Hello Everyone,

This call is for the USA-South Regional Conference, brought to you by your friendly neighborhood BPrill!

Conferences are a great way for us all to get together and learn from each other.  That is specifically important in the USA-South where so many of our judges are spread out and in rural areas.  This conference will be focusing on skills that may have atrophied over the last 18 months, and nearly all presenters are from in-region.  This is a great opportunity to meet some of the more senior judges in the region.  We will be running two tracks of simultaneous presentations.   For each hour, attendees will be able to select if wish to attend the A seminar or the B seminar.  You do not need to “pre-apply” for a specific track, nor will there be caps on each seminar.

Schedule – Exact Presentations or Presenters may change prior to the event.

(All Times are in Eastern Standard Time)
11:00-11:10 Welcome – ALL Members – Use Track A ZOOM

Track A
11:15-12:05 Building a MTG Community: Joshua Walters. An expansion upon the basic topics covered in the L1 courses with a look at ways to engage new players and keep the ones you have. How to be forward thinking about the community you want to have and how to help cultivate it.
12:15-13:05 TBD: Meg Baum
13:05-14:00 Lunch Break/Open Forum
14:00-14:50 Tournament Shortcuts: Kyle Evans. Magic is a fluid game in person, we don’t get to represent every step and phase like online play (it would also really bog the game down). Learn about approved shortcuts in the MTR and understand how we can create our own shortcuts. We will also discuss loops and go over a few brief situations.
15:00-15:50 How to Take a Judge Call: Bryan Spellman. Its been a long time since most of us have taken an actual irl judge call. As events return (maybe), Spellman offers a refresher course in these mysterious interactions between humans, drawing from the experience of hundreds of calls and the input from several high level judges.

Track B (All Times are in Eastern Standard Time)
11:15-12:05 Proactive Problem Management: Eliana Rabinowitz. You can make leading at an event look much easier than it is by taking steps to find and manage problems you might encounter. We’ll talk through a framework for thinking about this, complete with math and a particular unfortunate example PTQ.
12:15-13:05 Bias In Judging: Fenrick Michael Fierke
13:05-14:00 Lunch Break – Open Forum
14:00-14:50 Deck Checks: Mark Mason. One of the most common places for a judge to be staffed at a large event for their first time is Deck Checks. This interactive presentation will make you the apple of your Team Lead’s Eye covering Deck and Decklist Problems.
15:00-15:50 Mistakes Happen: Isaac King. Captain America Voice: So, you made a mistake. You screwed up. You know what you did was wrong. The question is, how are you going to make things right.

Applications:
This conference is capped at 200 people.  Acceptances will be biased towards Judges in the USA-South, and if an additional discriminator is needed, number of previously attended conferences will factor in. However anyone can apply, and we will accept up to the cap.
You do not need to provide a cover letter unless you wish to.  Limericks, dad jokes, riddles, Taylor Swift lyrics and anything between are all acceptable.

Applications will be accepted until August 28th 23:59 PST, and you will be notified of acceptance on August 29th.

Technology Platform:
Presentations will be broadcast via Zoom (Courtesy Pastimes Games). Link TBD
Chat and Attendance will be done over Discord.  Link Provided in Event Forums

Communication/Updates:
Updates, announcements, and links for the event will use the event forum on the Judge Academy website.  Copies will be posted to the #info channel on the discord server a week prior to the event.

Support:
This event is foil supported by Judge Academy.  To receive support you must
– Apply and be accepted to this event.
– Be a Judge Academy certified L1 at the time of the conference start.
– Must attend 4 Presentations
– Have a name in Discord that matches the User name in Judge Academy and Zoom (this is for attendance)
– Must fill out all requisite form no later than 2 days after the end of the conference.
Forms will include mailing address, and some form attendance check.
The attendance check will probably be something boring, but I have an idea for something cool, and if I can pull it off, we gonna do that instead 🙂

Attendance:
Attendance is very important to me.  Attending a conference and paying attention is not just respectful to the presenter, but also to those declined.  In a capped conference, there will be some people turned away.  As such, I will be taking attendance in some way.  Additionally, if you find that you will be unable to attend after being accepted, I would appreciate a heads up so that if there is a waiting list, I can fill the newly opened spot.

Mailing outside the United States may require additional shipping and handling payments if the recipient requires more than “basic mailing”.