Hello and welcome to the January 2017 regional update. These updates serve to inform us about the work of our regional projects as well as keep us focused on our regional goals. This month we completed the staffing of regional projects, set growth benchmarks, and clarified the L2 advancement process. Let’s go!

Regional Projects Staff

I want to begin with publishing the project teams, now that we’ve set them up. Thank you to everyone who volunteered. This year will be an awesome one because of your efforts.

Conferences

Andy Doyle (Lead)
Randy Tice
Scott Markwart
Frank Singel
Casey Barnett

This project will serve and balance the conference needs of both the region at large and local areas. 2016 saw great success in the creation of a slate of smaller localized conferences and enabling them to meet a high level of both quality and availability throughout the region will be part of a great 2017.

Tournament Organizer Relations

Patrick Nelson (Lead)
Art Edson
David Incorvati
Robert Towers
Chris Byrne
Ben Litz

The TO Relations project will focus on continuing the good work being done locally to track PPTQ events and share these methods with all of us. Additionally, they will work to identify new PPTQ TOs and help them understand best practices around judge solicitation and event scheduling. This will help the local TOs know what resources are available to them as well as provide value to the judges and players by ensuring there aren’t too many TOs trying to run events on any given day.

Next Step

Meg Baum (Lead)
Zach DeLadurantaye

Next Step will expand their work this year to create resources for new L2 judges like they’ve done for L1. The goal will be a guide to best practices and documentation for certifying new judges, resources to successfully head judge, and highlight what community support there is for new L2s. This project will work in concert with the L2 Testers and L3s to ensure this documentation is thorough and kept up to date.

Communications

John Temple (Lead)
Alex Smith
Spencer Cole
Mike Anderson
Brian Rapp
Dylan Goings

The Communications Project maintains the Great Lakes regional blog, Facebook page, and Slack. Members of this project provide moderation for the Facebook page and Slack while also developing features and content for the regional blog.

Mentorship

Jarrod Williams (Lead)
John Temple
David Rappaport
Minh Vu
Marcos Sanchez
Matt Sauers
Andy Thompson
Torrance PeLong

This project will be the platform for L2 Testers and L3s to help judge candidates find solid mentors to help them along the road to L1 or L2. In addition, I want to see this project write a series of blog posts to help identify the requirements for L2 and help candidates have a clear portrait of what’s required. Finally with maintenance tests coming for all judge levels in 2017, this project will work with judges who haven’t passed those exams to improve their knowledge.

Growth Goals

One of the best and frequent questions I’ve heard this year is how do we grow the region. After completing most of our annual maintenance survey (and we are still reconciling Judge Apps and Judge Center numbers) we aren’t in need of a mass influx of judges. There aren’t a ton of stores going without judges and event staff, but to fully support growing areas I want to see us add 10-12 L2s. More capacity at that level will help insulate against regional fatigue.

While I don’t believe a region wide initiative for L1 growth is necessary, I do want to encourage everyone to organize in your local areas. I want to commend Trent Novak for starting a Judge Meetup in Toledo, Ohio. This work is the kind that I believe our region needs now. When we spend more time connecting with the judges near us, we will have a better picture of the immediate needs of the community. So take the plunge and schedule a meetup: talk about your area, play some commander, or cube, or dust off the judge tower, and if food isn’t involved then you’re probably doing it wrong. #GetOutAndJudge

L2 Advancement Process

With the new year and the goal of adding some L2s to our L2 group, I want to review the process for L2 testing and how we apply it regionally. First things first, familiarize yourself with the requirements. Our regional additions to these requirements are that the judge who writes the L2 recommendation can not be the judge that tests the candidate, along with passing the Level 2 Pratice Exam with 80% or higher. This addition is to ensure that you are getting multiple L2 or L3 judges who believe you are ready for L2.

At that time you have completed all the pre-test requirements to advance to L2, please fill out this form. This form needs to be submitted at least one week from the date on which the candidate wishes to test. From a regional perspective, since we have L2 testers and L3s arranged around the region, we want to try to avoid testing at events but if that is an issue please discuss this with me.

Your answers from the form are funneled into a google doc application that all of the L2 testers and L3s view for evaluation. All the L3s and L2 Testers are then invited to review the information and vote if they feel that it meets the requirement. Once two of the L2 Testers or L3s vote yes on your application we discuss which of us is closest to the applicant to reach out and schedule an exam as well as finish evaluating the content to identify what areas are needed to focus on in the interview. If your application doesn’t move forward at this point, you will be contacted by an L3 or L2 tester with specific improvements to make to move your application into being ready for test.

I hope this clears up the process and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate the reach out to me about this.

Thank you all for the work you do in our Region. Just a reminder that exemplar wave 8 closes on January 31st so get those recognitions in. If you have run out of slots or are an L1 and want to recognize someone please reach out to me as I have extra slots as your RC.

Keep Moving Forward

Jarrod Williams L3 Columbus, Ohio
RC USA-Great Lakes