Some thoughts about growth
When I take a step back and look at the big picture of what the CoCo has accomplished as an organization these last few years, I'm immensely proud of our whole team. We've done a lot. Just in 2023 alone, we ran 24 successful Scrabble tournaments - and all told, we've held a total of 49 since we first launched the CoCo back in late 2019. Not bad, considering we built all of this from absolute scratch. A half-decade ago, no one even knew what a "CoCo" was.
Still, though: It's never a good time to get complacent. As a matter of organization-wide philosophy, we're always looking for new ways to grow this thing. We're looking to move into new regions of North America, start running new tournaments, appeal to new players, and more. This is the sort of work that can never stop. It's what growing the game is all about, really - at a granular level, really digging into the details and finding ways to take baby steps forward.
As the guy who spearheads this sort of work for the CoCo, I try to be strategic about these efforts. I try to guide us forward with as much information, and as much of a coherent logical approach, as possible.
One thing I do is, every year, I draw a map.
The idea here is pretty simple - it's a lot easier to envision your future when you have a clear view of your people. Where are they, and in what areas do they gather to play Scrabble?
In the image above, you see 89 purple dots, one representing each player in the United States who signed up for at least one tournament in 2023. This shows you a lot, doesn't it? With this visualization, it's clear that the CoCo player base is made up largely, but not entirely, of people living in a small handful of CSW hotbed areas. The Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and D.C. metro areas, along with a smattering of people in New York and New Jersey, account for the lion's share of our Collins Scrabble-playing humans. Ergo, one can easily suss out, it makes sense to put tournaments in these places.
Now, there's certainly an interesting "chicken or the egg?" discussion to be had here. There's currently a very strong correlation between where our players live and where our tournaments happen - but why? Do we have tournaments in these cities because that's where CSW Scrabble players are? Or does the CoCo player base have a bias toward certain cities where we have tournaments? In other words: If we had events in more cities, would we have a map where the dots weren't quite so clustered? Where there were active CoCo players all over the place?
I'm honestly not sure. But regardless, suffice it to say: More tournaments is good. The more opportunities we can give people to play Scrabble, in the more places, the better. So that's what we're going to strive for in 2024 and beyond.
There are definitely plenty of areas where we could be doing more. In the Bay Area, we've still never had a tournament (despite the 11 dots you see there)! In Southern California, we've had some events, but they've been pretty sporadic. You could say the same for the Midwest, the New York/New Jersey area, and New England. And I'd still love for us to have a presence in the Southwest (we've still had zero tournaments ever in Arizona) and the Southeast (none yet in North Carolina, Georgia, or Florida, either).
(And then, of course, there's the entire country of Canada. Obviously important! But that's a separate challenge altogether, so let's save it for another post on another day.)
In any event, to make all of the above happen, there's one thing we need more than anything, and you can probably guess what it is - more directors. This is something we've preached about in this space over and over and over again already, so I won't beat the topic into the ground this time. I'll keep this short and sweet: If you believe in our organization and you want to see it grow, the best thing you can do is be the change you hope to see. Step up and direct a tournament. You'll be glad you did! It's rewarding work, it's easier than you think, and hey - it means you get to play more Scrabble! We all love playing Scrabble... right?
That's our hope, organization-wide. We all hope to make it possible for everyone out there in the CSW player community to play more Scrabble. More, more, more, more, more. As for our existing team, we'll do everything in our power to facilitate that - but we would certainly accept all the helping hands we can get. Let us know if you've got one you can offer.