Re: GWA Awards

**J* L* <h*@yahoo.com>**

Graham: You're eligible in all the electronic categories except Trade. (Even overall product, should you want to enter there if you have responsibility for the entire site.)

Kate and All: The Awards program costs different amounts different years. Costs include transporting judges for the larger categories (books, magazines, newspapers, photography, etc.) to a central location (usually Washington, D.C. area, because it's cheaper to get all the books and other stuff moved more inexpensively that way) and putting them up and feeding them from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. The judges donate their hours of time. 

Categories that get smaller numbers of entries (radio, TV) are mailed out to judges for consideration. The number of judges we need depends on the number of entries. We don't know that till after all the entries are received.

Anyone who's ever judged a professional writing or photography contest knows that it's really tough work. The judges put in long hours, too. One reason they're willing to do it is the camaraderie of being with other professionals in the same field.

I'll leave the future tech possibilities up to Doug. He knows more about that than I and I'm sure he's pushing Bob Lagasse in the right direction there. 

About the possibility of video conferencing, however, I will throw out some other considerations: Only the second day of the judging does the group get into comparing and discussing entries. The first day, all are judged individually on their own merit without discussion. 

So that part could be done at home (although it would require many more copies of each entry to be submited, because everyone would need to have one; now they're passed around among the judges) and shipping -- books, especially -- can get costly (and time-consuming for those who have to box them up, do the shipping, etc.). And who's going to want 100 or more books showing up at their door? Where do you put them all? And what do you do with them afterward?

Then you have the human factor -- who has a weekend at home to devote to a project like this? (The judges work from about 7 am to 6 pm on Saturday and 7 am till 1 or after on Sunday.) At home there are so many distractions. And you don't get the same feeling of camaraderie. (We find there are sometimes problems along these lines already with those who judge smaller categories at home. Working it into your schedule is hard.)

So it's not quite as simple as it sounds.

I think this is a good discussion about the program and hope that the Board will take up the issues being raised.

Judy Lowe

http://twitter.com/JudyDigginit

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Gardening

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