-
PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2005
BJCP FINANCIAL REPORT FOR 2005
New National and Above Judges for 2005
Competition Director's Report for 2005
Exam Directors' Report for 2005
IT Director's Report for 2005
PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2005
The BJCP has made significant strides and improvement during the past year. Some of the greatest changes came in such areas as continuing education, competition, finances, experience point schedule, exams, IT upgrades and communications improvements.
The Directors continue to be the backbone of keeping the BJCP functioning. Without them, the BJCP would be defunct.
The new Continuing Education Program headed up by Kris England was put in place in 2005 with opportunities to earn non-judging points for organizing, presenting and attending sanctioned education events. This year at the National Homebrew Conference in Orlando, Florida this June we hope to have many of the presentations sanctioned for credit. Initiatives currently being worked on by the CEP team include a Judge Vocabulary, water tasting kits and a sensory evaluation kit.
The BJCP Treasurer, Al Boyce continued to make progress is improving the financial operation of the BJCP. PayPal to pay on line for registering competitions was implemented. Also, Al was instrumental in obtaining the 501c(3) education tax exempt status in July. The treasury continued to build with the BJCP Board looking at ways to fund programs for members such as the Continuing Education Program and other items such as possibly Color Guides.
The Grant Committee, headed by Mike Hall, BJCP Vice President, issued three grants of $500 each during the past year. The Grant year was realigned to correspond to the BJCP Fiscal year. Due to realignment, $500 was added to the budget for 2005.
The new 2004 Style Guidelines officially took effect on January 1, 2005 and have been well received with many positive comments on the significant improvement of these Guidelines. Any suggestions and recommendations for changes should be sent to your Regional Representative, the Competition Director or the IT Director.
The BJCP Exam Program saw some notable activity in 2005. The East and West Exam Director Positions require highly dedicated individuals to keep on top of the extreme workload. During 2005 these positions were filled by Scott Bickham (East) and Steve Piatz (West). There were 304 exams administered in 2005, up from 288 the year before. Also, exams were administered at 36 locations including the first two exams in Australia and one in Canada. About 74% of the exams were first time exam takers bringing in a healthy number of new judges. Forty-eight BJCP judges contributed to grading exams in 2005. This is a vital area where new graders are solicited to keep the program viable. If you are a National or above ranked judge and are interested in contributing to the BJCP, contact one of the Exam Directors.
The BJCP Exam Committee chaired by Ed Wolfe, was established in mid 2004 and is making good progress at revising the BJCP Exam. The first action of the committee was to incorporate the new Style Guidelines into the exam. The exam is being reviewed and reworked by sections, and major changes in exam format and types of questions are underway. The tasting portion of the exam was reviewed with improved guidance and requirements for the administration of the tasting portion of the exam have been put in place. Significant progress has been made on the written portion of the exam with some of the format changing and moving away from only essay type questions to include true/false, multiple choice, fill in the blanks, etc. These sections may be incorporated into the exam as they are validated. The goal is to wrap up the exam revision by the end of 2006. For those that have trouble writing essays, this should be a well received change since the essay aspect of the exam will be greatly cut down but not eliminated.
Along the line of exams, an Exam Grader Policy was codified for the selection and management of exam graders. This policy was put into effect in October of 2005 and is available online under Examination Center.
BJCP Information Technology has undergone great modifications and upgrades during the past two years. This has required a great deal of work on the part of Gordon Strong, the Director of Information Technology with the assistance of Jamil Zainasheff who has just been formally made the Assistant IT Director. With the introduction of many new and modified programs along with changes in policies and rules, the IT infrastructure required significant and complex updates to support these changes. Some of the important changes include the new CEP Program, revised competition rules, and revised GMSR rules. For more detail, consult the IT Directors Annual Report.
On the Competition front, Dave Houseman, the Competition Director, has made substantial changes and improvements over the past year. Last June at the NHC in Baltimore, the BJCP established an internal committee to work with the AHA on merging the two Competition Programs. A proposed merger was presented late in the year and in January, 2006 the BJCP and AHA merged the two programs into one standardized program called the AHA/BJCP Sanctioned Competition Program (SCP). This merged program allows standardized procedures for registration, fees, forms and conducting competitions. All the competition materials were rebranded and revised into a standardized format and appearance. The program allows a feed from the registration system to cross post information on the BJCP and AHA web site. Take a look on line at the new SCP.
The BJCP Communication Director, Ed Westemeier has continued to upgrade the web site and ensure good BJCP Communications are maintained. Ed recently introduced the BJCP Forum which is gathering a good following.
