On being an ENnies judge

[alsih2o]

On Being an ENnies Judge.

Two bits up front-

One: I am not the ENnies, I am just a one year judge. I do not speak for the ENnies or the ENnies Board of Directors in any way.

Two: I am the Gerald Ford of the ENnies. I came in sixth but was put in to avoid even the appearance of conflict from JoeGKushner who stepped aside gracefully and still stayed on to help with what he could.

That being said…

Two years ago I e-mailed Morrus and told him I was going to run for ENnies judge. He gave me one bit of advice- “Don’t.”

“It isn’t any fun,” He said. “It is more work than it is worth for the books.”

After two years of sitting on my hands I chose to ignore him and run. He was MOSTLY right. For the time I invested in reading and trying to comprehend and staring at the pictures I could have easily earned more than enough money to purchase all the books I actually want from all the entries and had money left over for a nice weekend away with the wife.

The past two years I have made the awards. A solid weeks work at minimum and I did them for cost. Each time I had a twinge of jealousy toward the judges because they got all kinds of free swag with none of the burns and without wearing a chemical mask. Man, did I have that wrong. I had the easy job comparatively.

It is HARD. Very hard at times. You have to honestly review material that is not that great form people you really like and material that is awesome form people you don’t like. You have to fill in that last spot in your choices for nominee when there are three books looking at you that all seem to deserve a spot. All the while you know that the results will have personal and real world effects on the people who produce the material.

You have a deadline. I am not the best at that part, but you have 4 other judges and all the other people involved in making the ENnies happen depending on you. Time presses on your ability to sort out whether book A or B has the best rules or coolest maps. I have saved all my choices. I will be interested to see if I still stand by all of them in a year.

And then comes the schwag. Everyone you know knows you have a big pile of books you have just gotten for free. And you can bet everyone wants one of them. How does one respond gracefully to a request for a specific book from a ‘Friend’ you spoke to once? Two years ago. As part of a conversation with someone else. And you didn’t particularly like that person?

It is not over yet but it is getting close. And that leaves me with a few folks to thank.

Thanks to everyone who voted for me. AND thanks to everyone who voted for the other judges.

Thanks to Teflon Billy, Cthulhu’s Librarian, Piratecat and Crothian. They have all been great to work with.

Thanks to JoeGKushner for handling his situation with class and sticking around to help out. JGK showed real style. Thanks to the Board of Directors for the ENnies: Dextra- our fearless leader, and Psion and Morrus. The treated us with respect and guided us when necessary. They were great.

Thanks to Buttercup for organizing the booth volunteers (and thanks to all of them). To Michael Morris for doing the coding and setting up the show visuals. To Fusangite for working on the voting. There are even more people: Zenld, Jaldaen…some of them seem to be contributing all the time just to contribute!

I do have a lot of books left. LOTS of books and electronic products and magazines and maps. I will be getting rid of 90%. Some goes to my gaming group, some to ENWorld volunteers and some I will be giving away here on the boards as soon as I know I don’t need it any more. Look out for some fun contest and such.

It has been fun. It has been a serious pain in my ass. I appreciate the opportunity but to be honest…I don’t think I will do it again. I am going back to plain old ‘volunteer.’ I encourage you to think about running for judge next year. Then look at your loved ones and consider how much you sleep and think better of it.

 

[Henry]

Regardless, as a forum member, I want to say "thank you" for the effort you've put in. In fact, every year that the judges take time out from their lives, their families, and even their jobs, it shows up in the quality of the choices, and the ability of the judges to defend their choices.

It sounds strange, but I benefitted just two weeks ago from an conversation Crothian had a year ago about about the Poisoncraft book from Blue Devil. It was his reminder to a forum member about the quality and nature of material in that book that got me to purhchase the PDF for a gaming purpose just last month. His recommendation, and why, was what stuck with me, and has probably meant other sales for Blue Devil and the other award winners in the past.

So I'll finish by restating: Thank you. I can't wait to see what's up for nomination.

 

[der_kluge]

I don't know what came over me to nominate myself to be a judge, but thankfully I didn't win. I know how much work it is. And I don't know if I have it in me to review things without bias. But I suppose in the end, it is the collective opinions of several people that make the Ennies what it is.

So, maybe I'll try again next year, maybe not. I can definitely appreciate the amount of work that goes into it, though. An amazing feat by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Crothian]

All judges have a bias, there is no way around that. And each judge deals wiuth it in a different way. Each year there are books from companies I love that I wanted to love, but couldn't. And on the flip side books I wanted to hate, that suprised me and won me over. It can be tough to sit down to a pile of books and have no expectations and judge it solely on the merits in front of you.

This was my third year being a judge. Each year has gotten steadily harder. And this year I was a fool and took the Submission Coordinator position.

 

[Mark]

Regardless, as a forum member, I want to say "thank you" for the effort you've put in.

Ditto.

 

[alsih2o]

As an addition: I have judged 4-5 dozen Art competitions, so i had a general idea of what would be expected of me.

This was an order of magnitude more difficult.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Guys,

Thanks for your hard work. It is appriciated.

 

[francisca]

And then comes the schwag. Everyone you know knows you have a big pile of books you have just gotten for free. And you can bet everyone wants one of them. How does one respond gracefully to a request for a specific book from a ‘Friend’ you spoke to once? Two years ago. As part of a conversation with someone else. And you didn’t particularly like that person?

Wow. How tacky. I'd never even ever dream of asking a judge for a book after he was done with.

Of course, if you were offering....


On a serious note, thanks to all of the judges for putting in the effort.

 

[Rasyr]

I would also like to add my thank you to all the judges that served this year. You guys ARE doing a tremendous amount of work going through and judging all those products, and I fully sympathize with you. It is an extremely hard job (believe me, I understand fully how hard it is).

You guys truly do deserve it!!

 

[Morrus]

You have no idea how glad I was to back away from the ENnies this year and delegate the work. Denise (Dextra) did a fabulous job of getting things organised this year, and I'm eternally grateful to her. I've been lucky enough to be able to just sit back and answer an occasional question thrown my way.

I can tell you from years past that her job is horrible. I used to actually dread it every year.

She's gathered together a fantastic team of volunteers who have coordinated and arranged the submissions, the judging, the booth, the ceremony, the statuettes, the finances... the list goes on and on. I can't even begin to list everyone involved.

But the people with the worst job, the ones I really, really admire are the judges. That job is hideous.

Well done guys.