On February 8th the NVPS board met and discussed how our current rules were serving the membership.  Many members of the board agreed that there had been a lot of confusion for members, judges and Competition VP's concerning the restricted and unrestricted categories. Category and class entry data was also analyzed.  A Competition Rules Committee was appointed consisting of Georgette Grossman, Chair; Bob Friedman and Willa Friedman (current VP's Competition), and Tom Burden and Melanie Marts (next year's VP's Competition). The Competition Rules Committee presented their proposal to the board on March 8th and it was accepted by the board. An additional proposal concerning time constraints on capture for competitions was brought forward by Bill Prosser and was also accepted by the board. An informational presentation was announced and presented to the membership on April 5th.

The membership will vote on these proposed changes to Competition Rules at the May 3rd meeting.

In a nutshell the proposed changes that were voted by the board are:

1. Change competition categories and classes from current to:

Category         Classes

Color Prints                Novice and Advanced

Digital Images            Novice and Advanced

Monochrome Prints      Combined one class

(the current restricted categories will go away)

2. Members must compete in the same class (novice or advanced) for all categories and if they are promoted in one category, they will be promoted in all categories

3. One competition per year (non-themed) will not be subject to the 2 year time constraint for image capture. The VP's Competition will announce in advance which month the no time limit competition will be.

So that the membership is informed and has the opportunity to study the proposed changes, I am posting the following documents:

1.  Competition Rules Committee Proposal submission to the board on 3/8

2.  PowerPoint Presentation to the membership on April 5th

3.  Current Competition Rules marked up showing proposed new rules

4.  Proposed Competition Rules (clean document)

Please plan on coming to the NVPS meeting on the first Tuesday in May (May 3) to vote on the rules as well as the NVPS slate of officers.

Sandi Croan

President, NVPS