An overhaul of the Grand Master Service Requirements was completed and put in place. The program is now spelled out and accessible on line. Credit was established for such contributions as ad hoc service to the BJCP and service on committees. Also, specific credit was spelled out for serving in one of the many BJCP positions and credit for service as a Director or a Regional Representative was greatly reduced. One of the key aspects of the program is a requirement of all individuals in the future to participate in the grading of exams to be able to attain the position of Grand Master. The exam program is extremely important and graders are crucial to its success.
The BJCP Experience Point Award Schedule was modified in July of 2005. The biggest change is allowing for increased staff points for larger competitions.
The first promotion to Grand Master III occurred in 2005. Dave Houseman, Competition Director and past Region Representative officially became the first person to achieve this unprecedented and exalted rank. Other promotions in 2005 included 37 National, 3 Master, 6 Grand Master, 2 Grand Master II. See the list below of those advanced in 2005.
Russ Wigglesworth, the BJCP Program Administrator for the past ten years and deeply involved in BJCP activities since 1990 was the first individual to be bestowed the rank of BJCP Honorary Grand Master for his unsurpassed contribution to the BJCP as Program Administrator from 1995 to present. Although there have been very few Honorary Master Judges, this is a new rank created to recognize a unique individual who has made great contributions to the success of the BJCP. Russ's position is slowly being phased out, at his request, and divided up amongst other individuals but Russ's maintenance of past records and corporate knowledge is still ongoing and indispensable.
After many years of failing to recognize service to the BJCP on various committees, BJCP members who participated on the 1997 Style Guidelines Committee, 1999 Style Guidelines Committee, the 2002-2003 Continuing Education Committee, the 2004 Style Guideline Committee were awarded points for their service on these committees. Guidelines for awarding credit for committee service were put in place with the new Grand Master Service Requirements.
On a less pleasant subject, action continues on recovering missing BJCP funds. An internal committee was established in late 2005 to coordinate and pursue legal avenues including criminal prosecution and civil action. A law firm has been retained to represent the BJCP and is actively proceeding. Members will be updated as circumstances permit.
Some ongoing action during 2006 will includes wrapping up revision of the BJCP Exam, establishing a mead and cider certification program, and improved communications between Region Representative and their members. Also we are looking into creating color slides.
If you, as a BJCP member, have any proposals or recommendations for improvement of the BJCP, contact your Regional Representative or the BJCP President by e-mail. The e-mail addresses are listed under the BJCP web site under Administration Center then click on "officers."
That summarizes the main activities of the Board over the past year. As you can see, a great deal of progress has been accomplished in many areas to improve and upgrade the BJCP.
Ron Bach
President, BJCP
Back to top of page
BJCP FINANCIAL REPORT FOR 2005
Prior Balance - 1/1/2005 4,632.21 2005 Income 18,981.78 2005 Expenses 9,128.31 Current Balance - 12/31/2005 14,485.68 BUDGET ACTUAL NOTE INCOME 1 BJCP Examination Fees 13,225.00 10,405.00 a 2 BJCP Contest Certification Fees 2,500.00 6,578.88 b 3 BJCP Merchandise Receipts 250.00 1,829.33 c 4 Misc. Income 0.00 168.57 d 5 Returned Checks 0.00 0.00 Total 15,975.00 18,981.78 EXPENSES 1 BJCP Grants 1,000.00 1,500.00 e 2 Continuing Education Program 1,000.00 0.00 f 3 Income Tax 3,000.00 0.00 g 4 Legal Fees 2,000.00 0.00 h 5 Mailings: Examinees 0.00 26.70 6 Mailings: Reimbursees 0.00 0.00 7 Merchandise (for resale) 1,800.00 2,810.50 i 8 Miscellaneous 750.00 292.76 9 Office Supplies, Misc. 750.00 298.40 10 PO Box Rental 50.00 0.00 11 Postage 1,300.00 884.81 j 12 Printing: Examinees 100.00 88.77 13 Recognition Pins 2,800.00 2,552.00 14 Reimbursement: Exam Directors 200.00 0.00 15 Reimbursement: Exam Graders 800.00 561.00 16 Shipping: Merchandise 0.00 13.37 17 Surety Bond 100.00 100.00 18 Telephone 50.00 0.00 19 Website 0.00 0.00 Total 15,700.00 9,128.31 Prior Balance - 1/1/2005 4,632.21 Income 18,981.78 Expenses 9,128.31 Current Balance - 12/31/2005 14,485.68 Checks Outstanding 330.88 Account Balance Showing 14,816.56 Receivables Outstanding Notes:
- Exam revenue was lower than expected due to several cancelled exams, and 2004 figure was artificially inflated due to off-cycle billing for AHA competitions.
