When I started WhatsUpDocs, I felt that the ideal rhythm for articles to go live would be one MIPG/MTR/JAR article each Month, 1st and another smaller article each Month, 15th. I’m still convinced that’s quite what it needs.

But 6 weeks ago, I failed for the first time to come up with something to add to this blog. After 2 mere months. Impressive, no? I could argue many more or less valid reasons, the main reason being the upcoming GP Paris I’ll be the TO for.

Well, in all fairness, I can even find other reasons for this. But, well, I say “Reasons”… Shouldn’t I use “excuses“? Wouldn’t that be more accurate?

 

Blast from the Past

 

Then a concept I’ve read for the first time a couple years ago came back to my mind:

“If you’re doing it alone, you’re doing it wrong”.

 

This instinctively looks like an arguable stance, doesn’t it? I mean, if I’m the one who had an idea, I’m the one who went through the whole process of creating then carefully crafting it. As a logical conclusion, how could I expect anyone else to make it work as well as I would?

That’s the instinctive reasoning. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of reasoning that leads you to have a great idea and never take the best out of it.

 

 

Shallow graves

 

I’ve tried to think about some of the projects I’ve had that were most likely worth it but never saw the light:

• In 2005, I translated the Comp_Rules to French. Or rather until paragraph 420, at which point I got a bit demotivated after three weeks of full-time translation. Then I shared it a bit but never updated it and it died very soon.
• In 2009, I wrote an article about how to HJ large events. It was extremely long, fairly technical and some ideas weren’t optimal. There were good things in it, but it in the end never got published.

 

 

Way later, I came up realizing why these projects got buried: I did not try to gather a group to make sure someone would take care of keeping these projects alive even if I were to become too busy. And in the end, their range and size became factors of demotivation.

 

 

Corpse Dance

 

In 2010, a Global project for translating documents was started by Juan Del Compare. Because this project was structured, a team was gathered and Comp_Rules ended up being translated to French by a group led by Daniel Kitachewsky in 2010.

 

David Zimet (Hi David!) came to me privately as he had been given access to a draft of my Running Large Events article and he felt it should really be published. So he offered to follow up with it. But, well, that was my idea, how could I expect him to treat it as well as I would? So I can’t say I welcomed him in the best possible way (Sorry David :/)

 

 

Think Tank

 

I don’t really want to go through the same mistakes again with WhatsUpDocs. I believe this can become a great educational tool. That’s why I designed it but there’s no way I can succeed alone. I’m therefore looking for help:

 

• Judges interested in writing articles about the philosophy behind the MIPG.
  That’s a basis, but I’m actually more and more convinced that the JAR is the document that needs the most explanation articles, because it is so short that grabbing the full extent of its underlying philosophy is made even more difficult.

• I’m also looking for an Editor to review articles before publishing.
  Your first task? Finally reviewing the article about Marked Cards that Claire Dupré submitted a few months ago but I’ve never found time to review appropriately.

 

If you’re interested, contact me at kevin.desprez@gmail.com

 

 

Back to Basics

 

WhatsUpDocs’s future is important, but publishing something that only aim at sustaining itself would be arguably useful.

However, this concept does have many applications in many core elements of the basics of our hobby, i.e. judging: Teamwork, Mentoring and as a consequence, Leadership.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Champion of the Parish

 

As a GP HJ, I often get to evaluate L2 judges who aim at obtaining the Team Leader Recommendation. One of the most common issues I notice and that can make them fail is their inability to instinctively delegate tasks. They want to do it alone.

 

Honestly, that’s quite a common behavior. I came to realizing it when I tried to evaluate whether I had been doing it a few years ago, I realized that it still sometimes happen to me, especially when the situation becomes slightly stressful. And I think that anyone who is evaluated to check what can be the final item of their L3 checklist is in a stressful situation.

 

If you’re in that situation, don’t worry, it is not overly concerning. Of course, it may make you fail, but that does not mean it’s a blocking issue. It can become blocking though, but that’d require you never improve on it even after several tries.

 

 

Killer instinct

 

Actually, it’s fairly instinctive to believe that because you’re given the great power of being a TL, you’re also given the great responsibility of running the tournament yourself, hence showing others their trust was not misplaced.

However, you’re then completely missing a major point: If you’ve been selected to be a GP Day2 Team Leader, it means that we believe you can succeed. What would be the point of putting you in a place where you have no chance to succeed?

 

 

 

If you’re to become a L3, we’re not overly interested with what you, as an individual, can do. Actually, we’re interested on what you can make others achieve.

And honestly, having them sit on a chair the whole day is not exactly an achievement (although one may argue your teammates will be ready to go back to work on Monday morning):

• The event will suffer as you can’t be as quick on your own as you would be with your team
• Your teammates won’t learn nearly as much as they could have, tasks will be much slower
• You won’t learn nearly as much as you won’t exchange with them.

 

Training grounds

 

My point is probably explicit enough by that point: It’s through the creation of a collaborative environment that you can create a win-win exchange with your teammates.

By teaching them, trusting them and giving them feedback, they get to learn the theory, to put it into application, to think about how things can be improved. The underlying goal is to eventually know how to do better next time. That’s how you can turn Teamwork into Mentoring: You set yourself as a resource that others can use so as to learn.

 

 

And how do we call someone who others feel like they should use as a trustful resource? A Leader.

But in order to be a leader, you need to interact with others.

 

One can’t do it alone.

 

Kevin Desprez.