There are probably PEG operations that are smaller than ours: One G channel, one part-time coordinator, camera operators recruited from the high school, and a oversight commission of 5 volunteers. We submitted work twice to the regional video festival in past years, and the staff (such as it is) has been to watch the awards ceremony. Our commissioners–all very sympathetic to our work–have never attended, but when we suggested their participation as a judging center for the 2014 festival, they agreed.
We asked for a small group of entries and received 4 Overall Excellence submissions for one budget ranking. The DVDs arrived with instructions and judging forms. I quickly previewed the DVDs so I would know what they might expect.
Normally our commission cancels their July meeting, but we used the regular meeting date became our judging night, with popcorn. Although I had photocopied judging sheets for everyone, the commissioners preferred to dictate their comments to me.
The entries were for centers with an annual budget of $500,000 to $750,000. Our own budget is less than $25,000, so it was easy to dazzle us. We watched openings, fast-forwarded occasionally and resumed watching when something interesting appeared. We spent about 90 minutes altogether. I got signatures in the appropriate place that night and rewrote their comments neatly the following day.
OBSERVATION: I set up the entries in the order sent, by entry #. The commissioners liked the first best and judged the rest in descending order. Was this the effect of fatigue as the evening progressed?
UNEXPECTED: We also received a dozen or so entries for another category, because there were not enough judging sites volunteering to make meaningful festival awards. Since I had promised the commission that this would only require an evening of their time, I corralled one of my crew to spend a Saturday afternoon barrelling through the category. Although one signature short of a proper judging center, we did our best to give good objective judging grades for different aspects of each entry. I sent my worker home with a final half-dozen DVDs & watched them myself later. I believe fatigue may lead to lower grades for entries viewed after the first batch.
How can we make our judgments more fair? We might try scrambling the order of entries viewed & see what happens this year. We might look for a date to review the top 4 or 5 of a category & see if anything changes in the order.
GOOD & LESS-GOOD CONSEQUENCES: The Overall Excellence entries made the commission dream big; they’ve been asking why we can’t produce more than government meetings. Until I can find more (that is, “any”) volunteers, that’s not going to happen. On the other hand, they voted to become an organizational ACM member. And they agreed to judge again this year. I hope we only get a small group of entries. I hope we can get as many judging sites we need to make everyone happy. Those who submit to the festival deserve good consideration. –Anonymous