Blogger Blitz 2019 Judicial Sign-Ups: Judge the Third Annual Blogger Blitz Competition!

Do you love video games? Are you an avid reader who supports other bloggers in the writing community? Does sharing your thoughts about the work of others fill you with excitement? Then your time has come, adventurer, because only one month remains until the beginning of the third annual Blogger Blitz competition and I’m looking for bloggers to sign up as judges for the competition!

WHAT IS BLOGGER BLITZ?
Blogger Blitz is an award-winning annual writing competition held here on Adventure Rules for other bloggers in the writing community. It focuses on eight video game characters who compete in a single elimination tournament. Rather than simply an argument of “who is strongest,” Blogger Blitz presents each pair of competitors with random and wacky events inspired by the world of video games. Each writer composes a piece explaining how their sponsored character would overcome the challenge. Both submissions are then reviewed by a panel of judges who vote on a winner. The votes are tallied by myself, the host, who then writes a results post explaining the decision of the judges and revealing the winner of the round.

AWARD WINNING? REALLY?
Yes, really! Last year’s Blogger Blitz competition, Black Sheep, focused on pitting together video game villains in events created based on submissions from fans of the competition. It was nominated for a Normal Happenings Award by a number of amazing folks for the best blogging collaboration of 2018. And the lovely judges at Normal Happenings presented the best collaboration award to Blogger Blitz!

As much as I would love to take credit for the success of the competition, Blogger Blitz is a collaboration and it is the efforts of everyone who has ever been involved which helped it to achieve this award. Both of the folks who nominated the event have been in both previous iterations of the Blogger Blitz, with Lightning Ellen being the original champion and Kim of Later Levels having been both a competitor and a judge in past years. I’d encourage you to check out the Blogger Blitz Hall of Fame to see all of the amazing adventurers who have been involved in the past; without them, this competition could never have grown to this point.

OKAY, THAT’S COOL, BUT WHAT DOES A JUDGE DO EXACTLY?
Excellent question! The judges of the Blogger Blitz competition are the ones who actually choose the winner of each match. They read the posts submitted by the competitors, have a discussion about which one should be the winner, and then after hearing each other’s arguments they cast a vote about who should win the competition. The competitor with the most votes wins. Because Blogger Blitz is a single elimination competition with a set schedule, this means it is possible to know when you’ll be busy with the competition.

There are three rounds of the competition: the opening round, the semifinal round, and the championship. The opening round has four matches, the semifinals two matches, and the championship one match. That’s a total of seven matches, each of which has two posts for you to read. The posts vary in length based on the round: 1000 words in the opening, 1500 in the semis, and 2000 in the finals. There’s a one week break built in between rounds, so you’ll have some time to rest after long segments of judging. Each week, the competition posts will go up on Monday morning, and you’ll have until Thursday afternoon to read the posts, hold discussions with the other judges, and cast your vote. This may feel like a tight timeline but remember that you won’t be writing any blog posts – your role is reading and discussion. Below, you can see the match schedule for the competition:

• July 29th, 2019 (Judgement due August 1st)
• August 5th, 2019 (Judgement due August 8th)
• August 12th, 2019 (Judgement due August 15th)
• August 19th, 2019 (Judgement due August 22nd)
• September 2nd, 2019 (Judgement due September 5th)
• September 9th, 2019 (Judgement due September 12th)
• September 23rd, 2019 (Judgement due September 26th)

THAT SEEMS REASONABLE – ARE THERE OTHER DUTIES?
The judges will have one additional responsibility in the third Blogger Blitz, but don’t worry – this one takes place before the competition starts and is the primary reason that I am having judicial sign-ups separate from competitor sign-ups. This year, judges will be involved in the process of approving the events for the competition and establishing the criteria for success in each event. During Blogger Blitz: Black Sheep, events were chosen by vote in advance of the competition. This had the disadvantage of making the events public, and they were chosen based on popularity more than the way in which they could make the competition fair or interesting. That’s why I want input from the judges this year – you can help me make sure that each event chosen is somewhat balanced and that it will add something fun and unique to the competition.

During Blogger Blitz III, we’re going to be setting clear judicial criteria for each event. This helps the competitors to know exactly what they need to try to do in order to win big points from the judges, and it helps the judges to know that they are all using the same standards to try and identify a winner. During the time after these sign-ups and before the events are officially revealed around mid-July, the judges and I will work together to create the guidelines so that everyone is on the same page when it comes to what types of post are most likely to impress during each event.

THIS SOUNDS GREAT! HOW DO I SIGN UP?
Fortunately, that’s the easy part! All you have to do to sign up to judge is a leave a comment on this post expressing your interest. I’m going to be looking for five individuals to serve as judges for this year’s competition. There aren’t any rules about who can sign up to judge but priority will be given according to the following scale:

1. Blogger Blitz Newcomers
2. Blogger Blitz Veteran – Previous Competitor
3. Blogger Blitz Veteran – Previous Judge

If you’ve been in both Blogger Blitz competitions, however you participated in Black Sheep will be the role that impacts your priority. Once I get a group of five, any additional sign-ups will be added as alternates in case someone ends up having to drop out before the competition starts. Of course, if you want to be a judge and miss out, you can always sign up as a competitor instead on July 1st!

Once we have five judges, I’ll get in contact with you either in the comments here or on social media if we’re already pals in order to provide you the link to the Blogger Blitz Judicial Discord. This is where the judges will work together to create the events for the competition and set the judicial guidelines, as well as where we will discuss the results of each individual match.

Blogger Blitz is nearly here, adventurers, and my hope is that many of you are excited to participate as judges for the competition! If you want to sign up but have questions about the role of the judge or the schedule, please include your questions in the comment and I’ll do my best to clarify matters for you. Let’s work together to make the third annual Blogger Blitz the best competition yet!