Regional information for BeNeLux judges
Our region has 10+ (mini) conferences each year, and because we are quite small geographically, they have a higher purpose than education and practice alone. They are the social glue that keeps us together and united, despite the fact that we speak so many languages, and experience cultural differences from time to time.
Dear Magic-enthusiast!
As you may or may not know, the beautiful city of Ghent is our host for two big Magic: the Gathering events in the near future. CardMarket Series Ghent in April and Magic Fest Ghent in September.
Now, most tourists who want to see a historic city center in Belgium go to Bruges. However, in the author’s subjective opinion, Ghent is the more awesome destination of the two.
To convince you of this here is a small guide of Ghent written by Anouk Burny. It’s not all of Ghent, that would be five books with twelve appendices. This guide is based on one form of transportation, which is tram line 1. CMS Ghent will take place in Flanders Expo, which is the start of tram line 1, the tram also passes the main station of Ghent (Gent Sint-Pieters) and goes further into the old city center. This makes it the ideal line to guide you through Ghent.
The focus lies mostly on good food and drinks, but there’s also a little culture and some information that might come in handy.
Have a nice trip!
Well, definitions, semantics and philosophy aside, in the BeNeLux it means you are an L3 or have been appointed as ‘Leadership’ because you took on a particular responsibility. That responsibility was being an Area Captain up until now, where people would reign supreme over a part of the region the size of 2-5 provinces.
When the call came for Area Captain applications it became clear that we would be running into a few problems. One was that the state of development of the area and the options for strong Area Captains are an inverse correlation. In easy words: an area lacking judges would generally lack many good candidates. With that came the issue that many great judges applied that were competing for the same position and many of them would have to be turned down.
In addition, many of the applications came with a very specialised motivation to be able to do very specific things rather than being responsible for a generalist position.
And thus the Sphere system was born, to let all the people that were or wanted to do more for the region, do it and get the recognition for it they deserve. It allows them to specialise and implies they will need to work together to create a nice coherent whole.
For people that want to read up on the description of the spheres, go here.
Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to our Regional Sphere Leaders.
Since the beginning of October, the BeNeLux region has a new Regional Coordinator: Niels Viaene. We took a moment to ask him some questions about himself and the region.
If you are interested in Judge Conferences, Judge Dinners and/or Competitive events, you should configure your notification settings on JudgeApps, because you won’t be notified about any events by default.
To do so, log in on JudgeApps, go to Notifications and then Change your notification settings.
The first part of the page is set up correctly already, most importantly receiving email for New Event Created. No need to touch this for now.
Scroll down to Event Notification Settings and you see the list of events for which you want notifications. This list is empty!
Time to add things.
If you’re interested in both competitive events and judge gatherings, select Select All from Event Types and Benelux for the Region and press Add. All done!
If you’re only interested in judge gatherings (Conferences & Dinners) and not in competitive events you should only select Judge Conference and Other from Event Types.
Regular events are rarely posted on JudgeApps; There have been no BeNeLux Prerelease events posted in 2017 for example. If you are interested in these, but not in Competitive events (so you’re not using Select All), then you can select these just in case.
At some point you might be interested in events outside of the Benelux. Then you can add Grand Prix or Judge Conferences from other regions as well. If you’re close to Germany, then MKM Series could also be a great opportunity.
Now, if you’re applying to events it’s important to have a picture on your profile to show the event organizer and the other judges/attendees what you look like. Most people remember others through facial recognition rather than their names. So while we’re here, click on your name and then Set Image.
Here you can upload a photo.
The instructions mention Tactful Attire. Basically this means whatever you wear when you’re judging, so if it’s something that you would wear at your LGS, it’s acceptable for a profile picture. Once you start judging competitive, the judge shirt is the most appropriate. The background should be MtG-related or neutral. If you only have beach photos, then just crop one so only your head is visible! Any photo with a recognizable face is infinitely better than no photo.
Or if you want to get creative, photoshop your head onto your favorite MtG art! You can also ask me to do that, I’ll be glad to help! (past performance is no guarantee of future results)
We’ll go over five recognitions that caught our attention, and had a talk with the recipients in order to learn how we, too, can find ways to improve ourselves and the community.
Event: PPTQ Amsterdam, Spelletjescafé 2 Klaveren, 31 July 2017
HJ: Michel Degenhardt
HJ-in-training: Alex de Blécourt
FJ/SK: Jan-Jaap Vermeire
Format: Modern
Size: 58 players (over 2 floors)
The Benelux Bulletin team has their latest edition ready for you.
Go read it now!