This conference is on April 10th starting at 10 am CET.
I can’t change the preview that says April 9th. Sorry D:

Events Skills Conference Series

Presented by Pastimes 

Some skills are learned best from experiences and interactions with fellow staff at events. For the last year, there haven’t been the opportunities we used to have to polish old skills, gain new skills, and interact with each other. Even with digital events, those opportunities are precious and few.

The Events Skills Conference Series are Judge Academy foil-supported conferences presented by Pastimes, designed to create a space for all judges to polish skills gone rusty or get exposure to the kinds of skills and knowledge they would have gained naturally from attending events.

Anyone with a Judge Academy account is welcome to apply; however, only certified Judges will receive foils. Sponsorship includes one pack of four promos for each Judge Academy Certified Judge at the Conference. There is no regional lock nor cap for this event.

The conference will be held over Zoom and Discord. Chats and general conference announcements will happen over Discord, while the lectures themselves will be given over Zoom. This event will begin at 10:00 Central European Time and run till about 18:00 (6 pm) with a party to follow

Presentations & Activities Schedule this month:

• 10:00 – 10:30– Introductions with Meg Baum
  • Setting expectations, conference etiquette, and general welcome.

• 10:30 – 11:30– Practical Deck Checks with Oli Bird
  • Never got a chance to watch a deck check happen? Haven’t sorted a legacy Lands deck in 18 months? Do you want to learn the differences between a Polish Deck Check and an Australian One? Join Oli Bird for a walk through the world of deck checks

• 11:45 – 13:00– Logistics 101 with Niels Viaene
  • This seminar aims to teach you a way of looking at and preparing for tournaments, starting from zero and can scale up indefinitely.

• 13:00 – 14:00– Lunch and Trivia! 
  • There will be a break halfway through the conference. Because this conference is not bound by the conventions of time and space, we will be offering Trivia with prizes during the break.

• 14:00 – 15:30– Wizards EventLink and the Magic Companion app with Bill Stark and Alex Green
  • See below

• 15:45 – 16:45 – Applying for Success: A Staffing Managers Panel 
  • A panel-style Q&A with some of the world’s most well-known staffing managers throughout time. This will be a panel discussion centered on their experiences as staff managers and their advice on improving your application game for events both online and digitally. Any questions asked in this panel will be run through a moderator and submitted (at the latest) the night before the conference; if there is time after submitted questions, any remaining time will be semi-open mic.

• 17:00 – 18:00 –  Self-Care at a Magic Event with Guy Baldwin  
  • An exploration of self-care failures you can do at events. How they harm you, how they are perceived, and how to portray yourself better. (in-person and online)

• 1800 – 2200 PARTY and the Trials of Knowledge!
  • Looking to party in style? Test your Magic knowledge in ways it’s never been tested before, and join us at the end of the conference for the Trials of Knowledge. Team up with up to 4 others (or find your team during the conference) and draw, guess, puzzle, and dream your way to supremacy in our assortment of quiz-style games.

We are excited to announce some special guests for this conference!

Bill Stark and Alex Green from Wizards of the Coast will be joining us for a presentation on Wizard’s newest events scorekeeping software, Eventlink!

About the Presenters

Bill Stark has been with Wizards since 2008. A former pro player, he has worked for Magic R&D, the Wizards Play Network, and now the Core TableTop Technology team. He is the product manager for Wizards EventLink and the Magic Companion app.
Alex Green has been working with WPN retailers since joining Wizards in 2015. He is currently the WPN Retail Relationship Supervisor, and his team works to help retailers joining the WPN or needing help with WPN programs.

About the Presentation
Learn about Wizards EventLink and the Magic Companion app, powerful new tools for judges and organizers alike to organize events as we return to in-person play following the pandemic. What are EventLink and Companion? How do you get access to them as a judge? All those questions and more, plus an interactive demo and Q&A session.

We are not taking applications for presenters, but welcome applications to help admin the conference.

If you would like to learn how to run your own conference or learn more about how conferences work, I encourage you to apply to help admin this event. I will only be taking a limited number of admins for each event. Admins will receive an additional conference packet for their hard work.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or prophecies, please feel free to email Meg Baum at meg@pastimes.net!

This application will be updated as more information becomes available. Any important updates after acceptances have gone out will come via email.

If you are having trouble applying, please make sure you are logged into Judge Academy. 🙂