speechdrop > email chain ? (best practices to minimize lag/delay)

Problem

I have witnessed what seems like a higher amount of lag in email chains getting out to all relevant debaters (partners, competitors, judges) after the student/debater clicks on ‘send’. Last year I thought it was because perhaps emails were getting some sort of extra screening/scrutiny when there were cards/emails sent about nuclear weapons policy through Cornell emails. I then instructed debaters to make gmail accounts by team and it got a little bit better.

This summer I have noticed similar if not even more lag when sending out email chains to debaters in our internal practice debates. This happens even though debaters are just sending docs about climate policy, and it does not seem to matter if they use gmail or their Cornell emails.

I have of course also witnessed all variety of delays when competitors from other schools send email ‘reply all’ responses with attached speech docs at tournaments.

Solution?

I’m wondering if it’s time for collective ‘best practices’ to move on to something like speechdrop. I don’t know who runs speechdrop or if there are alternative sites that do the same thing, but in testing this summer it has worked great for practice debates.

Step 1: The aff team creates a room on speechdrop
Step 2: The aff team communicates unique code for that room to competitors and judge
Step 3: All subsequent speeches get ‘dropped’ into the webpage/url for that unique room, and it seems very fast (so far)

I remember when the norm was tossing around a flash drive to competitors and judges (about a decade ago), but then things shifted over to email chains. Maybe its time to move on from email chains to something else?

Barriers to the solution/disadvantages

I think there might be some reluctance to use speechdrop because then anyone passing by the room/watching the debate might get access to all the docs if the virtual room code is, for example, written for all to see on the markerboard/chalkboard in the classroom. Some teams are more secretive that others or want more control over who does/does not get a part of the email chain. I think a workaround to this would just be to handwrite down the room code on a slip of paper, then hand that over to the judge and to the other team.

I don’t know how speech drop operates. Is it free for now, but may end up being a paid service later? Can its servers become overrun if use of speechdrop gets used, for example, by 100+ teams at once at a weekend tournament? I don’t know

Please let me know your thoughts!