Subject: Digest for the period 5/5/2006 - 5/6/2006 Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 01:01:17 -0400 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Points for Travel (beerking`at`adelphia.net) 2. Re: Judging expenses, taxes, the law, you, and the BJCP (Joel Plutchak) 3. Re: Points for Travel (Kevin) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: beerking`at`adelphia.net Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 23:58:55 -0700 Subject: Points for Travel I'm afraid I too must weigh in against awarding points for travel. Although the BJCP does award "non-judging" points, these are usually awarded for directly beer judging or education related activities, I don't think driving qualifies. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, I must laugh at the comments made about the rigors of travelling to get to enough competitions. I became a judge in 1986 (second time the test was given). Trying to find competitions to judge in the Mid-Atlantic region at that time was like trying to capture Bin Laden. for my first many years as a judge, there were ZERO competitions 100 miles away. There were 1 or 2 about 200 miles away, but if I wanted to get more points, I was driving anywhere from 6-8 hours just to find competitions. It took 9 years for me to become Certified, and most years, my only competition was the Nationals. (Add to that the fact that we always had to drive through the snow, uphill, both ways...). Points are easy to get today, I don't think we need extra points for driving. -- Lyle C. Brown beerking`at`adelphia.net Kuwait's only beer judge! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joel Plutchak Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 14:45:34 +0000 Subject: Re: Judging expenses, taxes, the law, you, and the BJCP Ed Westemeier wrote: >If you try to involve us in any way, we will have our goons come to your >house >and convince you to change your mind (just kidding). Is membership in the Goon Squad an elected position, or appointed? More importantly, do members get experience points for, um, "events" attended? And do they get an extra half point if they travel far to do so? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 13:52:16 -0400 Subject: Re: Points for Travel wrote in message news:8476610.1146812335428.JavaMail.root`at`web19... > > Points are easy to get today, I don't think we need extra points for > driving. > Not that I am against or for points for travel, but Bill brings up a valid point--homebrew competitions are becoming more numerous, and those well-established competitions are getting bigger. We may be heading for a relative BJCP judge shortage; that is, there are more beers out there than there are BJCP judges to judge them. It does seem like there are more posts lately, with second and third call for judges, than there were before. There also seems to be more incidences of "extra flights" taking place on a separate day from the main day of the competition. Couple that with recent concerns from competition entrants whether there is enough judging experience sitting at the table judging the beers, and we should have some food for thought. Does the BJCP keep track of these stats (number of competitions, size of competitions, and number of BJCP judges vs. non-BJCP judges in a compeitition) on an annual basis? These kind of stats should tell us whether or not we are heading for a Judging Crisis down the road. If a crisis is looming, the BJCP and AHA should look into ideas to recruit and train new judges, so that the quality and timliness of the judging in homebrew competitions don't suffer. Kevin Kutskill BJCP Certified ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Important Subscriber Information ***** To post a message to JudgeNet, send it to judge`at`synchro.com. Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments. Make sure you use a meaningful subject. Quote only as much material as is needed for context. To manage your subscription, go to http://synchro.com/judge/subscriptions.html or send an email to judge-request`at`synchro.com with the subject: help judge. JudgeNet is also available as an NNTP newsgroup, go to news://news.synchro.com/synchro.judge