The ICF Annual Conference returns in July, and for the second year running the flagship competition inside it will run virtually rather than in a room with wheels on a folding table. If you've judged in person, you know how much of that work happens with your hands: pressing a rind, checking give at the equator, smelling a cut face the moment it's opened. None of that travels over video, so this year's judging cohort has had to relearn a skill they thought they already had.
Judging & Competition Preparation, this cycle's Curd cohort, spent its last two sessions on exactly that problem. The short version: a camera and a scoresheet can still get you most of the way to a fair score, but only if the entrant on the other end knows what the judge needs to see and the judge knows what to ask for.
What changes when you can't touch the cheese
The course walks judges through a substitute checklist for each sense they'd normally use directly. For appearance and structure, entrants are asked to film a straight-on cut with a ruler in frame, plus a close angle on the paste and any eyes or mottling, under consistent light — inconsistent lighting is the single biggest source of disagreement between judges scoring the same wheel this way. For texture, since a judge can't press the rind themselves, the course has entrants describe give and moisture release on camera while cutting, in the entrant's own words, which turns out to be a reasonably reliable proxy once judges know to weight it correctly against what they're seeing. Aroma is the one sense nobody has solved for; the course is candid that virtual judging scores aroma more conservatively than an in-person panel would, and it asks judges to note that limitation on the scoresheet rather than guess.
The other half of the course is about consistency across judges who are all working from someone else's video rather than the same room. A shared rubric matters more on a virtual panel than an in-person one, because there's no hallway conversation between flights to recalibrate a judge who's scoring high or low that day. This cohort spent real time practicing on archived footage from past competitions specifically to get everyone's baseline within range of each other before the live event.
One member finishing the cohort put it plainly on the last call: "I judge tighter on video than I ever did in a room, because I'm scared of the things I can't check myself." That instinct is exactly what the shared rubric is meant to correct — a judge who compensates for uncertainty by scoring harsher isn't more accurate, just more cautious, and the course spends time getting judges to trust the checklist instead of their own nerves.
If you want to judge in July
Judging & Competition Preparation is open to any member working toward Competition Judge Accreditation, and it's also useful if you're entering the competition yourself and want to understand how a video-based panel is actually going to look at your wheel. Reach out through the Awards & Competition Committee if you'd like a seat before the July conference, and watch this space for entry details as the date gets closer.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.