[FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Posted on the FRC Blog, 6/2/16: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...-championships

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Only one final winner?

Wow, what an idea!

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

"The WFA and WFFA are deeply cherished by all those honored to have been so recognized and the WFAs look forward to maintaining the singular nature of the Woodie Flowers Award..."

I used to look forward to the singular nature of the Championship too.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Kickoff would be an appropriate place for this announcement.

[bitter]Unless they split that too :rolleyes: [/bitter]

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

You should time travel back to 1998 and prevent FIRST from awarding multiple winners in subsequent seasons.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Lol. Dude. Come on.

We all know what I meant, there's no need to read that deep.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

This is going to be hard to pull off. In fact, I don't know how you can pull it off for two separate events happening sequentially. If the winner is at the first then the second event knows it ahead of time and if the winner is at the second then you aren't honoring them at the first.

But hey, if this award is remaining singular then there is hope that one day, we'll get back to a singular championship too.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

I think they meant a surprise for the recipient, not for everyone. They might be able to do this if they collude with the main or alternate contact of their team.

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They don't even need to get that tricky about it. Just do what they do for Dean's List currently, and get in touch with all nominated mentors directly. Or, if you want to allow teams to keep it a secret from the nominated mentor, for renominations (which many teams do), put it as a check box when they submit the nomination - If awarded, which champs should it be presented at - A, B, or whichever the team attends (defaulting to the team's default champs should the team not attend one).

It might actually be best to just include that question with the nomination for both WFA and DL, just to take all the ambiguity out of it and ensure full knowledge for FIRST without having to manage the logistics of contacting 100+ individuals for each award!

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

per·verse
pərˈvərs
adjective
(of a person or their actions) showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

How about the Prize Patrol. Track them down where ever they are on live stream.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

This is a bummer.

I was really looking forward to watching the separate event in summer of 2017 where WFA Upper and WFA Lower duke it out to determine the 2017 UWFA (Ultimate Woodie Flowers Award)!

In all seriousness, it is interesting that WFAs are holding on to this. If the winner is at Houston, it kind of takes that element of surprise out of Upper Split Champs?

Maybe a separate mentor recognition ceremony will be added, even if the WFA isn't given out at both events?

-Mike

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

I'm all about celebrating those who build the robots!

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

I like that idea. Might take some coordination, but ought to be doable.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Though I don't agree with the 2Champs split, the fact they're keeping it singular means they're not treating it lightly.

It's not the solution many people want, but in this case, it's better than having 2 Woodie Flowers (at least to me.)

[In Reference to the Salt]
The core of the problem (imho) is the whole 2Champs brought a logistical nightmare for teams and FIRST itself. To coordinate two events of similar scale halfway across the country (vertically, at least) is an impressive feat, and hopefully the 2017 staff will be able to coordinate it as well as this and previous years.

FIRST made these changes because they see a bright future for all of the F** competitions, and we all have to trust in them, whether we like it or not, that they know what they're doing.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

The competition is a game with rules and a score. It's objectively possible to be the best at that, so I get why some are upset that there will be two sets of "champions" at the end of each season.

The WFA doesn't, objectively, name one mentor as the best or anything. It's a recognition of their great work, but it doesn't do that by diminishing the work of others. I don't think it would be strange for two individuals to receive that honor.

Besides, they'll give a WFFA award to just about anyone these days*, so what's one more?

*Relax. I'm poking fun at myself.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

I don't think it would be terrible to give the award to two individuals (lord knows there are enough outstanding mentors out there that deserve it!)... but you still have a question of logistics. What happens if they look through all the essays and say "These two are the top of the pile", then realize both of those individuals are going to be at the same champs? I definitely don't want to diminish anyone's contributions, but would you give the award to one person, knowing that there's someone else that maybe deserves it a little bit more but happens to be going to the "wrong" championships that year? I think sticking with one winner is the best route, and announcing it at whichever event they are at (preferable), or their team's home event if they don't attend champs.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

This is exactly the same as two deserving candidates having submitted for the same regional, or being in the same district. I don't see why this is an issue here but not at regionals or districts across the country.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

With WFA being awarded to a single person, I am confused why they would not award the Chariman's award to a single team.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

The Woodie Flowers Award in its entirety (from finalist to winner) is mostly driven by the winners of the award. It may be likely they were Given the opportunity to discuss with FIRST, or even given final choice, on how many people received the final 'winner' title each year. ((There are a number of WFA Winners here, maybe they can provide more insight?))

It may have been different in the case of the CCA. I would be interested to know how involved the current Hall of Fame was involved in the CCA discussion. Has that already been revealed? Can someone from the HoF comment?

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

This.

