Judge Projects

One of the most requested items we have heard of is a way for judges to organize and work on Judge Projects, a feature we are excited to be including in this launch. Judge Projects are a fairly open-ended concept. They can be short term tasks or long ongoing efforts. At their core they are groups of judges coming together to work towards a shared goal, usually to help the overall judge community in some way.

There have been numerous complications including organizational, legal and logistical that needed to be addressed before Judge Academy could fully incorporate Projects. However after a large amount of research and development, we have worked out a way to launch a robust system for projects. Looking to the field of software, the Open Source model provided the framework that Judge Projects could be built on.

Judge Projects are independently organized. JA cannot direct, manage or control the projects, but we can set up features to help! Here’s what you need to know about Judge Projects:

  1. Judge Projects are initiated by judges, meaning members of the judge community will determine what projects they want to start.
  2. Judge Projects are judge directed, meaning the creator of a project has control over the management of that project. For example, Judge Academy will not require a project lead to add or remove specific judges from their project.
  3. Judge Projects can be privately-owned or community-owned, but are never owned by Judge Academy. All work for community-owned projects will be done under the Creative Commons license.
  4. Judge Projects will have full access to the PM Tools, such as a project timeline and calendar, task lists, and even tools like Gantt charts. Judges are free to use the project management tools for both individually-owned and fully-private projects.
  5. Judge Projects are not compensated by Judge Academy. Judges are free to participate in projects, judge academy will not recruit, assign, require, or compensate judges for the projects they participate in. As always, if Judge Academy requires specific work to be done by someone not on our staff, we will contract with those individuals.
[pm]