The first Nordic judge conference of 2017 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 April 12th. All L1+ participants who register by this date will receive packet of judge foils. We have a maximum of 70 foil packets for this conference: once that cap is reached, you can still choose to attend, but you can't get 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/M5cnjmQ9W2smfJaI3. 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.

Presenters will be chosen by April 8th. 

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

List of presentations: 

Johanna Virtanen - State of the Region: The latest news from the RC's "desk". 

Jack Doyle - Simulations: Come one, come all, to the magnificent Simulations Workshop! Together in groups, we'll tackle real-life situations, push the boundaries of rules and policy, and receive some feedback on how we tackle situations and how we could improve our approach to live judge calls. Act out your Magic pro-player fantasies; or pretend that you're Kevin Desprez; it's all here waiting for you!

Jonas Breindahl - Personal Safety and Inclusion Panel: How do we ensure that players in our events and at our local game stores feel safe and included? How do we help our current players understand that something that might not be offensive to them, can be to others. These questions and more are what a panel and I will discuss. 

Lars Harald Nordli - Judging at Regular REL: Most events are run at Regular Rules Enforcement Lever (REL), but Competitive REL is getting the most attention. In this seminar we'll go through some scenarios that will most likely happen in an event run at Regular REL in which you'll be the judge. Feel more confident at your next FNM with “Judging at Regular REL”!

Patrick Eriksson - Self Reviews: This seminar is about becoming better at becoming better. It’s about making sure valuable lessons aren’t lost and past mistakes aren’t repeated. We’ll look at some ways you can effectively interview yourself and how you can find useful experiences to learn from. Using some philosophies from education on how to give guidance and feedback between colleagues, we’ll look at what you can do if you are both the reviewer and the subject. In time, you too can learn to handle your inner rhinotiger.

Kevin Moore - Slow Play: Have you ever watched a match and thought maybe that the pace of play wasn't up to what you thought it should be? Slow Play is the most difficult penalty to assess that we have as judges. Other penalties in the IPG are clear about what has to happen in order for us to hand out penalties, but Slow Play leaves the interpretation up to us. Come and learn what Slow Play is, and how to watch for it.

Patrik Fridland - How to start and hold a Judge Class: In this seminar I will talk about what are the central points of starting and manage your own Judge class.  How we can either borrow existing content from others or how we can inspired by it. Especially looking at why we can benefit greatly from making our own content. 

Charlotte Sable - Replacement Effects: From “enters the battlefield tapped” to “exile it instead”, replacement effects are everywhere in Magic. This seminar will teach you how to identify and handle replacement and prevention effects of all types with confidence. Come for the basics, stay for brain melting corner-cases.

Gunnar Olai Sivertsen - Your first competitive event: "Judging events at competitive REL is quite different from judging at regular. This seminar is intended to give some handy practical pointers and explain some of the philosophical differences between the two enforcement levels."

HaiWei Shen - Introducing people to Magic: This seminar will be about introduction into Magic, how we open the magical doors into our wonderful community. How we introduce and include people. We'll talk about how to build up a local community from the scratch, maintaining it and let it evolve. Different people may come from very different backgrounds and have very different expectations when getting in touch with a new game. You will also get the chance to tell how you became one of us.

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