The Judging Panel for the 2008 and 2009 Best Children's Game award consists of:

Patrick Brennan (Chair)

Patrick Brennan is an IT program manager and boardgame enthusiast. A love of games during childhood was re-ignited during the late 90's with the influx of high quality Euro boardgames, and his collection now numbers over 500 games.

Patrick is a member of two weekly boardgaming groups and contributes views and news on games to international boardgaming sites. Combined with plenty of gaming at home with his three young children, Patrick has a wide range of experience to draw on when assessing and judging games for all ages.

John Farrell

John grew up playing traditional games such as Scrabble and Trouble with his mum and sister before going through a long period of role-playing and computer gaming in his late teens.

After starting his own family, John's son learnt to read playing a Harry Potter card game, and from then on the family slowly progressed down the path of a love of board games. John now has a collection of 350 board games, and has a niece and a nephew who love coming to visit.

John works as a computer programmer, and generally prefers word games and highly analytical abstract games.

Melissa Rogerson

Melissa Rogerson has been playing games all her life. Her parents owned a small independent games shop in the late 1970s and 1980s, and her father ran one of Melbourne's older private Bridge clubs.

In 1996, Melissa represented Victoria in the Australian Youth Bridge Championships.

Melissa, her husband and their two young daughters have a "playing collection" of around 400 boardgames. In September 2006, their collection was one of the Melbourne Museum's featured "Community Collections", with many of their games displayed and demonstrated there during the month. Melissa has a keen interest in games promotion and in using games in education, and has pioneered the introduction of annual Family Game Nights at local schools. She writes a fortnightly column for a popular boardgaming blog, and has appeared on ABC Melbourne and regional radio discussing boardgames.

When she is not playing boardgames, Melissa works as a consultant in information management and online services.

Neil Thomson

Neil is a husband and father of 3 boys under the age of 8.

He is a game group organiser for his local club Border Games, Albury Wodonga, which meets every Saturday from 10am-6pm. The club supports all manner of genres including tabletop miniatures and CCG's.

Neil enjoys both Euro and American styles of boardgames.

Neil writes monthly game reviews for his local paper and also writes reviews for his local games store to help inform the public. As a teacher, he also has the chance to help young students discover the new world of gaming and develop their thinking skills.

Neil is the tournament director for the Australian Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne championships at the Australian Games Expo.

Paul Kidd

Paul's business card says he's a Software Solutions Architect, but he's really a husband, father and board game player.

Like many people he started playing Monopoly as a child and moved on to Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager, all-night games of Civilization as a uni student and two years representing Queensland on the Junior Bridge team for the Australian National Championships. He has now come full circle to the simple pleasure of an hour or two's enjoyment of a game around the kitchen table with friends and family.

He is very excited to be involved in Board Games Australia, as it will give him an excuse to give his wife for how much time he play games with the kids. Of course if it promotes the sociable, stimulating and above all enjoyable hobby of board and card games to more Australians then that's OK too.