New FPA Judging System Announcement

Dear FPA Members (Jammers),

What started almost 5 years ago has finally come to an end – the revision of the judging system. Freestyle Disc is a sport with many facets and passionate players each of whom have their own perspectives about how judging should work. This, together with a very detailed, thorough and democratic process (according to the FPA judging system changes process rules) and the fact that all members of the judging committee* are volunteers and come from different time-zones contributed to the long process time. I’m a bit sorry for that, but on the other hand I’m also convinced/proud of what we did and I hope that our hard work will result in an improved judging system that meets with the needs of competitive freestyle play. Be assured that we always tried to act in the best interest of the sport and that many decisions made were the best compromise between all numerous valid arguments presented to the committee as well as pragmatic considerations like financial, time and human resources at tournaments.

Based on your initial input in 2009 we had set three overarching goals the last of which we probably accomplished the least due to the many facets and complex nature of Freestyle Disc:

– Encourage diverse, risky and innovative styles of play;
– Make judging more fair;
– Make judging less demanding.

The new judging system will be active 6 weeks after publication/now, starting Monday the 19th March 2014. It will be implemented tentatively for 15 months from that point on. This means that after 15 months, all changes will be reviewed again and one-by-one accepted, dismissed or adapted. The FPA board will form a new committee for this. Please collect your feedback about the new system for the 15 month implementation time-period and share it when the FPA board asks you to do so (of course, you can start discussions anytime and anywhere before this, but then there’s no guarantee that your thoughts will be considered for the review in that case).

The hyperlinks below lead you to the new judging documents and explanations about them (I recommend to read the explanations first!). Please note that the format, numbering and wording of the documents (but not the content!) is still subject to changes until March the 19th. I wanted to post them quickly, so you can read them before Frisbeer in Prague and ask me questions there. The explanations are based on a proposal for changes to the previous judging system that the committee had published on Shrednow.com in 2012. Jammers had the opportunity to give feedback to this, based on which the committee accepted, dismissed and fine-tuned their proposal. The results were then accepted by the FPA board (majority vote per item):

Explanations about the judging system changes, including:
1. Artistic Impression
2. Difficulty
3. Execution
4. The Bonuses
5. Crossing out high and low scores
6. Judging Education

All explanations as a PDF file

The new judging documents:
Judging system manual (PDF)
Judging sheets (XLS)
Variety checklist (PDF)
Difficulty mp3 audio files (3 minute | 4 minute | 5 minute)

* Many thanks to Lori Daniels, Claudio Cigna, Rodney Sanchez and Jan Zahradnicek for all those endless hours of dedicated and competent work. It was really a pleasure working with you!!!
And thanks to Arthur and the FPA board for their support, too!

Best regards,

Philipp (a.k.a. Sleepy Jammer)

The best color for a disc

Hi jammers out there!

I have two questions to the community:

1. Which tournaments are counted as majors?

2. I’d like to start a discussion: What’s the best color for a disc?

I know we had a poll about that on shrednow already and a discussion on jammers on the net recently and it seems like, that the majority of jammers favors white discs. But why? Because you seem them better during the dusk?
For me the most important feature is the slickness of a disc. That’s why i prefer yellow discs. I feel that in most cases the spin lasts longer with them.
And that’s another interesting point to me: why only in most cases? Sometimes I buy a really good disc and I think: o.k. let’s buy five more, but then the rest is "crap". Why is that? I don’t get it! I’m curious about your answers,

greetings
Philipp

Reichstag jam

For all the jammers who have never been to Berlin, I just uploaded a small photo gallery from a last years jam in front of the Reichstag (german parliament). The Reichstag meadow will be the spot for the pre- and post-tournament jams during the Worlds in Berlin. So feel free to catch some atmosphere and raise your pleasant anticipation.