Hi all,

First of all I’d like to welcome our latest addition to the L3 testing team – Sophie Pagès is now leading the Verification Committee, in charge of handling L3 checklists. The full team is now: Riki Hayashi at self-reviews, Sophie at VC, Elise Bouaziz at Pre-Event Interviews, and Jared Sylva at Supplemental Activities.

Today I’d like to tell you about some steps in the L3 testing process which used to require a level 4+ judge. There were three of these:
– the Team Leader check was given by L4+ Grand Prix Head Judges. The reasoning was that in-depth observation skills were required, and in the few cases where an L3 was head-judging a Grand Prix it was because we had no other choice. As head judging a large event is quite stressful, we didn’t feel completely confident that someone who does it for the first or second time could also observe a team leader in a satisfying manner. But not only were these fears unfounded, we now have a specific Advanced Role for head judging which is going to have specific training and testing processes. This will ensure better preparation of head judges and observation and understanding of team leader expectations will be more thoroughly defined. So it’s natural that this requirement becomes simply “Grand Prix Head Judge”.
– the panel needed to have an L4 on it (and an L3).
– Supplemental Activities, when they didn’t require another panel, required a chat with an L4+ to debrief the activities and advance.

The last two are replaced by the L3 Panel Lead certification. You may have already noticed that a group of people have the badge – the former L4s. There’s also going to be a round of applications, open to all L3s with enough panelling experience, to further complete this pool. This isn’t going to diverge a lot from the current system, since I’ll still be coordinating panels. I would just like to take advantage of the decorrelation between levels and certifications to better spread panelling among L3s who enjoy it and make it easier to test at GPs since more people will be able to conduct panels.

Thanks for reading, I hope to have the checklist changes out in a few weeks.

Daniel