We're opening registration this week for Webinar: Judging Standards 2021, set for November 23. It's a shorter session than our usual full-day workshops, built for members who score entries, want to start scoring entries, or just want to understand what a judge is actually weighing when a wheel crosses the table.
This one comes up every year around the same time, and there's a reason. Our competition calendar runs on a rhythm where entries are prepped in late summer and fall, judged over the following months, and results feed straight into what members put in front of buyers heading into the holidays. A session on judging standards in late November gives members time to absorb it before the next entry cycle opens, while this year's results are still fresh enough to compare against what they just watched happen.
What the session actually covers
This isn't a general cheese-tasting class — we already run separate sensory coursework for that. Judging Standards is specifically about the mechanics of competition scoring: how categories are defined, what separates a technical fault from a stylistic choice a judge should leave alone, and how score sheets get reconciled when two judges land in different places on the same wheel. Members tell us the most useful part is usually the section on defect language — learning to describe what's wrong with a paste or a rind in terms a fellow judge, and eventually an entrant, can actually act on.
It also functions as a checkpoint for anyone working toward Competition Judge Accreditation. The credential requires hands-on scoring experience, and this webinar isn't a substitute for that, but it does line up the vocabulary and the standards framework you'll be expected to apply once you're paired with a mentor judge for your first live panel.
Like most of what we've run in 2021, this is a virtual session, and we've kept it that way deliberately. Feedback from members who judged over video this year — including some who'd never judged before an online-only cycle forced the switch — has been that a screen actually makes some of the mechanical scoring easier to teach, since we can walk through a photographed wheel frame by frame in ways a room full of people crowded around a table never quite allows. We know some of you are ready for that to change, and we expect judging panels to look different again once in-person competition returns in full. For now, this session meets people where the calendar actually is.
How to get in
Registration is open through our events page now, and space is limited to keep the discussion sections useful — this is a webinar with breakout conversation, not a broadcast. If you're already Competition Judge Accredited, current credential holders are welcome to sit in as a refresher; several past attendees have told us it's worth revisiting before a new competition season starts. If you're new to judging and aren't sure whether this is the right entry point, the Awards & Competition Committee can help you figure out where you stand before you commit the afternoon.
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.