USA-North 2016 Competitive Event Judges and Area Leaders Conference - Makeup

Greetings,

This is the semi-restricted access Competitive Event Judges and Area Leaders Conference for 2016 2017.  We were snowed out on the prior date, so we have rescheduled!

This will be an intensive, small-group driven conference, with discussion and the expectation is for everyone to participate in things.

Any judge can apply - if you are an L1 or L0, our primary requirement is that an L2+ recommends you as an area leader or competitive event judge.

We are capping attendence at 60 attendees, based on the available space and the remaining regional foil packets, but we only have foil support for 50 attendees.  (This is in part based on the foil packets recieved for the canceleld conference - if there are significantly more than 50 applications, I'll see what I can do about foils support.)

Note that foil support priority goes to people that were slated to attend the prior conference.  Anyone can apply, and we will accept probably everyone, but if the size is too big, foils will go to the people that were slated to attend the canceled event.

If you plan to attend this event, you must apply.  This is so we can get an accurate count for the groups and for lunch.  Your application from the cancelled event will not carry over.

This conference is foil supported.

The venue is TBD - it will be in one of three places: Minneapolis, Eau Claire, or Madison.  We will announce the venue as soon as we have one locked in.

What kinds of topics will we be discussing at this conference?

We will have four key topics, each estimated at a 90 minute time block:

Critical Feedback - moderated by Zach Rivers and Jacob Milicic

Head Judging and Team Leading Events - Moderated by Rob McKenzie

Certification, both L1 and L2 - Moderated by Patrick Cool

Miniconferences and local skill building outside of events - Moderated by Ken Bearl

What does the schedule look like?

The current plan (subject to change, the start time will not, everything else is fluid):

10:00am Keynote

10:30am Seminar

12:00pm Seminar

1:30pm Lunch (catered, onsite)

2:30pm Seminar

4:00pm Seminar

5:30pm Judge Social (Cube, Draft, EDH, etc)

What do we need to help make this a success?

As we are going to be breaking into small groups and having intense discussions across the topics, we need group leaders.

Luckily, this is a group OF leaders.  For every topic, we will be breaking down into groups of 5-8 people, and each group on each topic will need a discussion leader that is responsible for keeping things on track.  We will be sending out a survey to determine which things you would rather lead for - the default is that 50-75% of the people will end up leading a small group discussion over the course of the day.  If you are leading, you don't have to provide content, just keep the discussion on track, potentially take a couple of notes, and either be the person that brings forward what the group discussed into the wider discussion or manage the person that does.

The topics will be driven by a master moderator or moderators for that topic, presenting scenarios, questions, and challenging the groups to provide answers or thoughtful discussion pieces on the topics given.