Tobias Vyseri – Candidate for Board of Directors 2024

Note: This is a candidate page for a Judge Foundry Election. Information on this page is provided by the candidate, and does not represent the opinions or positions of the Elections Committee or of Judge Foundry. For more information about this election, see the schedule and index for the 2024 Regional Advocate Election.

Nomination Statement

Hey all, I’m Tobi, many of you may have worked with me, and if not, hopefully we get to work together in the future! I’m a circuit judge and have been a judge since 2014, though I wasn’t particularly active until becoming an L2 judge in 2016. Ever since becoming L2 I’ve written a tournament report for every Comp REL event I’ve judged, which you can find on my website https://vyseri.com/TournamentReports.html. I don’t have a ton of grand plans if I get on the board, I have a few things I’d like to see happen, and some ideas of how to do that, but I’m not going to make any promises I might not be able to keep. I’m honestly not even really sure whether you should elect me onto the board, there are a lot of other great people going up for election here, and I know for sure that a few of them are easy first picks over me. The reason I’m still applying is because I want to make sure there’s someone on the board who listens to people and can advocate for judges who don’t feel they have a voice. I also feel like I’m generally pretty even-tempered and I think that’s a valuable asset in meetings where a lot of strong feelings can potentially get thrown around. 

Q1: Specializations / Focus Areas

Question: Board Members work on a wide variety of tasks and projects. What would your “specialty” or main focus area be as a Board Member?

I like making swag, so I’m probably going to make some cool stuff for the merch shop (this is probably going to happen regardless of whether I get elected to the board or not) I also kind of want to take a look at figuring out how to lower the cost on some of the merch shop stuff. I also think we need some kind of code of conduct so that if someone misbehaves egregiously something can be done. It would be nice if the judge certification also carried a baseline moral expectation as well as a skill-based one. I have a feeling this isn’t possible, since it’s commonly a hot topic and JAC and JF have vaguely mentioned some reasons this isn’t possible. But maybe there’s some kind of orthogonal approach we can take that circumvents the issues? 

Q2: Certifications

Question: Many questions related to the value of Judge Foundry membership. First, regarding certifications: How would you ensure that Judge Foundry Certifications have value in the eyes of TOs and other stakeholders?

This is such a tough question, especially since I’m not sure how much of this stuff has already been done, I think Laughing Dragon and Face to Face already have a fair amount of respect for the cert, so nothing really needs to be done there, I’ll ask the hiring managers at NRG, SCG and Pastimes what would make a JF certification meaningful to them, I don’t think there’s anyone that could better tell us what these orgs want than the people who literally do the hiring. If the TOs give me a goofy answer like “nothing would make it worth it” or something that doesn’t give me a clear roadmap, then I think my plan is to be sad, but then after that, I’d try to ensure that levels mean something. And the way to ensure levels mean something is to ensure that the holders of those levels all perform to a consistent standard. I think the current tests do some of this, but I also think they are highly imperfect. Some of this will smooth out with time, we’ve already seen the abolition of some terrible questions and the addition of tons of new questions. But the judge program is full of brilliant minds, I’m sure we can iterate on our processes and create something even better! I also think our interviews for candidates might need some work, there are some guidelines on the JF website, but I feel like those are thin and maybe a clearer more standardized interview process would be helpful.

Q3: Member Benefits

Question: Second, outside of certifications, how do you think Judge Foundry should best use its limited resources to benefit the members?

Hmmm this is a hard question. I think, in the most broad terms, JF should use its resources to generate value for its members. This is super vague, so let me zoom in a little I guess, I think as an organization for judges our primary goal should be getting people hired based on their JF levels/membership. We had a super cool thing in Canada where JF shipped some swag with the RCQ kit to encourage stores to hire JF judges. I think more initiatives like this, that give TOs kickbacks or incentives for hiring organization judges are great. I think we also need to be doing something for L1s, the biggest complaints I’ve heard from Canada’s isolated L1s are “why am I paying for this, it gives me nothing” which is like, fair. They don’t even get update exams, which sucks a lot because I like those exams they are really cool. For the L1s in my area I try to connect them with judging jobs, and try to train them when I can, but it’s really rough. I know judge classes have been run in the past, and maybe that’s something that we could put more effort into. If there were a predefined rubric available on the JF website, that anyone could run, I think that might really help. 

Q4: Legal Commitments

Question: Judge Foundry as an organization and Member Directors individually are bound by several Non-Disclosure Agreements, prohibiting disclosure of information gained as part of their duties as a Member Director, including in some cases disclosure of the existence of an NDA with a particular organization. Violating these agreements may have consequences for the individual and for the organization. As a Director, will you abide by any agreements that Judge Foundry has signed, and will you personally sign NDAs with other organizations as needed in order to pursue and maintain partnerships with other organizations?

Of course, while I’ll be sad I can’t disclose everything to everyone all the time, I understand the need for these things and am happy to comply 🙂

Q5: RCQ Judge Demand

Question: In the post Covid era of Magic, the amount of qualified L2 judges seems to have declined, but demand for judges at competitive REL events has grown with the advent of RCQs. Is there a solution you would pursue to prepare enough judges for Comp REL demand?

Whenever I’m in a lead role that has some input on staffing I take judge growth into serious consideration, someone who is isolated but running a lot of RCQs might get paired up with an experienced event grinder or IPG savant with the explicit purpose of training and mentoring. Beyond that, I think we’re going to try to spin up conferences in Canada, but with our geography, it’s a bit rough to try and get people to travel in any capacity. We’re planning an in-person conference attached to the Calgary RC and an end of year online conference to hopefully reach some of our even more isolated folks. Canada has many challenges, but overall I’m very hopeful for the region, we have so many enthusiastic judges and a real culture of mentorship and empowerment, so I think we will be able to raise some excellent judges in the coming months. 

The US seems to be suffering from more fatigue, the few dedicated judges are getting ground down and frustrated with the state of things. I think we’re lucky in Canada where we have on consistent TO, which makes it easy for judges to grow and have their growth recognized. In the turbulent scene of the US with a multitude of TOs it can be difficult to have your growth recognized and acknowledged, which I think is causing many judges to feel trapped in their previous ability category. I have to admit, I’m not as clear on training for US judges. I know Brook is doing some amazing things with mentorship, and training, and likely has a better idea of what is good for the US scene right now. 

Q6: Judge Work Opportunities

Question: What efforts, if any, would you support in order to increase work opportunities for judges?

In Canada if I find out a store is running an RCQ but doesn’t have a judge, I try to find a nearby judge and connect them with the store. I also know that in Canada, and especially the west, we have not a lot of judges for our largeish events, so it’s very easy to get newer judges a slot at a commandfest or on sides at an RC or something. 

Q7: Judge Foundry Areas for Improvement

Question: Pick one area you strongly feel Judge Foundry needs to improve and tell us your idea for doing so. Is it feasible? Is it achievable? How will you make it happen?

M e r c h. 

This is going to come across a little dumb and frivolous but I have a lot of experience making and selling stuff. I feel like our merch offerings could not only be a little cheaper but also a little broader. This is super easy for me to do 

The second thing I want to fix is more substantive. I think testing is a bit wonk right now. I really don’t know why we aren’t testing rules again at L3, even if it’s just “pass the L2 test again so we know you haven’t forgotten everything” 

I also feel the current L3 test, while it’s settling in, still has some far-out questions. These are slowly getting the edges sanded off, but I’m happy to help push on behalf of folks for questions that actually are unreasonable to be removed from the pool.