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The next Forum On-Line will include the Official Ballot, and potentially more write-ups from other candidates.
Read why:
I believe it is time for a fresh direction in the way judging, both human and system aspects, is handled. In 1993, when the FPA was moved from Colorado to San Diego, it was with the intent to experiment and find a suitable system. This happened...once. It was (is) the system we currently play under. We need to continue the journey towards a workable solution, and I am prepared to put positive energy into this goal.
As an organization and as players, we need to broaden our view of what freestyle is and can be. Already, there are at least three dominant styles, and there about five new styles emerging. There's room for about 300, the way I see it. Let me explain. There is a style that says, create a script and perform it; one that says, just improvise; there's the brush and run; the center control; the against the everything; the Ocean Beach regular; the juggler; I could continue on and on, but you get the point. All of these (and the infinite styles I forgot to mention) are valid. We can argue validity all we want, but in reality, these are all valid styles. We need to be able to account for them all.
The current system is limited to the evaluation of a performed script. It has shown little ability to adapt to other styles. I believe this was done intentionally because the people involved believe scripted routines are always more "professional." This is a sell-out to the word freestyle, because it limits competitors to one road. Sometimes scripted routines are the best, sometimes they're not. What's important is what's completed within the allotted time, not what style is played.
While I have recently unveiled a number of experimental judging ideas, it is not my goal to push these ideas. As Judging Director, it will be my responsibility to push any ideas in search of perfection. However, perfection seems a long way off, and simple evolution is the first step.
It is also my firm commitment to involve the world in these discussions. Much of the new talent is coming in from outside the US., and they deserve representation on the committee. As it stands right now, the US has all spots, with So Cal holding 3 of 5, and two people from the same team! This looks stacked, and needs to change before the elections. There has been a call for new people to the committee already, but we can't always wait for people to volunteer--we need to recruit solid diversity so that a consensus can be reached.
Frankly, I'm not really looking forward to all the BS that comes with the job, but I'm willing and able to do it if we can take some steps forward. The next few years are crucial, as once we enter new tournaments with our format, it becomes just that much harder to change. It seems we have a short grace period to reach some idealistic agreements, but this will come to an abrupt halt--soon.
Whoever you vote for, realize that the FPA has gone a long way to make a free election possible, so send in your ballot. This election is a huge step forward for the Association.
MR
First, I've only been Executive Director since Bethany left in November, and I feel I'd like to put in the effort to improve the FPA and our sport for at least two more years.
Organization. I would like to spend more time on improving the organization of the FPA so future transitions to a new Board will be basically transparent. With continued focus on basic organization, we will be able to spend less time on the figuring out what to do and more time doing it. I also want to improve communications with the rest of the freestyle world by getting more jammers outside the U.S. involved with the FPA.
Judging. First, we must continue to strive to post scores within one to two minutes after a routine is finished (both individual judges scores and a total score). We were really good at this in Hawaii '97, and in Seattle '98 it wasn't really relevant because of all the awesome acts in between teams. I think this is important at spectator oriented events in the future. We must not get lazy and back off this goal, as prompt, public scores add credibility, spectators are familiar with this from the Olympics, reduces dead time and increases enjoyment for spectators. The key to this is to not use the Head Judge to manage scorecards, but to use another volunteer to handle scorecards exclusively.
Next, I agree with Mikey that there's room for 300 different freestyle styles. And although Mike and I (or any board member) may not agree on everything, I think we can still work together effectively to accomplish positive things for our sport.
But I don't think changing the judging system is the answer. I still believe we need to focus our energies on what is important to our audience, not ourselves. Everything else being equal and singling out one of the 300 styles, I believe spectators enjoy watching professional, choreographed routines over spontaneous routines, and I think our current system rewards this in a balanced fashion. And as we've seen, it's much more difficult to execute a spontaneous routine, and we know crowds hate drops.
Rather than changing the judging system, I propose two alternatives. First, I'd rather put our energies into educating the judges. We should do this no matter what. As I've always said, I'd rather have a bad system with good judges rather than vice-versa. Specifically, I'd like to see more examples for each category (e.g. a throw away is an automatic major error, a clean root off the ground is always an intermediate error, etc.). Other ideas are better, more specific write-ups on how to judge (e.g. what's consecutivity), maybe brief checklists that judges read before they judge, etc.
The second alternative is more controversial but I believe a better solution than changing the system, and sometimes radical steps are needed to move a sport forward. I would like to see the current system called the Performance-Oriented system, and use it to judge Co-Op and Mixed. Then lets put our heads together and develop an Extreme-oriented system for Open Pairs and Women's Pairs. With a second system, we change our sport in an evolutionary way, and eliminate the gridlock that has faced judging committees in the past, which results in few changes being made and lots of good volunteer time wasted.
A few other things I'd like to see is four minute Co-Op routines, three minute pairs routines, and the elimination of time calls since it's too easy for announcers to screw this up ( if you don't know your music, then ask someone on the sidelines to time the routine and call it out to you).
The Forum/FPA Web page. As I've said, communications between FPA members that are on-line has been at all time high. We plan to continue to build on this with more enhancements to the FPA web site and quarterly Forum On-Lines. Of course, where would we be without "jammers on the net" and Tommy's independent www.frisbee.com web site (not associated with the FPA, but the FPA is grateful to Tommy and Media City for it).
Later this year, I plan to move the FPA web site to a new server with better performance and a better domain name (unfortunately, www.fpa.org is gone) so we appear in Search Engines more frequently.I also enjoy funding and
Unfortunately, we've been struggling to find volunteers to convert the Forum On-Line from MS Word format to a hard copy format we can mail. Thanks to a few volunteers that signed up in Seattle, this problem may be behind us. The FPA is committed to doing a better job on this and plan to send out hard copy Forums in the future. If you can help convert Word files to something that can be printed, let me know.
I've put in about one day a week into the FPA, and I'm willing to do this for at least two more years. I will continue to fund and manage FPA projects like the web page and photographs so I can improve my skills in these areas. This sport has brought me lots of satisfaction over the past 20 years, and I'm happy to try to make our sport better for recreational and competitive players alike.
LI
I am running for Marketing/Spread the Jam director. I propose to create more materials that tournament directors can use to promote their tournaments to sponsors, as well as more spread the jam materials for the public. Last year I produced the Freestyle Highlights video. This short video was a useful tool Arthur Coddington was able to use in order to sell MTV on doing a Freestyle segment on Mikey Reid & Jonathan Willett. The segment aired recently.
With the help of Marketing committee members, I would like to create some printed materials to go along with the video. Pat Rabdau has almost completed his long awaited instructional video. We need to make good use of this powerful tool to follow up on the interest of the public. I think marketing and spread the jam have to be linked hand in hand because the education is the follow up from tournament and TV exposure to get new players hooked. I would also like to create school programs for teachers who are interested in Flying Disc and freestyle. The knowledge on our great sport is not out there. It's still a secret. Let's change that.
DL