Questions about Chairman's Award
 

1) how creative can our chairman's submissions/essay be? if there a limit to the design process, or are we expected to have it on like a simple microsoft word document with no embellishments?
2) can pictures and graphs be included in our executive summary?
3) are those pictures (if allowed to be included on our graph) part of the four picture, 1MB limit?

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

The Chairman's essay and executive responses get submitted through textboxes on TIMS...so you are limited to plain text, unfortunately, and the 1MB images you can upload.

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

Everything dcarr said, and the following -

I highly encourage you to design the Chairman's award how you deem fit, but at the same time input it into STIMS the way FIRST is requiring. This means that in the chairman's interview, I am not sure what your team typically does, but let innovation and creativity show (ex.) give the judges a copy of your essay how you want them to view it).

Cass

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

One of the best ways to let that creative you free, is through the presentation. You may already be doing this, but the presentation is your one on one time with the judges, and a judge may respond better to a creatively stimulating presentation than a monotone speech. Go nuts!

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

Figuratively, of course. You don't want to scare the judges...

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

Oh wait... Is that what we've been doing wrong this whole time?

:yikes:

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

And I would highly encourage you to log into STIMS a couple of days ahead and get familiar with it, make sure everything works, etc.

AND - don't rely on Microsoft's character count. For whatever reason, in the past, we've seen that MSWord count is different from the FIRST awards submission count, so give yourself at least a 100 character buffer (or more).

As for the creativity, you can get creative with how you write the essay, it doesn't have to be vanilla and just explain your team. Check out 842's for a classic example of a very creative winning essay.

Good luck & have fun!!

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

Ok, this is a bit OT but still a question anyway.

This is our first year submitting Chairman's. When we submitted, was someone (either the student submitter or the adult contact on the account) supposed to receive an email confirmation? I wasn't there when we submitted but the student assured me everything was all set. Not that we can do anything about it now, but I kind of just wanted the peace of mind.

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

Your main contact should be able to see in TIMS that the submissions were finished.

Re: Questions about Chairman's Award
 

Awesome, thank you! I'll check with them!