Welcome, and thanks for joining us at the Benelux Blog, where once again we will be putting the spotlight on some of the many sights of exemplary behaviour that were shown by judges from our region. We missed the last wave, because of “cough” reasons, but we will try to make up for it with this one:

We will start with a recognition that was given to William Tiddi by our very own Mark Dragstra:

You have been presenting a couple of seminars for the last two mini-conferences. These seminars are of outstanding quality. You invest a lot of time in researching the subject and how to convey this knowledge to the audience. You’re not only improving other judges, you also inspire other judges to start presenting. Therefore you are enforcing and improving the region beyond the attendance of your seminars.

Inspirational to say the least, so we reached out to William in order to get some insight on why he does what he does:

Judge conferences are my favourite moments to engage with the community, so I was glad to have the chance to present and inspire others to do the same. I am a huge fan of the mini-conference format as they are perfect for L1s as entry points in the broader Judge Program and for everyone to share experiences, so I try to always keep that in mind in my seminars… and it seems to be working!

The mini-conferences have been a steady hit in our community, so if you haven’t gone to one yet, you should certainly try them out. Luckily there’s one up for application right now!

For our next choice we went with a recognition from Toby Hazes, directed at Cécile Denaux:

Thanks for organizing the very first Benelux Judge Regionals! It’s an awesome initiative that’s a great opportunity for judges to play more actual magic, for Dutch and Belgian judges to mingle more and even a good judging opportunity to get more experience!
⊂ﾟＵ┬────┬~

This is what Cécile had to add:

As a very involved community judge, I took this recognition about the first Benelux Judge Regionals deeply to my heart. It’s only fair that I share this with Anouk Burny (level 1 from Gent) because we both organized it.

We intended to gather judges to have a fun day; besides seminar or tournaments there are few occasions to see each other.

We did that as a bonding opportunity and we both hope that this will be the start of a long tradition.

If you want to know more about the Judge Regionals, make sure to reach out to Cécile or Anouk, we are sure they would be happy to get you some extra information!

Next up is a recognition for Arjen de Jong, given by Todd Bussey:

I’ve seen multiple useful contributions to the Facebook Ask the Judge done by you.
Most recently, concerning a question about how Saheeli, the Gifted works with multikicker – you answered it in a straightforward way that was easy to understand.
Your rules knowledge is exceptional and the contribution in time that you make to help out the Magic community on the Facebook Ask a Judge page is noteworthy. Take a bow for your excellent work.

In our quest for more information, Arjen added this:

I’ve been posting on the Ask the Judge Facebook group ever since I started to work to become a judge. It helped me a lot to expand my own rules knowledge and it’s a great way to train yourself in how to word your answers correctly and navigate different types of players (in terms of rules knowledge and general understanding of English) in the way you word your answers to them.
I’ve had many events were a corner case rules question came up and I knew the exact answer without even thinking twice about it because I had answered it before from the comfort of my computer with CR and Gatherer at hand.

Todd has been active in the group since I can remember joining it and I’m honoured to get recognized from among the wide group of judges that contribute to this group every single hour of every day.

There are many ways for a judge to do exemplary things in the program, some closeby like the two previous recognitions, some with a bit more international reach, and this one certainly falls in the latter category. Make sure to give the Ask the Judge Facebook group a visit if you can!

Next up is a recognition for Emilien Wild, given by Anniek Van der Peijl:

Hey Emilien, thank you for your tireless posting on the BeNeLux judge facebook group. Pretty much every day you post something of interest to this group, whether it’s event applications that are about to close or rules updates or articles. It really helps people to stay informed (especially now that the Bulletin is no longer in business).

Emilien gave us some extra insight in this recognition with the following words:

What I like about that nomination is that it demonstrates one of the principles of the Exemplar program: while being well connected and doing a lot of events help to get more occasions to have an impact on others, you can also impress judges by actions that don’t require to even leave your house. In that case, it’s as simple as getting a habit, when I see a piece of news that could help my fellow judges, to make sure I share it. Facebook, for all its downsides, makes it very simple to do exactly that, and two clicks on each article, announcement, or Judge Apps post that will help other are enough to spread information.

For anyone that frequents the BeNeLux Judge Facebook page, the many shares and posts from Emilien are certainly noticeable, and we felt it more than welcome to put those in the spotlights.

And finally, we end up with a recognition that is extra painful for our project, considering the regularity it talks about is exactly what we went wrong on for the previous wave. It is a recognition from Bryan Prillaman for Toby Hazes:

Toby, this nomination is for your continued work on the 2HG blog. Particularly the regularity of it. When we do something on a regular basis, we start to get a little relaxed with respect to schedule and quality, but after years of doing this, it looks like you have sacrificed neither. keep up the good work.

We got Toby to add some words from his side:

First of all, it should be noted that I’m not alone anymore, Sabrina Kool and Kade Goforth are also regular writers now but it’s still mostly me that’s associated with the blog. Perhaps we should start using profile pictures with each article?
So about the regularity. What helps me a lot in this regard is that the blog is “demand-driven”, it has very clear deadlines. A new set is spoiled and then there is a weekend full of 2HG prereleases. Sometimes there are only 2 cards to talk about and that’s okay. I don’t have to rely on inspiration or happenings like a more personal blog. The motivation for writing the blog today is essentially the same motivation that I had the first time years ago.
As for the quality, I have a bit of a perfectionist mindset in that if I do something I want to commit 100% and I don’t mind wasting hours on insignificant small things.

Doing extra work to help other judges (and in this case players too!) enjoying their time is a great thing to do, but keeping it up for a long period of time, being there when people expect you to be is even greater to see, so thanks for showing us how it’s done, Toby.

With that said, we have reached the end of that post, but we’ll be back soon enough, with more great examples of judges doing awesome things! If you see somebody doing something truly exemplary, and want to thank them for that, don’t forget to recognize them on JudgeApps. If you can’t, then our Regional Coordinator Niels Viaene can make it happen for you. You can contact him at sineo.niels[at]gmail.com. Submissions for the next wave close in less than a week from now, so now is a great time to think of some great things you saw!

Thank you for reading, and keep on being exemplary!

See you soon,

The BeNeLux Blog Team