A 2022 Rearview: Favorites from the Renaissance Year
Happy almost-2023! It’s been quite a journey of a year, personally, and that’s something I know is true for many others as well. Really, for a lot of folks, I think it was the first year where 2019-type normalcy returned to most elements of life: by midyear, there are parts of society where things looked exactly the same (for better and worse).
If you’ve read any of my blogs before, you know that I’m writing this all down mostly for my own memory, but also for anyone who cares to read it. Mostly, I write about the happenings of the Pokemon TCG Championship Series as I see them, but a brief personal update:
I was personally grateful for one big part of the 2019-esque feelings: the ability to hold large gatherings of people without it feeling like a house of cards! The center of my year was my July wedding, which was awesome—and all the more awesome for not feeling like a Petri dish experiment while we were there, either. Before that, though, I moved to Chicago and started an exciting new job (and then moved again after the wedding—moving is terrible)—finally, I can no longer make people go “???” at tournaments by telling them I’m in school. I think that’s all the personally-interesting things.
2022 brought one major development for myself and most of the people I imagine will read this: Pikachu brought back in-person events! While the Players Cup, Limitless, and countless other sources provided invaluable senses of community during the pandemic layoff, it’s been fantastic to have a return to Regional and International Championships. I know things aren’t quite fully back: local events will be a welcome infusion of energy, and Oceania still needs to have its February International Championship for us to have reached a full cycle of events. Still, though, the energy of live events that so many of us had missed for years is finally back.
That means that airplanes are also back, and I had a fun year:
Once upon a time, I did all of this writing to reflect on playing in events and things like that. I played a little bit this year (both Salt Lake Cities [poor showings] and LAIC [some Limitless points!]) as a result of my continuing belief that folks staffing events should have some sense of what things feel like on the ground. Honestly, both Regionals were really useful for reminding myself what elements of an event are important to players that can sometimes be communicated a bit weirdly from judging’s perspective.
One example: it’s really obvious to a judge that a time extension will be issued for a problem, but for a player, the judge fiddling to write down the start time of a ruling on a piece of paper isn’t a very transparent gesture. Bonus: it’s really frustrating when an extension is shorter than it ought to be—especially when a venue has visible timers…
Otherwise, I spent the year trying to make these events as fun, fast, and fair as possible. Something new I did this year was event admin leadership, leading Hive (Stage, TO desk…whatever you want to call it) operations for all of the Top Cut and Day 2 Events shows in 2022. It was great to get a new perspective on events, and I’m really grateful to Dana, Jimmy, Denise, Vince, and the others that have helped me adjust to the role & trusted me to be there.
Something that’s become really apparent to me through that experience is simply how many people it takes to make a Regional hum effectively. More specifically, I’ve learned just how many places something can go wrong: when you have mega-events, an efficient round takes an army of judges efficiently helping players’ problems, a strong group of Head Judges promptly resolving appeals, and a well-designed Hive moving those slips as quickly and accurately as possible through the computer station.
The strongest judge team in the world is useless without a strong hive, and a strong hive will do a lot of thumb-twiddling if that last slip is on a 24 minute time extension. The whole event can only move at the pace of the slowest turning gear: it truly takes a team to make these shows glow.
And that’s been the blessing of this year: I’ve gotten to work with & lead some really awesome teams. Highlights, for me:
- The NAIC team I was honored to lead as Masters Blue HJ was the most country-diverse team I’ve ever worked on, and while I’d worked with almost everyone before myself, a lot of people meeting a whole lot of new faces—kind of scary at first, but something that worked out beautifully. I think NAIC ended up being the best experience I had at an event all year. The way everyone worked together through some extremely challenging situations—awesome.
- I meant what I said on the Twitter: amazing effort from the Toronto Regionals team. That extends to literally everyone in a staff role at that event, but especially my Masters TCG team, which did an amazing job some extraordinarily challenging situations.
- Warsaw was one of the best events I’ve ever attended. The city was a joy, I presented at my first in-the-flesh Professor Seminar, twentytwentytwo has some really cool things figured out from a staff-experience perspective, and my (coincidentally very British) team was a lot of fun to work with. And that was before this happened:
I got to pinch-hit commentate Alex’s match because finals ran a bit past others’ scheduled flights. A very cool experience, and although I don’t think it was quite a return-worthy performance, I’m very glad to have gotten to do it at least the once!
Thanks to everyone that’s made for an awesome 2022! It’s been great to reconnect with so many people, meet new folks, and everything in-between. I’m excited for 2023 personally, professionally, and hobby-ily. Pikachu’s not wasting any time this year, as we’re up next weekend in San Diego already!
Have a happy evening however you choose to spend the rest of 2022, and all the best to you into 2023!
