Focus Groups at Judge Conferences The first Judge Conference is always a unique experience. If you’ve had a chance of attending one (if you haven’t, plan for it asap!), you should remember that feeling. The discovery of your regional community, the sense of belonging quickly encompassing former strangers, facing judges so similar to you – […]
Changes to Conference Support
Hello everyone! If you’ve recently been to a conference, you might’ve noticed that the support packs were rather old. It’s not that we don’t like our cards for commander or that the cards on themselves were not good, but after receiving them for so long, they definetely started to lose their appeal. Currently, Exemplar and […]
An Article: The Backbone of a Great Seminar
Writing, reading and sharing articles is a cornerstone of the international judge program. The very fact you are reading this article is proof. Articles are great. They give projects and individual judges an opportunity to share an idea with a large group of people across the globe. They give the reader a chance to hear […]
Hoboken Judge Conference Report
Location: Hoboken, New Jersey Date: 26 March 2016 Attendance: 147 confirmed attendees plus several walk-ins Presentations: 26 Judge Tests Passed: 8, including one new L2 Location The idea for this conference started about a year ago, when , , and approached me with this idea at the Spring 2015 judge conference. They wanted to host […]
Seminar Feedback
From time to time a presenter at a Judge Conference might not be able to engage us as much as they could. It could be the lack of interaction with the audience, the aesthetics of the slides, the length of the talk or many other things. Why does this happen? In my opinion, it boils […]
The Art of the Mini-Conference
Judge conferences are a great way to meet area judges and learn from your peers in a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere. Perhaps you’ve wanted to host a similar event, but you don’t have a large judge population, or you are remote relative to the concentration of judges in your region. Enter the mini-conference–a scaled-down version of […]
Eastern European Winter Conference Report
Location: Sinaia, Romania. Date: 5-7 February 2016. Arriving at the hearth of Transylvania was much better then expected. We were warned about bad roads (or no roads at all), but had a completely different experience. Sinaia is a mountain resort known by its Peles Castle, Sinaia monastery and even was a residence for Romanian Royal family. Very […]
Picking a Topic and Goal
Picking a Topic When you’ve made the decision to present at a conference it is most likely that you have some idea in mind of what you want to talk about. You may feel that you have a particular insight into some area of judging that is generally unexplored by others or even that you […]
Organizing a Judge Conference – What can go wrong
Last year, I was one of the organizers of the Czechoslovak judge conference. And even though the conference went quite smoothly with about 40 participants and 18 seminars over 2 days, it was not completely problem-free. So, I’m writing this article describing some of the issues we have been dealing with in order to prevent […]
Hosting the Virginia Judge Conference at Battlegrounds
Hosting a conference is a lot of work. There is a ton of planning that goes into it that and I did not realize and were surprised to prepare for. The Set Up or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the LGS Finding the perfect place is difficult, and a truly perfect place […]