I actually want to start this off by providing some context and reasoning for what I am publishing, and why, because not everyone has it.<\/p>\n
Oh, and fair warning, this is a pretty long article.\u00a0 You are in for an extended pre-commentary, then my verbose responses.<\/p>\n
What I am publishing, why, and why now?<\/h2>\n
I’m publishing purely my own words, my responses to the interview questions that are part of the Program Coordinator selection process.<\/p>\n
I have a variety of reasons for this, and I am going to dig into a few of them here.\u00a0 Note that a lot of these don’t apply to the other Program Coordinator applicants.\u00a0 They are writing specifically for the selection committee, and their expectation going in was that this would be private.\u00a0 If the committee publishes their application, that’s a breach of trust.\u00a0 If people push them to publish, that’s changing expectations.\u00a0 I don’t expect anyone else to publish anything.\u00a0 I’m doing this for my reasons, not holding others to these reasons.<\/p>\n
First, I want my application text to be fully open, regardless of if I get the role or not.\u00a0 If I don’t get the Program Coordinator role, publishing my answers afterwords looks a little spiteful.\u00a0 “See what the committee rejected, look, it’s totally worth it” is the message I’d get from that kind of publication.\u00a0 I don’t want to give that message.\u00a0 I want to put my answers out in public, and my reasoning prior to the announcement of anything, because I don’t hold any spite for the committee.\u00a0 In fact, I respect them and I’m not going to kick up a fit.\u00a0 I’m demonstrating I’m publishing regardless of the outcome by publishing before the outcome.<\/p>\n
I believe that the Program Coordinator role is a public one, and the people in the role can’t hide their decisions.\u00a0 Sometimes they will have to make choices about what information to share with the public – the role comes with an NDA, and sometimes gets some limited information from either Wizards of the Coast or other parts of the judge program that can’t be shared until some later date.\u00a0 Demonstrating that I know what is acceptable to share, and demonstrating I can be a strong public voice and take ownership of my words and actions is absolutely part of what I want to show as part of the Program Coordinator process.<\/p>\n
I also don’t want to put this off again and again, then declare I won’t finish it, or hope people don’t remember or stopped caring.\u00a0 You can see on this very blog that I started stuff and did not finish it.\u00a0 That’s very normal for a lot of people, and normal for my history.\u00a0 I don’t want to put things off related to this role.\u00a0 I believe it is important, and I can’t just ignore or walk away from this.<\/p>\n
Oh, and there are no public Program Coordinator applications from people that did not get the role.\u00a0 Riki and Riccardo published their applications, but they got the role.\u00a0 I am personally fine with my application being a demonstration of a failed application.\u00a0 We really hold up success as a big deal in the judge program, but failing and getting back up and doing stuff is very important too, and if I fail I want there to be some use out of the effort I’ve spent.<\/p>\n
I’ve also heard some commentary about my timing for publication.\u00a0 I don’t have any results yet.\u00a0 I wrote my answers, did some back and forth with Riccardo about them (which I’ll talk about below), and spent some time writing this post.\u00a0 I’m not trying to force announcements, or info.\u00a0 This is just the timing that works out with my schedule and writing some commentary on the questions and answers.\u00a0 I have no inside info about the status of my application or any application.<\/p>\n
\n
The Questions<\/h1>\n
This is the set of questions I got from the committee:<\/p>\n
- \n
- It may seem that your application presents you as \u201ca PC for the US judges\u201d only. Don\u2019t you believe that PCs should be a single group for the entire judge program?<\/span><\/li>\n
- Your application seems akin of applying to a “super RC” post, while you clearly define in your answers that PC and RC are not responsible for the same spheres. Could you elaborate on that ?<\/span><\/li>\n
- Do you believe there is currently friction between US judges and EU judges? If yes, how could PCs help removing the friction?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As you will see below, I changed the order of the questions, and then asked for clarification on one of them.<\/p>\n
I’m going to take an aside here before I post my answers and talk about what I think the committee was concerned about in my prior applications and what these questions mean, so you can see where I came from in my (really lengthy) answers.<\/p>\n
Pre-Commentary on Question 1<\/h2>\n
1. It may seem that your application presents you as \u201ca PC for the US judges\u201d only. Don\u2019t you believe that PCs should be a single group for the entire judge program?<\/p>\n
I moved this question after Question 3, because I really wanted the committee to have the context of the Question 2 answer before they got to my answer.<\/p>\n
