Setting New Year's resolutions for 2024

Your mileage may vary, of course, but in my experience, New Year's resolutions have little hope of coming true unless you sit down and actually, physically write them out. Really, it makes all the difference. If you really want to persevere and make good on your yearly goals, putting them down on paper (or, in a pinch, a computer screen will do) is a must. Once your resolutions are in writing, they're official, and you have no choice but to stick to them.

And if you want to go one step further? Write them out, then put them on the internet for the whole world to see. It works because when everyone can see your resolutions, they can keep tabs on whether you're actually delivering on them, and call you out on it if you're not. Accountability is key. In the long run, it yields results.

So, to that end: Let's talk about some of the CoCo's organizational goals. We've got a lot of things we're trying to accomplish, both in 2024 and in the long term... so why not write them out? Let's let the world see what we're setting out to do in these next 12 months and beyond.

What follows are our New Year's resolutions. We'll try to achieve them all - wish us luck! But if we don't, hold us accountable. Seriously!

To the resolutions we go...

Bring back the tournaments you know and love

One of the best things we've got going for us is a small handful of annual events that players eagerly circle on their calendars every year. The Crescent City Cup, in New Orleans; the Hood River Open, outside of Portland; the spring ATX event, down in Austin. These are three of the big ones. Tournaments like this are our bread and butter - they reliably keep players coming back year after year. And we're thrilled that this year will bring the 12th, sixth, and third of those events, respectively.

We're also excited for our second annual Champions Cup in April, as well as our second time co-running Word Cup this summer. This is one of the things we do best - identify our most popular tournaments and continue to rinse and repeat, year after year. In 2024, we'll look to keep doing that.

Expand our presence into new areas

At the same time, a Scrabble organization can't subsist on just the same old, same old, year after year. There's got to be some innovation there, some willingness to try new things. And we'll definitely look to do that in 2024, too. In particular, we would love to see the CoCo expand into new geographic areas where we haven't had a big presence thus far.

It's obvious where the CoCo hotbeds are - we've got tons of tournament action in the Pacific Northwest, the Mid-Atlantic, and pockets of the South like Texas and Louisiana. But what about everywhere else? There are plenty of other regions across North America where we know we could be doing a better job of giving players opportunities to play. That's a challenge we'll try to tackle in the months (and years) ahead.

Run a great championship event

Since reopening post-pandemic a couple of years back, we've striven to deliver a high-level CSW championship event for players each year. In the summer of 2022, we did that in the form of a big-time Word Cup Collins division, complete with a star-studded field and a big cash prize. In 2023, we shifted gears and offered players a North American Collins Championship (NACC) in the fall.

It's back to Word Cup for the summer of 2024, and we're excited to co-run the event with WGPO in Albuquerque, NM. We're focused right now on building the biggest, most competitive CSW division we possibly can for next year's championship. For the last Word Cup, we drew over 70 Collins players, joining us from all over the world. We'll try to do even better than that this time around.

Develop a deep bench of directing talent

We've said it again and again and again in this space, and we're gonna keep saying it: Directors are the driving force of the Scrabble community. Without dedicated people working hard to create and run events, none of this would be possible. And on the CoCo team currently, we're blessed to have a couple dozen awesome people all doing their part and running tournaments.

Having said that, we're always in the market for more. Nurturing new directors is hugely important to our mission - it helps us grow the CoCo's footprint in all sorts of ways. We're looking to get tournaments off the ground in new places, bolster the areas where we're strong already, and try out fun, innovative new tournament ideas. The more personpower we've got, the more opportunities we can give you, the players, to play. So, no doubt, we'll keep working at this.

Introduce new players to Collins Scrabble

For me, one of the most exciting parts of this role is getting to see a Scrabble player try out Collins for the first time and like it. Sure, there are a million reasons not to start playing CSW - it's new and unfamiliar and scary and the words are weird and the opponents are tough. I get all that. But for most CSW newbies, once they conquer all those fears and just start playing, they realize it's just flat-out fun! And it's always gratifying to see a player try a Collins tournament and come to that realization.

I'm hoping we see a lot more players have that "Welcome to Collins" moment in 2024. That's another key organizational goal for the coming year - encourage as many players as possible to give the big book a try.

Introduce new players to Scrabble altogether

Of course, converting existing Scrabble players isn't the only way to grow our ranks. We're also hoping we can step up our recruiting efforts and get lots more people trying tournament Scrabble in the first place.

Millions of people all over the world love the game of Scrabble, but only a tiny fraction of those millions have actually taken the leap and shown up to an in-person tournament. If we could encourage a few more newbies to give the tournament scene a try in 2024, that would be splendid. We'll certainly do our best.

Increase our marketing reach

Of course, if we want to achieve that "bring in new players" goal, we'll also need to step up our efforts to attract people - they're not just going to show up magically.

When it comes to marketing the CoCo - and marketing Scrabble in general, really - one of the key things we can do is create more (and better) content online that will help attract people. We've got accounts on Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and so on and so forth - and come next year, certainly one thing we can do more of is use those platforms to do fun Scrabbly things and draw more eyeballs.

Remember who we are

Every now and then, I like to take a quick glance at the Who We Are section of our website, just to get a little reminder. It's important not to lose sight of the CoCo's core values as an organization.

We are citizens of the world. We aspire to grow Scrabble. We value democracy, transparency, and innovation. We treat our members with empathy and compassion. From the very first day we launched the CoCo back in 2019, this has been our identity. Now, as we enter the year 2024, we'll look to act in a way that, no matter what, stays true to that identity.

And if we don't, you know what to do: Hold us accountable! Really. I mean it. Yell at us.

...and, on that note, Happy New Year. We hope to see you over a Scrabble board sometime soon.