I’m happy to announce that the Head Referee Certification course for VRC Spin Up is now available!
(Speaking to the adults here) Don’t forget that per Rule T2 in the manual, you must complete this certification course to be a Head Referee at an official VRC Event.
One thing to note, as the course currently stands, it is entirely comprised of images and text. With that in mind, videos (similar to last year’s style) will be added over the coming weeks to help supplement the course. The reasoning behind this is that the current course is perfectly capable of serving its purpose without them, and allows us to release sooner.
And before anyone asks, the certification course for VIQC Slapshot is in the works. We expect that to be released in the next few weeks.
Just to avoid wasting everyone’s time, if I (or other head referees) have feedback to give on the certification, where should that be sent? Last season there was some confusion about whether that feedback should be posted in the private ref forum, the public forum, the Q&A, or the GDC’s email inbox, and I think some clarity to begin with would be helpful.
Fair question. I would say that roughly in order of how quickly the feedback would be seen / implemented…
1 - gdc@vex.com email address - this would be the highly preferred / most efficient avenue, especially for small things like typos.
2 - Private forum that Head Referees can access after completing the certification - this would be fine if it’s something that you want to have some communal discussion on before passing it up the chain, but I can’t necessarily guarantee that the right people will be monitoring that as frequently as the email address.
3 - Public forum - not really preferred, for a variety of reasons, i.e. similar to why there is a separate forum for certified Head Refs in the first place…
Q&A - highly not preferred, technically against the Q&A Usage Guidelines and therefore subject to removal (although we have never done so), plus you will make me grumpy for cluttering the Q&A
Edit - I should probably clarify further as to why these are the case. Due to their nature, the ref certifications are managed by a larger cross-functional team between the GDC / RECF / web editors / content writers etc. Emailing in a “ticket” is the most efficient way for us to forward along / loop in the correct people. Posting a typo fix in the Q&A is kind of like asking your principal what the grade on your math test was… they can probably get the request to the right person eventually, but it’ll take them a while and add a few unnecessary steps.
How about the Drive Team Certification?
That was so helpful in the past for coaches, but it never did get published last season even though it was promised and it doesn’t look like it is even being consider for this season.
Thanks for the clarification Grant, if I find any issues with this year’s certification I’ll make sure to shoot the GDC an email first. I will skip the process once though and say that so far this year’s certification looks to be much better aligned with the rulebook than last year’s so please convey my thanks to the team that put it together for this year. I’m looking forward to the accompanying videos!
Thanks for clarifying this, and I apologize for any clutter that was due to my questions last year on this. I was told to take any concerns about the accuracy of last year’s certification to the Official Q&A instead of here on the forum by a GDC member; this year I won’t do that.