I believe the committee has a very legitimate concern here, that there would be people working specifically for a faction of the judge program within the Program Coordinator group, and they wanted me to address this concern.\u00a0 I also think that this is a question that is different than I would ask about this concern, because it makes some assumptions about my application and about the Program Coordinator role that I personally feel are unwarranted.<\/p>\n
The question makes an assumption that the Program Coordinators should be a single group “for” the entire judge program.\u00a0 That’s a really strange assumption.\u00a0 The Program Coordinators do work that is program-wide, but the phrasing here makes it seem like they somehow transcend their histories and should ignore the groups they have historically worked well with…or something.\u00a0 I’m not entirely clear on what the question writer thought, because of the brevity of the question.<\/p>\n
It also assumes that I’m saying something about how I would only represent the United States in my prior application question.\u00a0 I think that is a misreading of my answers.\u00a0 I specifically say how the current group of Program Coordinators does not address a lot of concerns for a fairly large group of judges, and how I am in a position to do so more effectively than the current Program Coordinators.\u00a0 This assumption based on a misreading of my other answers is an interesting one.\u00a0 I obviously disagree with it, but I can see how that impression came across.<\/p>\n
Pre-Commentary on Question 2<\/h2>\n
2. Your application seems akin of applying to a “super RC” post, while you clearly define in your answers that PC and RC are not responsible for the same spheres. Could you elaborate on that ?<\/p>\n
I did not actually answer this question as a stand-alone answer.\u00a0 I also had a number of problems with it.\u00a0 Riccardo and I had a long discussion about this question in an online chat, and his explanation made it clear that the committee had the information they needed and why they wanted to ask the question.\u00a0 It did not solve my full confusion, but that’s fine.<\/p>\n
My confusion stemmed from not understanding where in my prior answers I gave the impression I was applying for a “super RC” role.<\/p>\n
I asked about this, and Riccardo took a look, asked the committee, and admitted that the question was in large part motivated by the same concerns as the prior question – the asker felt that I was applying to be a PC of the US.\u00a0 He said they got enough information from my other answers that the question was addressed to their satisfaction.<\/p>\n
Pre-Commentary on Question 3<\/h2>\n
3.Do you believe there is currently friction between US judges and EU judges? If yes, how could PCs help removing the friction?<\/p>\n
This is the meatiest question here, and it is a softball question, because the answer is clearly “yes” followed by a barrage of ideas.\u00a0 My commentary is short here, because I spent 3000 words on the question and I don’t feel the need to say much other than it really got me fired up to think that someone believes that the answer to the first part could be “no”.<\/p>\n
\nMy Answers<\/h1>\n
3. Do you believe there is currently friction between US judges and EU judges? If yes, how could PCs help removing the friction?<\/span><\/h2>\n
The answer to the first part is \u201cyes\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n
The short answer to the second part is \u201censure that US judges are listened to and represented strongly in leadership groups, and make these groups work in a way that US judges intuitively understand\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n
There is obviously a lot more going on than this short answer covers, and I\u2019m going to trot out some stats, some gut feelings, and some information I\u2019ve received from other North American judges to talk about the judge program as it stands right now and some of the structural and logistical challenges facing us all.<\/span><\/p>\n
I am also going to talk specifically about North American judges and European judges. \u00a0Latin American and Asia-Pacific judges: know that I care a lot. \u00a0I want you to be in leadership roles too. \u00a0The issue is one of proportions and it is super clear that the North American judges are currently in a bad place, so I\u2019ll be talking about the problems from a really North American perspective. \u00a0I\u2019ll probably end up having to do some really deep thinking and figuring in the future, because I am not wholly certain what the best worldwide solutions to some of the problems I am posing are…I just know they are deep problems and North America has the worst symptoms.<\/span><\/p>\n
Stats and a Starting Point<\/span><\/h3>\n
I\u2019m going to lead with a table, so you have some data up front.<\/span><\/p>\n
On Monday, February 12th, I pulled down the JudgeApps master judge list, and did some data mining of it. \u00a0I came up with this set of numbers:<\/span><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/robbit\/files\/2018\/02\/Regional-Stats-Feb-12.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNote that by the time you read this it will already be out of date – 6 US and 2 European L3s will be decertified, and the L1 and L2 numbers are going to be substantially different due to maintenance.<\/span><\/p>\n
