Hey Judges!

JudgeApps is now home to a whopping 157 projects!  We’re really glad so many judges are using JudgeApps to list their project and communicate with each other.

That being said, I think many of them could use a little tender loving care, so I was hoping I could get all of you involved with a JudgeApps project to spend just a few minutes cleaning up the project pages for your site.

Here are some things to think about:

• Can you add a news feed to your blog?

This is a new feature we’ve added, that we’ll hope you’ll take advantage of.

• Does your Project Description provide all the information people need about your project?

For example, does it have necessary links to your project’s web presence?  Does it properly explain the goals and activities of your project?  Are there related projects you think it makes sense to link to as well?

• Is your Project members list still accurate?

It happens to the best of us – we get excited about an opportunity and volunteer to help out, only to realize that we might not have the time or ability to really stay involved in the project.  We’d like to encourage you to keep a list of current active members of your project so that everyone can see who’s really working on what.  And don’t worry – it just takes a few clicks to get added later if you find the time to contribute again!

• Is your Project still necessary?

Remember that project someone created to help organize the seminars at your 2011 regional conference?  Maybe it’s time to delete that one…

• Are you looking for help with your project?

Remember that there are two easy ways in JudgeApps to find help for your project.  The first is to fill out the ‘Looking for:’ field. Just enter a brief description of what kinds of members you’re looking for, so judges can easily find places they can contribute when browsing projects.

The other place is the Help Wanted forum.  I created this as a place for you to help find other like-minded judges who are interested in working towards the same common goals.

For a great example of a well-maintained Project page, and a shameless plug, check out the Project Page for the Rules Tip Blog.

And of course, if you’re working with other judges, and you’d like a place to recruit more help or to communicate with each other using a private forum, consider creating a project as well!  Just remember to keep your project page clean 🙂

Thanks for reading – and an even bigger thanks for all your contributions to all the amazing projects you do to develop your communities and the program!

– Lems