FREE Arena Judge Event:

As a reminder: Facebook is sponsoring 2 free JA Magic Arena tournaments for Judges, each with a prize pool of $1,000 USD. 

They will be Arena – Standard Bo3, 256 player single elimination brackets, with prizes for Top-8. Judges participating must have a Magic Arena account and Standard deck, and use their full ArenaName#### as their gamer tag when signing up. If you don’t have a FB and want to sign up, please reach out to us so we can manually get your information to add you to the event.

Registration Links below and spots are filling up fast!: 

• May 29th at 9am PDT (4pm UTC) – https://fb.me/e/gqE8tmz9B
• June 12th at 6am PDT (1pm UTC) – https://fb.me/e/2kKknsSwN

Website: The look of our site has continued to grow and improve over the last month!

Completed Features/Updates:

• The Staff lists for events is now visible outside of the application window. 
• Badge Changes – You can now choose to display ALL of your badges if you’d like to, not just the highest level you have achieved.
• To avoid confusion with events occurring for people in different time zones, events now show the related times in both your local time zone, and of the organizer on the event’s main page.
• We’ve tweaked the view of the Events listing optimized for mobile devices. On smaller screens you will see a green ‘+’ to expand the row and see the full details of an event from the table view.
• The Application close dates will now become highlighted in red when the dates close in the next two weeks to increase clarity and help applicants keep track of closings.
• Various bug fixes and optimization

Upcoming:

• Change to forum reply notifications: The presentation and formatting of the replies a user receives to their forum posts is being cleaned up and made more readable. 
• Changes to User Search page: We are making changes to remove the DCI information from the search results and arranging the full name and display name order. Since privacy settings affect these items, the word ‘private’ will be used instead of blank spaces if a user chooses to hide certain information.

New Modules:

This month we’ve started to work through editing and processing our Level 3 content. While new applications for L3 have been paused until we know more about what what organized play will need from it’s leaders as it starts back up, these modules will be a part of that process, and are a great starting point for anyone wanting to start to understand what topics or skills they’ll need to start building or to help them decide if it’s something they ultimately want to pursue. As always, if you have any questions about your own process, please feel free to reach out to me directly at nicolette@judgeacademy.com

• Leadership Vs Authority
• Being Approachable
• When Mistakes Happen
• Actionable Feedback
• Getting Over First Impressions
• Teams at Large Events

Judge Apparel

The first order for Judge Apparel has been submitted, if there’s any issue or error you might be contacted directly by either the MTG ProShop or us.

Conference Promos: 

As we mentioned last month, we’ve started moving most European Conference mailings to distribute from a European Hub as opposed to directly from Judge Academy in the US. Thank you to those who informed us of those struggles and frustrations. We are hoping this change removes a large portion of delays and unequal arrival times, and customs logistical issues for conference support.

In addition to the L2 Electives that went up last month we’re also working on some extra documentation to streamline the sponsorship request steps post events.

As always, if you have a question regarding requirements, attendance policies, or distribution for a conference you are attending, please be sure to check with the Event Organizer, as policies will vary from event to event.

Finally, we’ve seen some discussion and questions around the new 2021 foil distribution plan and the differences and frustrations around having an unknown promo spot in the pack and what exactly that means. To help clarify and set expectations, for the month of May, conferences around the world will receive Infernal Tutor is their July 2020 slot, and Nicol Bolas in their 2021 slot in their promos sponsorship packs, meaning each pack will be:

1. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
2. Karlov of the Ghost Council
3. Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
4. Infernal Tutor

As usual, thanks for your questions and feedback as we all navigate a world of online conferences together.

Judge Academy is looking for help!

We will be contracting someone to help us champion the needs of event organizers. Our goal is to create content helping organizers of different sizes understand the benefits of using a judge, what their responsibilities and expectations as an organizer are and how to run a successful event. We are looking for someone with TO and content creation experience with the ability to create e-learning videos and coursework. If you think you might be a good fit, you can find the full job posting here. This is currently a part-time contracted position, and we are accepting remote applicants.