Hello Judges,

Its time for another Exemplar update.  The first thing you may notice, is that I am not Kim Warren. While I don’t play Rugby, or have clever internet memes, I am taking over the helm of Exemplar Program while Kim goes off into Bat Country (And I don’t mean Arkham City).  What does this mean to you?  Not a whole lot really.  But it does mean a lot to me.  I feel that Exemplar provides judges with an opportunity to recognize others, and help foster a culture of excellence.  I’m excited to steer this mammoth of a program, and working with Kim on the transition program. We have begun looking at improvements and efficiencies in the project with the goal of reducing how long this process takes, and a few interesting areas of growth.

Now on to the items to actually care about.  The information collected from Wave 2 is now firmly in WotC’s hands, and things appear to be moving forward on that front.  We are still getting requests to update addresses.  We are currently at the point of no return for updates, and if your address changes between now and whenever ‘then’ is, you will need to rely on your postal mail forwarding system.

Additionally, Wave 3 closes at the end of this month.  For wave 2 there was a little bit of confusion at the exact end time, so I will be explicit here.

---

Submissions for Wave 3 will close August 31st at 23:59 GMT.

---

That’s a Monday, and for some of you, that may be in the afternoon.  Fortunately you have more than two weeks between now and then, so there shouldn’t be any scrambling at the last second.  To that end, I am going to re-iterate some key points from Kim’s last blog post:

• The level of the person you are recognizing is only checked at the point that the recognition is submitted. If they level up during the window after you have recognized them, that won’t render your recognition invalid.
• After you’ve submitted a recognition, you are able to edit it later or to delete it if you change your mind.
• You do not have to submit all of your recognitions at once.
• You can submit your recognition in a language of your choice, provided that the person receiving the recognition is likely to be able to understand it!
• If you want to recognize more people than you have slots for (or if you are a level one judge who has noticed someone that they would love to see recognized), you can talk to other judges (especially your Regional Coordinator) who might still have recognition slots. Tell them why this other judge that you want to recognize is awesome and should be recognized!

If you are having trouble thinking about what to write about, maybe you are thinking too big.  Everyone can recognize the huge “program shaping” attitudes and behaviors.  But exemplary behavior can be small too.

Maybe someone wrote you a real insightful review that changed your perspective on things.  Maybe someone turned around the perception of a local store.   Maybe someone showed the foresight to fix a problem at an event before it happened.  Maybe someone showed the patience and compassion to work with troubled school age kids to get them into a game store and off the streets. Or maybe, someone just always has that special knack of making everyone feel important at FNM.  These are all exemplary behaviors, some are larger than others, but all of them are examples of behaviors we want to recognize and encourage in others.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more updates in the future.

Bryan