Karl Gude

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SND graphics awards facilitator, Greg Swanson, from the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa. (GREAT guy)

Things that you don’t want to hear:
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“I nominate Karl to speak if we’re asked to.”

“Did you realize this bottle of wine you bought was $50?”

“Can I have your autograph?” (I swear to God)

“Sir, your return ticket was purchased for MARCH 20, not February 20.”

“Sorry, no Tylenol. Will a TUMS do?”

“No other rooms, sir. Would you like us to ask them to quiet down?”

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Welcome to my last 18 hours. I’m in a hotel room next to the airport in Syracuse with 24 hours to kill. I think my neighbors have had sex twice, had a pizza delivered, hate someone named Karen and like Court TV. I’m pretty sure about the sex. That glass trick works pretty well.

It’s not every day …

I had to scramble to find a professor to cover my two-hour information graphics class at Michigan State. He called me after an hour from his office saying that most of the students had no interest in what he had to show (his great design work) but instead they just continued working on the map project I had assigned before. Not very neighborly of them. So he left them, and I’m sure most of them left, too.

The words you do want to hear:

“Judges, congratulations, you’re all done!”

I loved my fellow judges. And also the facilitators (professionals who paid their own way to be there) who bossed us around, did all of the heavy lifting, counting, organizing, and even fetched us chairs and soda (I mean “pop.” I’m a Midwesterner now.)

I especially enjoyed the students from Ohio U. and Syracuse U. who teased us with their portfolios. They were a smart, creative, curious and VERY silent presence. If they even TRIED to speak to us while we were judging they would be whisked away by an SND facilitator, as you’ve seen security details do when a fan tries to talk to their movie star client. We’re such stars!

Check out the fence.

The medal discussions —at times intense, but always instructive, and never really too personal, sort of— were a high point. We’d say things like, “with all due respect…” and “I just can’t…agree.” We’d mumble “sorry” to the others if we were the only holdout for a silver award. Once, when I was pushing for a silver, someone apologized to me and I responded, “Hey, I’m going to sleep tonight just fine.” I kept it all in context.

Judgemate Carrie Cockburn (Globe and Mail, Toronto) gets translation from Alberto Cairo (School of Journalism, Chapel Hill, N.C.)

Oh, and in the realm of “if you think that was awkward…” I had another “moment” with the judge I mentioned in my previous entry. You may recall that I had said something negative about a graphic that I was judging and it turned out to have been created by this person. I thought that it utilized an overused approach for presenting a certain kind of information (no, I won’t say what it is).

You could have cut the tension in the air with a knife.

Well, this judge (who I adore, by the way) and I agreed to look at a student’s portfolio together, so we settled around a table and hunched over her big black book. But when she opened it the other judge and I both gasped with astonishment. There, on the opening page, was a graphic with the EXACT imagery that the judge had used! I felt like someone had driven a branding iron into an open wound in my forehead.

Only in the movies…

It’s a cow, it’s a boxing glove, it’s a … map?