Here is the summary of our Greenhill community discussion on paperless debate.  Some coaches expressed interest in having another paperless discussion later in the year to see how things are going.  If you have suggestions for other future community discussions, please contact a board member or leave a comment here!

Notes from paperful/paperless

Updating judge philosophies to reflect what a judge’s reaction will be
about prep time on flash driving speeches and if a computer is a
failure

Minimum resources:
Each policy partnership needs three computers and a few clean jump drives
At least one school is providing the third computer.
Some people have purchased third computers from as low as $100 for a
netbook to about $300 for none net books. Some recommendations include
woot.com. Another option was to talk to local businesses (such as law
firms) who may be trading out their old computers and who might donate
those when replacing them.

There was a discussion about whether to share evidence via jumpdrives
to the files.  As a community, we trust on a lot of things so perhaps
trusting them not to steal files might be an option. There is also
potentially an issue with the jumpdrives having virus.
An alternate option is also that the paperless teams gives the other
team one of their computers to read evidence off.

Netbooks may also be an issue because processors are smaller and so it
slows the debate down as the year goes on.

Cost savings include printing costs, smaller vans,

What responsibility comes with the student checking out a viewing
computer and cost for replacing it? One coach tells kids they’d have
to pay replace it ($250), one says they’ll accept that they will have
to replace some (like kids will lose files or tubs won’t show up,
etc). One coach is doing an agreement with the families of the
partnership if the computer is lost – they are collectively
responsible.

MAC:
The new version may have the paperless functions. Some schools ask in
particular because they are a “one laptop one kid” school who have
macs. Some suggestions were to use them as viewing computers or to get
bootcamp/parallels to run software.

What about judging paperless? What if there is a crash?
Ans: if they have saved it on multiple computers perhaps it would be
easy to read off of the other ones

What about paperless teams who jump way more or who won’t tell you
which cards they read?
There is a lot of discussion about judging obligations to make sure
that situations go smoothly.
One suggestion was an ongoing judge jumpdrive that every speech saved
on the judge jumpdrive and that way the judge deters many shenanigans.
There may also need to be an additional save at the end of each speech
– the new version becomes part of the dialogue

Some people worry about the electrical capabilities  of high schools
being accessible, however that issue may already exist with teams who
use laptops and printers.

What about plans and permutations?
If the speech is jumped before hand then it is a bit difficult.  Or
perhaps with the plan, we could ask for a physical copy in advance.

There may need to  be a conversation in each round (whether you are
paperless or paperful) about the expectations from the judge.