Hi Officials,
You’ve probably noticed Certification being a bit quiet recently. We put out a survey for officials a couple years ago, and heard back, and then we put out another survey for skaters, and we heard back. Our own Don Scoreleone in collaboration with TaraByte who oversees Certification as a Board member are putting together results and recommendations for next steps, which should be ready soon. Three Cert Oversight members are also up for election right now, Don Scoreleone, Eggs, and Slaine.
So, what happens once we see the results and hear our recommendations and learn who is “running the ship” for the next year? That is probably going to be a bigger conversation in which we start gearing up to rethink a lot of our core tenants and practices, and start to think about what the next iteration of Certification will look like. Certification today is the third version:
- the first version launched in 2008 - you may recall this as five-level cert where NSO was Level 1…
- version 2 was released in 2012 - the years of “the Hellahard;” NSO and Ref cert were separate tracks, and Level 1 was education-only.
- The current version launched in 2018 (eight years ago)! This is the longest version yet for a single Certification system, and it has scaled well – we’re currently on-time despite ending up a few months behind as all of the Level 3’s recertified!
- But it’s time to start preparing for version 4.
So if you already filled out the survey, amazing. And if you asked your skaters to fill out their survey, even more amazing. But what if you didn’t? And what if you have something else to add? There is now a form for that: Feedback to Certification Oversight it provides feedback directly to Cert Oversight, for us to read. Responses go directly into our inboxes, and it’s anonymous – you don’t need to tell us who you are to use it (but you can, and please do if you want us to reply to something).
And we’re bringing back office hours, time when you can ask direct questions (either live or in advance), and see our answers “live” (or later, via a recorded zoom)! Our next times will be July 27 19h00 GMT, August 3 03h00 GMT and you can register to attend or pre-register a question to be answered on the recorded stream here: Registration for Certification Office Hours
And finally, we’re in-person at Roller con (well Danger Muffin and Don Scoreleone are) , doing a seminar on how the current system works and answering any questions anyone has! It’s in the S1 room at 12:30pm on Saturday, July 11th.
These channels for feedback are additional to the other ones such as emailing certification@wftda.com if you have any questions (100% human-read and answered), or using certoversighthead@wftda.com if the matter is more private.
Looking forward to a bright future!