- Contest income was higher than expected due to an inadvertent mis-estimate.
- Merchandise receipts were higher than expected due to the decision to sell BJCP shirts, hats, and pins at the AHA National Conference.
- Miscellaneous income represents interest earned on funds in accounts.
- Grant expenses were higher than budgeted due to switching in mid-year to a calendar year plan, requiring an additional $500 for the bridge period.
- The Continuing Education Program is still developing plans, and has not yet required any funding.
- Retroactive tax-exempt status was achieved, thereby obviating this expense.
- Legal fees were budgeted for recovery of the missing funds, but not spent during 2005.
- Money budgeted for merchandise was intended for pins, but that purchase was not needed, so an additional sum was added to purchase embroidered shirts and hats for sale.
- The reduced postage amount is related to note (a) above.
Submitted by Al Boyce, Treasurer. — January 3, 2006
Back to top of page
New National and Above Judges for 2005
A big Congratulations! goes out to all the BJCP members who advanced during 2005. These are truly motivated individuals who have demonstrated great ability to judge and contribute to the BJCP.Region Full Name State Rank Date Achieved West Mark Alfaro CA National 5/6/2005 West David Barlow CA National 11/7/2005 West Peter Carlson CA National 5/6/2005 West Steve Christian CA National 9/13/2005 South Cristina Collier GA National 8/6/2005 Northeast Timothy Collins NY National 10/12/2005 Mid-Atlantic Charles Coronato NJ National 8/6/2005 West Brody J. Day CA National 5/6/2005 South Kuyler Doyle TX National 2/3/2005 South William Dubas TX National 5/6/2005 South Phil Farrell GA National 11/7/2005 Mountain/NorthWest Andrew Hale Feinstein NV National 3/9/2005 Mid-Atlantic Vincent Galet PA National 12/4/2005 West John M. Guffey CA National 3/9/2005 West James J Jackson CA National 12/4/2005 MidWest Stephen Klump MO National 9/13/2005 West Kevin G. Koenig CA National 5/6/2005 North Geoffrey L. Larson AK National 5/6/2005 North John Longballa MN National 11/7/2005 Northeast Dan Marshall VT National 5/6/2005 MidWest Mark McAndrews IA National 11/7/2005 Mid-Atlantic Michael McGuire VA National 8/6/2005 Northeast Nathan W. McNutt QC National 5/6/2005 North Mark Nesdoly AB National 8/6/2005 South David Odom FL National 2/3/2005 South John Peterson FL National 5/6/2005 Northeast Lawrence Pilon NY National 8/6/2005 South Craig Sikes GA National 12/4/2005 MidWest Chuck Skypeck TN National 7/5/2005 Northeast William Solomon CT National 3/9/2005 MidWest Richard Stueven NE National 3/9/2005 South Jeffrey S. Swearengin OK National 10/17/2005 MidWest Michael Uchima IL National 5/6/2005 South Michael Urban FL National 8/6/2005 MidWest Britt Weiser IL National 12/4/2005 South Mark T. Williams FL National 8/6/2005 MidWest Joe Workman KY National 11/7/2005 North Al Boyce MN Master 8/22/2005 South Jeffery Gladish FL Master 5/25/2005 South Michael Heniff TX Master 3/9/2005 South Scott Birdwell TX Grand Master I 12/20/2005 Mid-Atlantic Thomas Cannon VA Grand Master I 7/12/2005 Mountain/NorthWest Gregg Smith ID Grand Master I 1/18/2005 West John S. Watson CA Grand Master I 12/14/2005 West Russ Wigglesworth CA Hon. Grand Master 8/3/2005 West Peter Zien CA Grand Master I 12/14/2005 South Ronald Bach FL Grand Master II 12/20/2005 Northeast Peter M. Garofalo NY Grand Master II 12/14/2005 Mid-Atlantic David Houseman PA Grand Master III 12/31/2005
Back to top of page
Competition Director's Report for 2005
This was a very successful year for competitions with 207 held. The AHA's National Homebrew Competition had a record number of entries and a number of other competitions grew in size during 2005 as well. The 2004 version of the style guidelines got a successful full year of use in practice. We've queued up some minor changes for 2006, but nothing significant. Several software packages for managing competitions have been made available.
