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Hello all,

Welcome to the latest update post for Exemplar. It’s been a while so let’s dive in.

In Wave 9, we announced an experiment. Instead of contacting authors for revisions of nominations that were “close”, we instead spent the time writing emails to tell judges with deferred nominations *why* the nomination was deferred.

The results were mixed. There are other administrative factors that don’t allow us to save as much time as I had expected. But telling judges why their nominations were deferred seems more popular than deferring them without feedback, so I can call that a success, at least anecdotally.

The feedback from within the Exemplar team, however, was very positive and we therefore decided to continue the process with wave 10, and will continue when we review nominations from Wave 11 (Fall 2017).

The next Exemplar announcement is a change to conferences.  Wait…conferences?  In the Exemplar blog?  Yes, you read that correctly.

Exemplar, in conjunction with the Conferences sphere are changing the timing of foil releases. New foils have been exclusive to Exemplar until they enter conference pack rotation roughly six months later. This has put too much emphasis on Exemplar nominations being the only way to get new foils. That is changing that moving forward.

Starting with the current Wave 10/Summer 2017 distribution, Exemplar packs and Conference packs are going to align much more closely.

While the exact dates of Conference pack rotation are controlled and announced by the Conference Sphere, we have created a rough schedule where the gap between the Exemplar packs and Conference packs will be measured in weeks not months. If you are interested in organizing a Conference or Mini-Conference, please check out the conference guidelines and contact your RC.

The final announcement in this update is that the next Wave of Exemplar, Winter 2018, will start 4 weeks after Wave 11 closes instead of the normal 2 weeks.  This does two things for us. We are working on some updates to Exemplar and want to announce them prior to the start of the next wave.  It also further helps Exemplar’s schedule nudge closer to the conference schedule we are trying to align with.

And as a final reminder, this Wave of Exemplar ends on November 1st, but there is no reason to wait till the last minute.

Until next time, if you have any questions or concerns or comments, you can email us at exemplarprogram@gmail.com.