My experience at Asheville Pizza Wars 2010

On Saturday August 14th, I participated in the Asheville Pizza Wars held at the Garage at Biltmore and presented by AskAsheville thru GSocialMedia. I bring to you some perspective of what happened behind the scenes and in the "fishbowl" we called the Judges room during the pizza wars.

My responsibilities the night of the pizza wars was to oversee the judging competition during the event, an organizational persons job for sure. Mary and I accepted and "private labeled" the pizzas to be judged as the entries were brought in. We kept the pizza company name identification secret from the judges so that they did not know who's pizza they were judging. The criteria for the judges to consider for each pizza entry judged was "appearance" and "taste" with a scaled system and separate categories for Cheese and Speciality (up to 5 toppings). The pressure was on as hundreds of people peered thru the window as they passed by curious to see and the pizza company representatives waiting anxiously for results.

The judges room was the coveted place to be for many reasons; at first the air-conditioning and then the 26 awesome pies spread out on 3 tables and no beer line. This was a beautiful site and a tummy rumbling aromatic experience as they dug in. Each of the judges took their responsibility very seriously, contemplating each pizza and savoring their responsibilities. All the judges were "full-filled" by the time they tasted a judges sample of the 13 pies from their category along with their beer or water for beverages.

 The panel of judges selected for this event were awesome. I would like to thank them for their time and "sacrifice".  They arrived when requested ready to help with any last minute set-up, eager to judge and devour the 26 pizzas, and support the non-profit Families Pursuing Justice. Not everyone in the room knew each other at the beginning - however, everyone has a common thread in addition to the love of pizza and beer - that is Twitter. Each of the judges have a twitter handle - you can follow them if you want to connect with them just click on the names below:

Kevin  Dani  Jose  Anne Fitten  Austin  Vonciel  Christopher  Adam  Sonia  Timmy  Jamie  Justin

As the evening progressed and the pies were sampled and judged the group talked, mingled and enjoyed each others company. This was an extremely pleasant and desirable group of Tweeps (short for twitter peoples) who worked very well to achieve the goal of awarding the prizes to the winning pizza companies. I think all of them had fun and are looking forward to next year.