The major change, as announced, was the merger of the AHA's Sanctioned Competition Program with the BJCP's competition registration program. The jointly branded, "AHA/BJCP Sanctioned Competition Program," will be the only way to register competitions. All competitions will be listed on the BJCP web site, fed to the AHA web site and listed in Zymurgy, if they are registered early enough in advance to make publication deadlines. This should simplify the decision about who to register with, especially for some competitions that were registering with both --- this will no longer be necessary. Additionally the AHA is providing a free entry into their National Homebrew Competition for every competition to give as a Best of Show prize. Registration and payment (with PayPal) is now on-line and much easier with less delay in getting competitions posted on the web.
While the committee was working out details of the merged program, they also updated all the materials used by the competitions that were sent by the AHA or BJCP and placed these on the BJCP Competition Center. The beer, mead and cider score sheets were cleaned up and made consistent with each other, without changing the functional scoring of any of these. Download new score sheets for your next competition!
I will ask every judge to encourage competition organizers to submit their organizer reports. There are a number of competitions that have not submitted organizer reports and it's you, the judges, stewards and staff, who suffer because you don't receive the credit you are due for the effort expended. As of this writing, there are 35 delinquent organizer reports for 2004 and 2005. Check out the Delinquent Organizer Report on-line and if you see that a competition is delinquent in which you participated, please contact the organizer and push to get these filed. It's much easier now that it is done on-line.
David Houseman
BJCP Competition Director
Back to top of page
Exam Directors' Report for 2005
In 2005 the BJCP exam was administered at 36 locations, including 2 in Australia and one in Canada. In 2004 the exam was administered at 32 locations.
There were a total of 304 exams given in 2005 vs. 288 in 2004. Of the 304 exams, only 79 (26%) were retakes of the exam so we continued to bring in a healthy number of new judges.
In late 2004, in preparation for the 2005 exam year, the Exam Directors worked together and with the then just established BJCP Exam Committee to revise the exam question pool to conform to the 2004 revision of the BJCP Style Guidelines. In addition, the wording of the questions was standardized, more detailed instructions for the examinee were produced, the beer styles covered in the exam was expanded to completely cover the styles in the latest BJCP Style Guidelines, and a new set of forms and procedure were established for the exam proctors to help the exam graders obtain better information about the exam beers.
Late in 2005 the grading process was updated to use more electronic movement of information between the graders, the Associate Directors, the Exam Administrator, and the Exam Directors. This change saves a few days in the overall grading process for a set of exams.
As background information on how BJCP exams are processed and who the graders are, the exam flow is something like the following.
- The Exam Director (ED) generates the exam questions and associated forms and mails them the local exam administrator.
- After the exam the local exam administrator mails the hardcopies of the exams back to the ED.
- The ED makes copies of the exams and mails hard copies to each of the graders and mails the originals to the Associate Director (AD) assigned for the exam set. In addition, the ED retains a copy of the exam in his file.
- The Lead Grader has overall responsibility for arriving at consensus scores for the exam and for writing the initial Response To Participant (RTP) form. When completed the Lead Grader emails the scores and RTPs on to both the AD and the ED.
- The Second Grader works with the Lead Grader to arrive at consensus scores for the exams and provides input to the RTP.
- The AD performs the first review of the scoring and RTPs. The AD emails the revised scores and RTPs on to the ED and back to the graders.
- The ED performs the final review of the scoring and RTPs. The ED emails the final scores and RTPs back to the AD and the Graders to provide feedback on the grading process. The ED also emails the final scores and RTPs on to the Exam Administrator for inclusion in the formal notification of exam results sent to the examinees.
Using the BJCP exam flow above, the following table provides a view of the individuals involved in grading of the BJCP exams given in 2005.
