The second Nordic judge conference of 2016 will include presentations and workshops on various judging-related topics. The conference is targeted at judges from the Europe - North region, although judges from all regions are welcome to apply (but must be approved by their own RC). The working language of this conference will be English. 

Registration

Participants must register by October 31st. All L1+ participants who register by this date will receive packet of judge foils. 

We recommend that you make your travel arrangements as soon as your registration is approved. 

Judge testing

Judge candidates are welcome to attend the conference. It will be possible to test for L1 or L2 at the conference. 

Presenters 

We are looking for presenters for this conference. If you would like to present a seminar at this conference, please fill out this form: https://goo.gl/forms/kd371sZKsaVOo9qs2  . You will be asked to submit a summary of your presentation. The summary should give us a clear idea of what you plan to talk about.

For this conference, one of our themes will be rules and policy. Presentations on these topics will be particularly welcome, but we still need content on other parts of judging!

Presenters will be chosen by October 15th. 

Sample Presentation Summary - "Competitive Sealed tournaments"

"In this seminar, the idea is to look at the important parts to remember when handling a competitive sealed deck tournament. We'll look at how to plan your event, what can go wrong during registration and deck building, the common problems you encounter and some of the rules that come up most often in the current format. I’ll use about half of the time to explain what I do to plan an event and let the audience plan a few different sizes of events to discuss the differences between them. 

After that, I’ll have everyone discuss some common problems, both with rules- and policy. For example, I’ll bring up how to handle deck problems, the combat rules and where they normally go awry, looking at extra cards vs drawing extra cards and how players are allowed to store their sideboards and extra cards. I’m planning to have a slide each for the problems, explain them and then get discussions going in smaller groups before letting each group explain their conclusions.

I’m going to need either a projector or a printer. If we have a room where people can move around a bit to talk in smaller groups that would be ideal." 

If you are interested in presenting but are not sure about the topic, please contact the organizers. Presenters will receive an extra foil as a thank you for their efforts. 

Expectations for presenters

All presenters will be added to a JudgeApps project group. Presenters will be expected to post their works-in-progress to the group, and encouraged to provide feedback to others. Presenters are expected to post the first draft of their presentations approximately a month before the conference, and the almost-final version a week before the conference. The exact deadlines are to be confirmed. 

Schedule

Presentation schedule: 

State of the Region - Johanna Virtanen

The latest regional and program news on that free powerpoint template you all know and love. 

Rules interactions of the Modern Format - Jonas Breindahl

I am not sure, but I think Jonas plans to talk about rules interactions, probably involving the Modern format. 

The teamless judge - Valdas Kalvis

Our region - due to geographical reasons - has judges that are physically disconnected from the judge community. This - especially in combination with the lack of free time - raises some issues: such a judge feels lonely, it's more difficult to maintain the required level of competence and ethics, and even to stay interested in the Judge program. In the seminar, we'll discuss what issues in particular such judges face, and what they (and us) can do to solve and/or prevent them.

Investigations - Richard Drijvers

This seminar will cover the basics of investigations, the roles people play in an investigation, and give some suggestions as to where people van obtain more information about investigations, as well as portraying some scenario's.

Back that thing up - Charlotte Sable

This presentation will cover the philosophy around backups and rewinds at both Regular and Competitive RELs. The presentation will explain how to determine if a backup is appropriate and how to actually execute the backup effectively.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Card Error - Asger Skovbjerg

After the so-called “Thoughtseize fix” was introduced, it was quickly discovered that this fix was useful in many other scenarios - so many that the infraction currently takes up almost 2 pages of the IPG, with a complexity that sometimes even requires GP judges to double check with a lvl 3 Judge. Come and learn the usefulness of this tool, when to use it, and when to not. 

I know a (tournament) shortcut! - Niklas Ek

In this seminar we explore tournament shortcuts, what they are, how they work and the philosophy behind them. Extra focus will be on the combat shortcut, including interactions with triggers, crewing and how to educate players.

A Patrick Ericsson extravaganza, topic to be confirmed - Patrick Ericsson

Patty will talk about a rules thing. 

The Workshop - Slawomir Novaczyk and Kevin Moore

We break into small groups to discuss a variety of topics. 

Judge Jeopardy!

Join our host Asger Skovbjerg for the traditional judge gameshow! 

Food and drink

A light lunch will be provided. We will do our best to accommodate dietary restrictions, but those on a particularly strict diet may want to bring their own food. 

Hotel and accommodation

TBA