Announcing the 2020 Magic Judge Online Seminar Series

We are proud to announce 4 weeks filled to the brim with amazing seminars, coming to a computer screen near you, sponsored by Judge Academy, CFB Events and tournamentcenter.eu.
You heard that right – if we can’t meet each other for real life conferences, we’ll just bring the seminars right to your living room! These seminars will be run at various time slots to ensure we have worldwide availability. Wherever you live (well, almost), each day you’ll have a seminar in the evening and one somewhere around noon.
Starting May 4, you can enjoy 28 days of seminars, following this schedule:

For the 18:00 UTC slot, we expect to have more interest as it serves the two georegions with the most judges, so we’re going to be offering up to two (different) seminars in that time slot. The other slots will each have up to one seminar. This may change for future weeks based on actual applications; it’s our best guess right now.

The seminars will be held on a private Discord server (details to come) by using the Go Live functionality that shares the presenter’s screen. We are limiting attendance to 40 people per seminar, both to ensure we can have some interactivity and due to technical limitations of Discord. Each seminar has a one hour time slot assigned.
This is pretty ambitious, so we’re going to need your help!

Presenter Application

As a presenter, your role is to provide the content! Each week, we’re looking to fill up to 28 seminar slots, spread over various time zones. You’ll be presenting your topic three times on different days (potentially split over multiple weeks) depending on your availability. Each time, you’ll have an audience of under 50 judges, to allow some interactivity. All of this happens through Discord, where you can easily share your screen and make your voice heard.

Here’s what we expect from presenters:
– have your presentation finished at least 24 hours before you’re up. Deadlines are short, so we don’t need everything done weeks in advance, but we do want to be somewhat certain that your materials are ready. Many of you will have existing presentations or modules that they can use for this purpose, even!
– you’ll need a Discord account and join our server, where you’ll need to test your audio setup with one of the admins as soon as possible, to ensure quality of the seminar.
– you’ll obviously need to present the seminar! We expect to run everything 3 times (with some exceptions, potentially). You’ll need to be ready for a final test about half an hour before your scheduled time, and you then have (up to) an hour hold your presentation and answer any questions. There is nothing scheduled immediately after your seminar, so you’re not in a rush, but we do want to limit time spent on each seminar a little bit. More Information on the google form!

Google form to apply, click here!

Applications are ONLY done via the google form.

Admin Application

As an admin, your role is to make sure that the series runs smoothly. Each week, we’re looking to fill 14 slots with volunteers, ideally from various time zones. Each admin will be responsible for 4 of that week’s seminars as well as for part of the scheduling for the next week. You’ll always be coupled with another admin for each seminar you’re taking care of.

Your role in making your assigned seminars run smoothly as is as follows:
– make sure you’ve received the presentation from the presenter at least 24 hours before the seminar starts
– (optional) quality check and feedback with the presenter, if desired
– do a technical check (Discord: audio, screen sharing) with the presenter at least 24 hours before the seminar starts if it’s their first time
– ensure the channel has been properly cleaned up from the previous seminar
– do a technical check (Discord: audio, screen sharing) when the presenter checks in, 30 minutes before the seminar starts
– run the check-in process: people who have signed up are to be given the appropriate roles that grants access to the channel (as well as manage late enrollment to replace no-shows)
– introduce the speaker, repeat rules for the seminar
– record attendance during the seminar
– share the feedback form with attendees at the end of the seminar
– debrief with the presenter after the seminar
– clean up the seminar channel 30 minutes after the end of the seminar
Aside from the quick checks a day before, your help is needed from about half an hour before each seminar begins until about half an hour after it ends. With a seminar taking approximately an hour, that means we’ll need two hours of availability for each seminar.

You will also be assisting in the scheduling for the next week’s seminars, which should take up around 2 hours each week. This includes some of the below (tasks to be divided):
– preparing, posting and advertising staff/presenter solicitation forms, based on templates
– selecting and scheduling staff and presenters, under supervision of the project lead
– contacting staff and presenters, confirming availability and finalizing commitments in the schedule
– publishing the schedule and preparing, posting and advertising attendance form
– selecting attendees, under supervision of the project lead
– informing attendees and finalizing attendance lists
– general attendance and feedback analysis

More Information on the google form!

Google form to apply, click here!

Applications are ONLY done via the google form.

Note that, while this is a volunteer effort to help our community grow, Judge Academy is graciously supporting the organization of this seminar series. As such, we’re able to present you with a foil package for your help if selected as presenter or admin.
They’ll be shipped to you around the end of June, or delivered at an event.

Once we have the schedule for Week 1 finalized, we’ll open up the attendance links where you can enroll for the seminars. As attendance is limited to 40 people per seminar, we’ll need to do some selections, which our admin team will try to keep as fair as possible.
More details will follow when we announce the schedule!

best regards
your project team!