Grader Name Lead Second AD ED Total Graded Jay Adams 7 7 Eric Asebrook 6 6 Ron Bach 3 3 Chuck Bernard 16 16 Scott Bickham 16 109 125 Al Boyce 21 13 34 Tom Cannon 60 60 Denny Conn 14 14 John Curtis 15 5 20 Scott Dennis 7 7 Pete Devaris 5 9 14 Jim Dexter 6 6 Paul Dey 18 18 Mike Dixon 11 11 Kris England 17 17 Paul Farnsworth 3 3 Joe Formanek 8 8 Peter Garofalo 21 22 32 75 Rick Garvin 3 3 Bob Hall 10 10 Ted Hausotter 3 3 Dave Houseman 9 3 83 95 George Huhtanen 5 17 22 Andy Litrenta 28 7 35 Steve McKenna 6 6 Rob Miller 6 6 Mark Nesdoly 7 9 16 George Perrin 9 9 Steve Piatz 3 195 198 Kevin Pratt 14 7 21 Susan Ruud 26 26 Tom Schmidlin 6 6 12 Brian Schwind 11 11 Jeff Seeley 5 5 Paul Shick 11 11 Phil Sides 18 18 Bill Solomon 7 7 Gordon Strong 14 69 83 John Tull 6 6 Dennis Waltman 16 16 John Watson 21 21 Ed Westemeier 16 16 Jim Wilson 8 8 Mike Winnie 7 7 Ed Wolfe 17 17 Jamil Zainasheff 5 5 Beth Zangari 7 7 Peter Zien 6 6 60 72 Grand Total 304 304 304 304 1216 Scott Bickham, BJCP Exam Director, East
Steve Piatz, BJCP Exam Director, West
Back to top of page
IT Director's Report for 2005
If 2004 was a year of transitioning processes and technology, 2005 was a year of tackling a lot of the difficult behind-the-scenes groundwork necessary to do a lot more interesting things in the future. As the BJCP introduced new programs and made changes to policies and rules, the IT infrastructure had to be updated to support these revisions. Some of the important changes that affected the IT infrastructure included the new CEP program, revised competition rules, and revised GMSR rules.
On the physical infrastructure front, we supported the migration of our server environment from an internally-managed MoreBeer host system to an outsourced professionally managed environment. We rehosted applications from at least three different servers onto the new environment. We added additional software to our portfolio, including rolling out phpBB in production mode as Forum software for BJCP discussions. PayPal support was added for competition payment.
Much work was done on the database infrastructure. The Filemaker database structures were aligned to facilitate an eventual migration to an open-source web-based solution using MySQL and PHP. Export processes were put in place to regularly send mirrored copies of the master Filemaker data to the MySQL database. New read-only applications were developed to pull data from the MySQL database rather than Filemaker. Additional databases were developed to allow collection of data for review and processing prior to upload into Filemaker.
Just as the database structures were revised to support an eventual migration, the data itself was cleaned up. Email address maintenance remains a difficult task. We added more links to the change-of-address form (e.g. in the judge record). But we actively try to remove bad email addresses whenever reported. We cleaned up a lot of the legacy data, removing illegal point awards (e.g. getting organizer and judge points in the same competition, multiple organizers, etc.). Several data fields were restructured and populated to support the migration, including separating judge, organizer and competition location fields into separate city, state, zip and country fields. We hope to develop additional applications around this data. Country codes were normalized into two-character data. Unreported competition reports were actively sought. Bad judge addresses were investigated. Improper formatting and content were revised. In general, the data was scrubbed hard.
From a web development standpoint, much of the effort went into rehosting and consolidating existing applications (judge record system, competition reporting system) onto a single platform, the main BJCP server. The applications were all rewritten to pull data directly from the mirrored MySQL database rather than rely on filemaker export tables. The applications also had to implement the new BJCP rules and policies, so a lot of rework was done during the year. A new self-service password lookup application was introduced. The capability to edit and correct submitted organizer reports was introduced. Development on new applications expected to be rolled out early in 2006 took up the remainder of the development time (these include a new competition registration system, a competition authorization tool, a dynamic competition calendar, and an RSS feed to the AHA for their calendar).
Goals for 2006 include continuing to restructure Filemaker to support the migration to MySQL. The applications and web changes needed to support the merged competition program will be rolled out. The Exam and CEP data will be scrubbed, and database formats restructured. New applications will be developed to use the MySQL data. All remaining existing applications not using the MySQL data or the MoreBeer server will be rewritten and rehosted. A new exam registration system, a new change-of-address system, and a retroactive point system will be developed. New CEP applications including a judge vocabulary system will be developed. We also hope to add a new email layer to the application portfolio so that we can send email based on database queries, implementing such things as regional mailing lists. Hopefully, we will also undertake an effort to validate all email addresses in the database and perhaps have a regular way to check their validity.
I continue to acknowledge the significant work done by Jamil Zainasheff in support of the BJCP IT capabilities. He has assisted Ed Westemeier (BJCP Communication Director) and myself in most of our IT and web efforts, and continues to do the bulk of the new web application development. Jamil is a vital member of our team and deserves our thanks and appreciation for bringing modern web technologies into the BJCP IT infrastructure.
Gordon Strong
BJCP Director of Information Technology
January 7, 2006
