Lou, sure...no problem.
There will be five judges: myself, Scott Greaves (penturners.org and IAP founder and darn nice guy), Joe Herrmann (Woodturning Design magazine editor, career woodturning teacher and super nice guy), Rex Burningham (co-author of "Turning Pens and Pencils", member of the Craft Supplies management team, frequent professional demonstrator and Provo Woodturning Symposium promoter), and Kip Christensen (co-author of "Turning Pens and Pencils", BYU faculty member, professional demonstrator, major contributor to the Provo Symposium and superb box maker). All of these folks are accomplished turners, collectively with over 100 years of turning experience between them.
This contest is the second in a series of what I had hoped would be a twice a year affair, where new ideas and turning techniques are displayed, with the aim of inspiring all who participate, and even those who only watch, to new heights in their personal level of confidence and skill. I know from my own experience that inspiration is a valuable and often illusive thing, and one that needs to be nurtured at every opportunity. That’s why the entry photos have been posted for everyone to see, as soon as each entry is made. We felt that there was no need to keep them a secrete...in fact, we’re proud of everyone’s efforts here, and believe that all who have participated in the process deserve maximum exposure.
Now, on to the judging process...
The rules state: “The contest is intended to inspire you to design and make an innovative, interesting and original Writing Instrument and Display set. The design of this set is completely up to you and your imagination.â€
In my view, this means that the “setâ€, and not the individual pieces, are the basis of what will be judged. Beyond that, each of the five judges will be completely free to rank and score the entries as they see fit.
The judging process will work like this: The contest will close 30 November. On December 1st, I'll publish an Excel spreadsheet and instructions to the other four judges. Each judge will have the next five days to view the entries and make their inputs by assigning a numerical score (1 to 100) to each entry, filling in the spreadsheet and then emailing it back to me. I'll then collate everyone's inputs and come up with a consolidated ranking, showing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners in each of the three skill categories. Then, I'll email the results back to the judges, who will have one final opportunity to review their scores. Once that's done, and no later than 24 December, we'll publish the results on the penturners.org site, notify each winner, notify the companies who have pledged prizes of who the winners are, and write a short article on this little adventure for the next issue of Woodturning Design magazine. That’s it...
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