My methodology was: \u00a0I did by-region counts of every level in JudgeApps, and then divided those regions into geo-regions and did the summations. \u00a0There are exceptions to every number (for instance, Jeff Morrow and Daniel Kitachewsky are still listed as L3 Panel Leads), and if someone has two Advanced Roles they are counted twice – the count was number of roles, not number of people with Advanced Roles.<\/span><\/p>\n
This is the breakdown of Grand Prix for 2018 by geo-region:<\/span><\/p>\n
31<\/span> North America
\n<\/span>16<\/span> Europe
\n<\/span>3<\/span> Latin America
\n<\/span>10<\/span> APAC<\/span><\/p>\nFor the Pro Tour 25th Anniversary, there are 1,613 PPTQs. \u00a0673 of these are in the United States. \u00a0That\u2019s 42%. \u00a0PPTQs are a good barometer for local Organized Play, and demonstrate we have the base of events and judges to support more leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to be calling out some problems these stats illustrate, and pointing back to the numbers as starting places.<\/span><\/p>\n
The L3 Problem<\/span><\/h3>\n
North America is having a problem making L3s and keeping quality L3s active and engaged. \u00a0A bad one, and we can correct it, but it will take some work.<\/span><\/p>\n
You can see the raw numbers – pre-maintenance, North America has 50% more total judges, but the same amount of L3 judges as Europe. \u00a0The Grand Prix breakdown above is also fairly disconcerting when you compare it to the L3 numbers. \u00a0We have nearly twice as many Grand Prixs in the US, but the same pre-maintenance number of L3s. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
I have had some lengthy discussions with John Brian McCarthy about this, and he has a lot of stats at his fingertips about L3 pass rates and historical in-region and out-of-region panel lead performance. \u00a0I had an extended digression here about this, but there is a tangled mess of problems and we aren\u2019t really close to solving any of them. \u00a0I don\u2019t want to turn this section into an extended aside on specific problems with the L3 process, but I do want to point out that there are problems and there are hard numbers and statistics to support them.<\/span><\/p>\n
L3 production has problems in North America, and we have a much lower proportion of L3s relative to the number of total judges than the program probably needs to sustain itself. \u00a0This has some huge impacts on the nature of GPs, RPTQs, and other events that have need or desire for L3s.<\/span><\/p>\n
This is also a negative feedback loop. \u00a0The best L3s go to a ton of shows, and get burnt out, and step back…and attrition goes up.<\/span><\/p>\n
We are so bad at making L3s that the USA – Southwest region, the third most populous region worldwide, had no L3s that were willing to step up as Regional Coordinator. \u00a0(Brazil had this problem as well – they also have systemic problems with L3 creation, but for different reasons than the US.)<\/span><\/p>\n
We have some deep and systemic problems in North America with the L3 process. \u00a0I went stat hunting because I had an intuition about this, and those stats showed me a reality that matched my intuition. \u00a0My focus on being a Program Coordinator from the US stems from seeing these issues, talking directly with the judges facing them, and realizing that the kind of close perspective that informs that intuition is not something a more distant Program Coordinator would be able to replicate. \u00a0The amount of European engagement seems higher, and Europe is making and maintaining L3s better than North America, at least from what I can tell.<\/span><\/p>\n
The Trust Network Problem<\/span><\/h3>\n
Along with problems making L3 judges, many of the internal operational and leadership roles of the judge program have gravitated to Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n
This is much more than just \u201cwe have no North American Program Coordinator\u201d. \u00a0This is about <\/span>Pournelle\u2019s Iron Law of Bureaucracy<\/span><\/a>, and it is about who controls the internal structure and maintenance of a group that exists for a particular purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n
There are <\/span>13 Spheres<\/span><\/a>. \u00a09 of them are lead by Europeans.<\/span><\/p>\n
Consider the gatekeepers of leadership positions in the Judge Program. The L3 Pre-Event Interview Lead, L3 Testing Manager, L2 Tester Certification Manager, and L2 Team Lead Certification Manager are all Europeans. The RC leader and GP HJ leader are Europeans. The last PC selection committee was comprised of 3 Europeans and only 1 North American, and the committee before that was 5 Europeans and 2 North Americans. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
This is not an indictment of any of these fine people. \u00a0They are as qualified as anyone is for their roles. \u00a0What they aren\u2019t is physically close or socially connected to North American judges.<\/span><\/p>\n
We have <\/span>consciously built our program on a trust network<\/span><\/a>. \u00a0This was a deliberate decision with the NNWO. \u00a0There are implications of that which are only slowly becoming clear right now. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
- Your application seems akin of applying to a “super RC” post, while you clearly define in your answers that PC and RC are not responsible for the same spheres. Could you elaborate on that ?<\/span><\/li>\n