Our first annual Meeting of the Members was held today in Crystal, MN, and around America and Canada via Zoom. At the meeting, we amended our bylaws and elected the next Board of Directors for our 2025 fiscal year. Alongside the business we needed to conduct as an organization, we also provided a hybrid Judge Conference for education on a variety of topics. You can watch a video of the full meeting here.
The meeting kicked off with the quorum call. According to our bylaws (which are written to comply with Minnesota State Law), 10% of eligible voters needed to be present in order to conduct business. Once quorum was established, we set down the rules for the meeting, such as procedures for how remote participants could be recognized to speak. We then began the election process by approving the rules for the election and giving the candidates a few minutes to make brief speeches if they wished.
After the candidate speeches, the vote was open! More than two hundred judges cast their votes online over the course of the day, ranking their choices for directors by priority. Owing to our value of Accountability, Judge Foundry elects the entire board every year. While this can be risky as it could mean the loss of institutional knowledge, it also allows our members to decisively set a course each year. Electing the entire board at once also works well with our system of proportionate ranked choice voting, because it allows judges of diverse interests to be represented on the board. You can learn more about our election system by reading this article introducing it or by reading the Judge Foundry Elections Blog, an independent blog maintained by the Elections Committee.
Once the election began, we proceeded to debate and vote on four changes to the bylaws. The annual meeting is one of the times for making these changes to our underlying structure. The Bylaws Committee, led by Kyle Ryc, did an outstanding job of preparing and presenting four changes to improve our organization, which you can read more about below.
- Amendment 1: Affiliate Members: Passed with 94.59% of the vote
- Amendment 2: No Write-In Votes: Passed with 96.88% of the vote
- Amendment 3: Election Committee: Passed with 94.12% of the vote
- Amendment 4: Board Vacancies: Passed with 96.97% of the vote
Following the passage of amendments, the floor was open for new business. Matthew Fox proposed that the Board should form a committee to investigate relationships with a variety of trading card game (TCG) publishers. Their motion asks the board to form a committee within 60 days, and was passed with 84.62% of the vote. Look for more news on this committee once the new Board of Directors is seated next month.
The meeting then recessed for the conference portion of the day, with presentations by four members:
- A keynote by Rob McKenzie — Rob discussed the value of conferences, and encouraged members to organize conferences and gatherings of their own in the future. Rob also outlined the support that Judge Foundry can provide for conferences, such as providing a Zoom account for hybrid conferences, helping secure venues, providing food, and defraying other costs. You can apply to run a conference today!
- Maintenance Update and Q&A on Maintenance by Joe Klopchic — Joe gave an overview of Judge Foundry’s annual maintenance, which will occur for the first time at the end of March 2025. Maintenance is a key piece of Judge Foundry’s value of Quality and helps ensure judges are keeping their skills sharp. Joe reviewed the maintenance requirements for our five judge levels and surveyed the attendees on how they are currently progressing on their maintenance requirements.
- Best Practices for Exams by Dan Milavitz — Dan broke down the nuts and bolts of administering and taking judge exams, including an inside look at how Exams project members create and refine questions. (Did you know it takes about an hour of volunteer effort to create and finalize a single question?) Dan shared some insights on how to study and prepare for exams, and reviewed some of the statistics about the pass rates of Judge Foundry’s advancement exams so far.
- Regular Judging Locally and at Conventions by Paul Baranay — Bearz opened their presentation by describing how they fell in love with Regular REL judging all over again thanks to working in the Command Zone at MagicCon Amsterdam earlier this year. He explored the foundational philosophy of Regular REL events, and discussed various ways that judges and local stores can work together to all achieve their goals. Finally, Bearz discussed how Regular REL events at conventions are both similar to and unique from other events, encouraging judges to facilitate fun and always be available for interacting with players.
At 5:30 local time, the meeting of the members resumed and polls closed for the election of the Board of Directors. Elections Committee Chair Dan Collins talked through the election process and shared the results. Before announcing the winners, he shared a graph that illustrated the velocity of voting, with the lion’s share of participation happening in the first hour after the polls opened.
Lastly, the election results were announced. The next Board of Directors, who will serve from October 1st, 2024 – September 30th, 2025, is:
- Brook Gardner-Durbin
- Joe Klopchic
- John Brian McCarthy
- Rob McKenzie
- Tobias Vyseri
You can see the full election results, including the process by which we reached this conclusion, on our ElectionBuddy page and learn even more from a recap from the Elections Committee.
Thank you to everyone who attended and/or voted at our Annual Meeting! We’re looking forward to an exciting new year starting soon, and we can’t wait to share what’s next.