Conclave's Blessing
Conclave's Blessing
Sheldon Menery once said that the amount of volunteering to events nowadays is plainly overwhelming. The amount of time that judges spend working on the program outside of their local events is also overwhelming. And sometimes, it might seem like all those hard efforts go by unnoticed, but I assure you, that's not the case.
At Worlds 2008, in Memphis, during Judge Dinner, four judges were awarded with cards signed by the L4+ judges whose title was linked to areas in which they had performed extraordinarily well. It was well received, and having such kind of recognitions more often is a thought that has been hovering around since then. It made sense to bring it back at Worlds 2009, in Rome. At Judge Dinner, these ten judges were mentioned for their achievements in different areas:
- Outreach: Jorge Penailillo, L2 from Chile. Jorge visited Colombia this year during their Nationals, and managed to certify 5 new L1s and helped test a remote certification process, which enabled the certification of a new L2 in Colombia. Prior to his visit, there were only two active L1 judges in the country.
- Education: Riki Hayashi, L3 from California, USA. Successful regional judge conferences have been occurring for the past few years; but large US states such as California hadn't had one yet. Riki organized the first judge conference in California this year, which hopefully will be the first of others to come in the US.
- Community: Damian Hiller, L3 from Argentina. Damian realized that he can bring change and growth to the whole Latin American region, and stepped up to do so. He's been quite active both on online and on-site discussions about the region's future, and the best example of his work was his excellent job as local liaison to HJ Scott Marshall at GP Sao Paulo.
- Community: Matteo Callegari, L2 from Italy. Matteo is recognized in the Italian community for being available to judge at any event and the enormous amount of time he dedicates to articles, forums, and mailing lists. His efforts on Italy have gone overboard and he's been working on bridging the gap between the Italian community and the worldwide community by writing judge articles and presenting seminars at Pro Tours.
- Judge Tool Development: Brian Schenck, L3 from Maryland, USA. There are currently more than a thousand approved rules questions in the judge center; and that's not even counting all the archived, retired and deleted questions. Someone has had review and assign all these questions. That someone is Brian, who's responsible for managing and editing Judge Center rules content. Simply put, judge tests are possible thanks to his hard work in the Judge Center.
- Judge Tool Development: Adam Shaw, L3 from Connecticut, USA. You might be aware that there's a new website for all of us DCI judges: the beta version of DCIFamily.org. Adam has single-handedly coded the new website and is still working on improving it and adding new features.
- Fraternity: Gavin Duggan, L3 from Alberta, Canada. Gavin�s passionate dedication to developing EDH has enabled judges (and non-judges, too) to have lots of fun and meet other judges in a casual atmosphere at both international and local events. EDH is nowadays a popular format in many communities in which no judge has ever been to a Pro Tour, thanks to Gavin's EDH webpage.
- Internationalization: Shin'ichiro Tachibana and Satoshi Miyamoto, L2 and L1 from Japan, respectively. Tachibana-san and Miyamoto-san have worked as a team this year, traveling to Pro Tours in the other side of the world to learn how Public Events are managed in Western Pro Tours in order to bring that knowledge back to Japan and make the best use of it.
- Policy: Nick Sephton, L3 from the United Kingdom. It�s not easy to write down policy that reflects DCI philosophy; it's actually the opposite: very difficult. Nick was able to do so, and not just a small piece of it: he wrote from scratch the Communication Policy, and he hit the nail on the head.
In the future, we're planning to have this kind of recognitions more often. We know you're doing a wonderful job out there, and we want to let you know that it's noticeable. It's likely that such announcements will become a part of the Pro Tour circuit, though the exact amount of awards might change, as well as other details. This is still a work in progress. If you have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to drop me an email at carloshod [at] gmail [dot] com!
