Written by Jon Goud
I’d like to announce a pilot phase for a new initiative – The Canadian Regional Enrichment Sponsorship. This is a program where Judges complete self-directed projects and receive foils as sponsorship and recognition for their efforts. Our goal is to help cover potential travel or other costs associated and to strongly encourage and formalize knowledge-sharing between Canadian judge communities.
The form of knowledge sharing can be anything other judges can interact with – a tournament report, a blog article, even a shareable podcast episode, or a video of some kind! Get creative and make it interesting 🙂
This is a pilot phase (I really can’t say that enough) – things that will determine if this project continues will be logistics, the quality of information-sharing from select projects, and level of interest/engagement from Canadian judges.
It works like this …
- Interested applicants submit their proposals via a Google form during a set application window.
- Each proposal must include some outcome which will benefit a larger pocket of the Canadian judge community.
- The RC with the help of a review committee of senior Canadian judges reviews and selects projects.
- Selected projects are sent foil packets.
- Everyone received the same packet regardless of the scope of their project.
- After the project is complete, two-way feedback from the applicant and from the selection committee wraps up the initiative.
What kind of things qualify? Here are some ideas …
- Travel to a far-off tournament and share a detailed tournament report of your experiences.
- Travel to an out-of province conference and share a conference report with the broader Canadian community.
- Travel to an out-of province judge conference and present on a topic perhaps unique to your experience or the specific experiences of your judge community.
- Travel to an isolated area to mentor and test judge candidates who might not otherwise have the opportunity to spend time with a judge of your level.
- Any other good idea! Be creative 🙂
For this pilot phase I have ten (10) available slots, and the judge foil pack awarded for each sponsorship will be one of each of the following: Gaddog Teeg, Doran, Capture of Jingzhou, and Prismatic Geoscope.
Applications will be open until April 20th, with selections going public by the end of the following week.
Interested? Apply here:
https://goo.gl/forms/kMO1PFd5rukfNBDB3
What if I haven’t been accepted to the event I want to go to?
That’s fine – we will be tie-breaking in favour of proposals where the judge has a higher likelihood of being accepted to the event in question. If your application is pending for an event and you are selected then subsequently denied from that event we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. A L1 who wants to go to a Pro Tour and write a tournament report is less likely to be chosen than an L2 who wants to travel to Nationals and write a report about that.
I would need these foils to be able to afford attendance. If I don’t get it, I can’t afford to travel. Does that affect my chances of being selected?
Honestly, at this point I’m not sure. One of the things I’d like to learn in the pilot phase is how we will make those kinds of determinations. My experience with this kind of thing in the past is to apply honestly and be prepared for either outcome.
I would like to travel and present at a conference, but the conference doesn’t exist yet!
This is bound to happen. If selected we’ll connect you with the conference team to get the ball rolling on conference planning and do our best to accommodate your travel availability.
I have other questions!
Awesome! We’ll use the Facebook group to discuss details, or you can always email me: jonbgoud@gmail.com