpful at the tournament last year.
There are also printable maps of events and homerooms, food, and parking.
Free wifi is available on campus (connect to CalVisitor).
Homerooms: See the events and homerooms map to check which homeroom your team has been assigned to. These open by 8:15am.
Car Parking: Please check for parking at any of the locations in the parking map. Note that some may require a daily fee.
Awards Keynote: We’re thrilled to announce this year’s keynote speaker at Awards: Mark Rober. He’s an ex-NASA engineer turned science YouTube star with nearly 3 million followers and over 90 million views on his most popular video. His content ranges from the comical to the incredible, and he’s promised a fun talk.
T-shirts [share with students]: Last year there was huge demand for GGSO t-shirts that are otherwise reserved for volunteers. This year, we ordered some extra for competitors! The awesome new design was made in-house, and a limited number of shirts will be available for $15 in Wheeler Lobby during the tournament (cash or check only).
Awards ceremony: We recognize this is a non-ideal set-up, but we’re excited to have a solution. As mentioned in our previous update, turbulent events in Berkeley’s reservations system has relegated us to our backup awards plan. We’ve hired a professional AV team to live stream the awards ceremony to several rooms on campus.
The awards ceremony will be hosted in three adjacent auditoria (connected by a single hallway in the same building). The central auditorium will hold 450 students (determined by team number). The two flanking auditoria will each hold 150 students. The central stage will be live streamed to the two flanking rooms. To maintain the suspense and excitement of a traditional awards ceremony, when each event is announced the top five teams will be shown in no particular order. Once they have all made it to the central stage (a less than 30 second walk), the ranking will be announced and medals awarded.
Due to the extremely tight seating, each team will be given EXACTLY 15 seats. The main 3 auditoria are VLSB 2040, 2050, 2060. Those seats will be given to entrants wearing or holding a wristband. This is a tight cap.
All extra seating will be available in Dwinelle 155. Seating here is first come first serve, and the ceremony will be live-streamed.
All doors open at 5:45.
Remind 101 service [share with students]: We use this text message remind service to send out critical day-of updates aimed primarily at coaches, but we encourage any students and parents to sign up to stay updated as well. Phone numbers are kept completely confidential by the website service, we promise not to send any updates after the tournament, and you can opt out at any time.
Instructions: text @7794k3 to the number 81010
Latimer Labs and Soda labs: Note that the schedule online now includes the location of labs for Chem Lab, Thermodynamics, Materials Science, Game On, and Forensics. Soda Labs will be locked during the day, but volunteers will be positioned at the door to let students in.
Day schedule: A general day schedule for the tournament has been posted online here.
Phone number: If any issues arise during check-in or during the tournament, please contact Kevin at 702-688-1405.
Social Media [Share with Students]: We’re online! We’ll be posting fun tournament photos, updates, and live stories throughout the day to our Snapchat (ggscioly) and Instagram (goldengatescioly) accounts. Check us out!
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The registration form will be available here. Please read below for more information.
Welcome!
The Golden Gate Science Olympiad invitational is thrilled to open registration on September 27th at 12:00pm PDT (noon) for Division C tournament to be hosted January 27th, 2018 at the UC Berkeley campus! Please review our tournament policies before registering. Only team coaches will be allowed to register their teams.
Please note in your preparations that we anticipate significant demand and predict that spaces may fill quickly on a first-come, first-serve basis. Any school may choose to register 1 or 2 teams. We will confirm placement via email for the first 40 teams and keep a waitlist beyond that. It is possible that up to an additional 5 openings may be offered to teams on the waitlist, pending space constraints to be resolved shortly.
Registration will be performed via an online form. The link placed on the home page of goldengateso.com will open up at 12:00 pm (noon). The first 40 teams to register, ranked via time of submission, will receive a confirmation email within two days and an invitation to submit the registration fee. Upon receipt of the registration check, teams will receive a second confirmation email and will be added to the published list of attendees on the website. If Golden Gate SciOly does not receive your payment by November 1st and no other arrangements are made, the spot will be opened to teams on the waitlist (please email us directly if this timeline presents an inconvenience).
Please note that, due to high demand, middle schools (B division) will not be allowed to register for this tournament.
The team registration fee is $150. Details on method of payment are to follow shortly.
The registration fee is nonrefundable, except at the discretion of the tournament coordinators or in the unforeseen event of tournament cancellation. Receipts will be included in coaches’ packets to be distributed the day of competition. (Any requests for receipts to be mailed earlier should be made to goldengatescioly@gmail.com.)
The Golden Gate Invitational may also feature custom t-shirts for sale to competitors! Teams may pre-order t-shirts using a separate t-shirt form available after registration.
Other documents, including waivers and liability releases, will be distributed to participating teams shortly after registration. Further tournament details, including the schedule and logistics, are on their way as well!
Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns at goldengatescioly@gmail.com. We’re so excited to welcome you to our campus!
Schools must be registered with their home state Science Olympiad organization (and must have paid all applicable state and national fees) prior to competing in the Golden Gate Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament.
Teams’ places in the tournament are reserved in the order that they submit the online registration form, provided that the registration fee (paid by check) is received by Golden Gate SciOly by November 1, 2017. Teams whose payment is not received by November 1 will forfeit their place to a team on the waitlist. Please contact us at goldengatescioly@gmail.com if meeting the payment deadline may pose a problem for your school.
The Golden Gate Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament is a Division C competition. All teams must conform to the Science Olympiad Division C membership rules.
All students on each team must be eligible to compete for that team as per the eligibility rules specified on soinc.org.
We reserve the right to cap registration at 40 teams and to close registration when 40 teams have registered.
All participating students must fill out several waivers and liability releases, which will be distributed to participating teams shortly after registration.
No team or team coach will be asked to write a test or supervise an event. All events will be run by Science Olympiad alumni, and all tests and answer keys will be made available to teams after the competition.
On competition day, every team will be given access to a room or part of a room at UC Berkeley to serve as their homeroom/team base.
Golden Gate Science Olympiad Invitational will make every attempt to adhere closely to the 2018 National Science Olympiad event schedule.
Unless otherwise stated, the Golden Gate Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament will follow all rules as stated in the printed national rule book and national event clarifications posted here. We will follow all rules and clarifications published by the National Science Olympiad organization.
For events for which the printed national rule book specifies different rules or content for different levels of competition, the Golden Gate Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament will follow the rules specified for the regional tournament level.
Each team must be accompanied to the Golden Gate Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament by at least one unique adult. (In other words, schools which send two teams to the Tournament must be accompanied by at least two adults on competition day.)
Teams must abide by the Science Olympiad code of ethics and general rules specified on soinc.org
All built devices must conform to the general rules described on soinc.org.
When applicable as stated in the printed rule book, students must wear appropriate eye protection as described on soinc.org.
Teams (including students, parents, and coaches) may photograph or video-record their team participating at any of the openly viewable events. No team (including students, parents, and coaches) may record or photograph any other team’s engineering devices or competition runs. However, Golden Gate Science Olympiad will provide event photographers to capture images from throughout the tournament that will be made available to all participants.
Golden Gate Science Olympiad is run by Golden Gate Science League, a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Questions? Interested in sponsoring? Joining us as a student at Stanford or UC Berkeley next year? Shoot us an email to get involved with our team!