I’m pleased to announce that all of the technical issues that delayed the first wave of Exemplar have now been resolved, and that foils will soon be on their way to judges recognised within that wave. Which means that everything is in place to get things started to wave 2!

Wave 1 was advertised as a pilot program and was intended to be a proof of concept – if we gave judges the power to take part in peer-to-peer recognition, would they choose to exercise it? What would the results look like? Participation was very high amongst those who were invited to participate, which gives us great hope going forwards with the next stage.

Wave 2 is best described as an open beta. While we’ve made some adjustments to the process from the first wave and taken on some feedback, we haven’t yet made any major structural changes to how the program works. Wave 1 only allowed L3+ judges to participate, which is a very small portion of the judges who we want to involve in the process of recognition within the program. This means that we have too limited a picture to make informed changes to, for example, the number and distribution of recognition slots that different judges receive. The only way to gain the information we need is to get the L2 judges involved – so, it’s about time that we did this!

Wave 2 is now open for submissions. We will be accepting recognition submissions until February 28th. Late submissions will not be accepted for wave 2, so make sure that you get your recognitions in by that date.

The table below describes how many recognitions of each level a participating judge may submit in this wave. This is the first wave in which all L2+ judges are invited to participate, and as such the number of recognitions may change before the next wave:

One comment on the numbers here: for this wave, we’ve taken a conservative approach to the number of recognition slots that each L2 will get. Even with 2 slots per L2, this will more than double the possible recognitions in this wave compared to wave 1. We are sensitive to the fact that it is better to adjust numbers later by adding extra recognition slots than by taking them away.

There have been a couple of changes to the process since the first wave. The first of these is the way that submissions will be made. We had multiple problems with the Google form implementation that we used during wave 1. Judges in some countries were unable to access it; it was difficult for judges to go back and add or amend recognitions later; there were no controls on data entry and so a lot of judges made errors in their recognitions that took us some time and effort to sort out and clean up later. As such, we will be using a completely new interface for recognitions in the second wave of Exemplar. Gavin Duggan has been working tirelessly on implementing this in judge apps; you can find it in the side bar once you log in, labelled ‘Recognitions’. This interface automatically tracks the recognitions that you have entered, lets you know how many you have remaining, verifies data such as name, level and DCI number of recognition subjects as you enter them and lets you go back and add or edit recognitions throughout the period that the wave is open for submissions. Note that this interface pulls all of its information from judge apps, so it is important that your level is up to date on the website! If your level or the level of a judge you wish to recognise is incorrect, please contact your regional coordinator and let them know so that they can make sure it gets fixed.

The other change that we have made following feedback from the L3s is that we have massively increased the allowed character limit on a recommendation. Please remember that everything that you type in the recommendations is going to be publicly available for people to read later on, so think about what you are writing and try to keep it appropriate for a wide audience – please limit the in-jokes. Remember that these are not meant to be full reviews, but a short description of the inspirational or exemplary behaviour that you are recognising this judge for. This behaviour does not need to be inspirational for the whole program, though it can be – it can have impacted only one person, with that person being you. Feel free to discuss recognition ideas with other people from your area or from your region if you have more people to recognise than you have slots. It is possible that there other judges with spare slots, or other people already recognising the judge for the behaviour that you have noticed and thus freeing you up to recognise someone else instead. There is no harm in multiple people recognising one individual, but there is nothing to stop a group of judges coordinating their recognitions if they want to. There will be a group reviewing submissions submitted through Exemplar to make sure that they meet the basic requirement of being recognitions rather than rewards, and if we notice a serious problem with a recognition that you have submitted, we will contact you in order to discuss it.

That’s all that I have to say for now. This program is as much or as little as you, the men and women of the judge program, make of it, so we really appreciate people participating in awarding recognitions in order to make it a success. Have fun!