About

Buildacase began in 2020 as a Google Doc I sent to new high school and university debaters to help them understand the basics. At the time I was an undergraduate competing for Hart House and coaching younger students in my free time. The doc was a compilation of online resources (YouTube videos, blog posts, Facebook comment screenshots) created by debaters far more talented and experienced than I was, whose work I studied in hopes of becoming great like them.

Over time, interest in the doc grew. Past students and Canadian debaters reached out to ask if they could share it with their own students. Strangers messaged me on Facebook to discuss the rounds I'd recommended as practice. By 2022, the project had outgrown the doc and I built a website. Buildacase.ca was born.

At the time, most debate resources online emphasized theoretical thinking skills, which, in my experience, novices found difficult to grasp or practice. I took a different approach. I wrote the lessons as if I was speaking to a novice debater across the table, and, inspired by my own experiences in competitive sport, I designed the lessons to drill specific skills repeatedly. My theory was: if I could teach novices to understand the building blocks of a persuasive speech, they could build their own speeches (and cases!). To this end, the three foundational lessons cover the basics:

1. How to structure or 'translate' an argument in simple terms;
2. How to identify logical gaps in an argument; and
3. How to rigorously compare two persuasive arguments.

Also, I designed Buildacase as a response to a need in the debating world for accessible debating resources. The pandemic era was a difficult time for the BP debate community. For the first time ever, debate communities across the world interacted weekly. Circuits were forced to interrogate their biases and foster more inclusive practices to support new debaters hailing from new circuits without experienced debaters. One group of approximately ~300-400 regular judges and coaches judged hundreds of tournaments online every month. So it was difficult for new debaters (particularly ESL debaters and debaters from up-and-coming circuits) to receive feedback from overwhelmed judges. In contrast, Buildacase promoted a practice format encouraging self-reliance through self-reflection and comparison to well known great debate speeches; it cut out the middle-man of expensive debate coaches or frustrating debate club politics and encouraged debaters to just… learn.

Learn what, exactly? Learn a few important life skills, of course! Tenacity, alacrity, empathy, teamwork, clear communication, critical reflection, rigorous comparison, and persuasive speaking — these are what I value in debating. Debating is just a game, and nobody plays the same game forever. Everything you do matters. James Taylor Foreman wrote:

[N]ot only that you do it, but how you do it. It's as if we see life as a big play. Everything you do has valence, character, voice; it all gives off a vibe, which at the very least you witness, and which, if nothing else, shapes the delicate curves of your face. You get away with nothing.

Nowadays, I do not debate. But I take each debate experience with me and it informs how I move throughout the world. I hope Buildacase inspires each user to feel the same.

What Buildacase is now

Buildacase ran on WordPress for several years. I went to law school, started a career, and didn't touch the site. In 2026, after graduating, I pulled up the analytics out of curiosity and realized the userbase had outgrown what WordPress could do. It was time to design my own. That's how we got to the new website you see now.

The site gained popularity quickly. 10,000 unique visitors in its first six months. The audience was newer debaters, as expected. What I didn't expect was the site taking off in Croatia, the Philippines, India, and other countries with growing debating circuits.

My intention with the new Buildacase is to make it the home of competitive BP debating online. I want it to be the record of every round a debater has ever done (which survives tabs shutting down). I want it to be a training program, a leaderboard, and a workspace for debaters, clubs, coaches, and tournament organizers. The hub for the sport.

It started as a debate course. The lessons are still here. They're the foundation of everything else. The activity needs more support than just lessons, so I am building it as a side project while I practice law.

As of June 2026, the new site has been live for about three months. It is still in beta. But it already passed the 10,000 unique users the old site took six months to reach.

Who built it

Buildacase was built by Matt Aydin. He is an articling student (a baby lawyer, almost) at a Bay Street firm in Toronto. Before joining the legal profession, he was a competitive debater. HWS IV finalist. Yale IV quarterfinalist. Princeton IV quarterfinalist. Canadian champion. Two-time WUDC-breaking judge (Korea 2021, Belgrade 2022). Coach of three WSDC teams in various capacities.

Matt had help from Muzamil Godil, Pranav Anand, and Leauren Ji, who gave feedback on Buildacase's earliest drafts.