We are going to split the Champs, Split the Chairman's... WFA? No... better not do that. Seems kind of weird.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

The WFA, as I understand, is an award endorsed by FIRST but not regulated by FIRST. It's not contradictory in that light.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Speaking solely for myself, I think it would be helpful to remind everyone at this point that the key point from the WFA perspective is that teams at championships (single or plural) are not competing for the WFA. In fact, there is no relationship between which teams are at championships and who receives the WFA. This is fundamentally different than a regional or a district event where the teams with nominees are all present. Not having a District Championship WFFA winner at the District Championship event will no doubt happen soon and when it does, there will be a WFFA ceremony without the recipient present. When the same thing happens at World Championships, it will be no different than what will be happening at District Championship events around the country. So whether or not the awardee will be at the event cannot be the basis for how the recipient is selected. The idea that the awardee will always be present to receive the award was destined to end no matter what.

Having a single WFA across two World Championships is also consistent with having a single WFFA at a District Championship. WFFAs are not given out at each district event. Because the WFA selection process is very different than the Chairman's award where all the teams competing for that award are at the event and interviewed by the judges, the WFA selection process (which gets to see all the nominees across all the events simultaneously) doesn't depend on the number of Championship events. Therefore, just as single WFFA is awarded at a District Championship, the decision was made to award a single WFA across all World Championship events.

I hope that these additional comments help to clarify how the single WFA decision came about.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

The Woodie Flowers Award is one of the few things that I wouldn't mind being split... so many mentors that have so much time into the program. There's no way we can honor them all, but this seems to be a missed opportunity to honor more of them.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

This seems to be in line with how the WFFA has been handled in the districts vs. the Chairman's award. While I agree with a single WFA winner for each year even with 2Champs, I still disagree with having only one WFFA per district while their are four Chairman's Awards (at least here in NE). With more areas moving to districts the number of WFFA winners will continue to decrease.

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While I agree with not liking only having one WFFA per district, maybe there's a good reason behind it. Perhaps they want to cut down on the number of submissions they have to read for WFA, since it builds on itself every year?

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I don't like it either, but at Champs Woodie told us the insane number of essays they had to read through this year... It's a lot of work for the past WFA winners to get through all of that. Personally, I would prefer to see another tier added for district events instead - recognize one semi-finalist at each district event with a paper certificate, then the semifinalists are the ones that are up at the district championships, with one finalist picked from among them. It's a little more work for the WFA winners to read through those each week, but reduces the load during week 7. It would allow for a little more recognition without dramatically increasing the judging load.

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Call it a DWFFA and it seems like a good plan to me, perhaps have the districts do this first pass judging and the WFA do the upper level judging?

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Question:

Which is more important?

1. Keeping the WFFA and WFA awards "exclusive" and "singular" in nature

OR

2. Recognizing and celebrating one accomplished mentor at every FRC event

I'll throw my hat in the ring that option #2 is FAR more important.

This decision, and the decision to only give out WFFA's at the DCMP level, gives me the impression that the WFAs are holding on to a failing architecture that cannot adequately recognize deserving mentors. I really dislike split champs, but I dislike split champs without a WFA even more.

The "prestige" of the award does not merit excluding many events from celebrating a deserving mentor.

-Mike

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

While I hate half champs almost as much as you do, and I think I agree with you on this, the arguments you've made for the WFA could be applied to Chairman's, the robotics competition, or half champs as a whole.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

I think I could see how my point could be applied to half champs, so let me clarify to highlight the difference in thinking.

I believe WFFA and WFA are a essential component of every official FRC event.

I do not believe going the CMP is an essential component of every FRC team's four year cycle. But that has been :deadhorse: already, so lets not go there.

Hope that makes sense.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Please don't take this as disparaging Woodie Flower award winners. They are all amazing. Nor even the process really. But the whole thing is sort of a meh to me. For every Woodie Flower award winner there are a plethora of mentors deserving of the award. Many on them mentor teams that the members don't know enough about the award to write an effective application. The density of Woodie Flower finalist between regionals and districts is another disparity. The award is not part of district events already. As for as I know it has nothing to do with how well the team performs either. I don't see awarding one or two annually materially effects this other than keeping the award a little more exclusive. The head scratcher is going to when to award it since there is not a final ultimate event

Once again please don't see this as whiny or too critical. It is more of an observation. All the Woodie Flowers winners or finalist that I know are great people and deserving. Woodie is one of my heroes.

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This is very true. We all love WFA, but I wonder if what we're discussing here is the ad hoc struggle to scale the old selection system. Having it run by WFAs is great, but it imposes particular limits on the process (and I won't claim to know what they all are). Is the committee and community still convinced that the original approach is strongest, or are we facing practical limitations of the system? For instance, if we wanted to add a DWFFA or send more DChamps WFFAs, is the debate philosophical or also practical in being able to vet enough nominations quickly enough? We tweak little aspects of the Chairman's process every few years. Is it time to open similar discussions with the WFA committee?

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Mike,
You and I are usually aligned in our beliefs about all things FRC, but you and I could not be further apart on this one my friend (at least based on your quoted post).

First, let me explain our rationale on the district champs WFFA. Quite the contrary to your claim about us holding on to a failing architecture we were trying to think way beyond the regional model. Our decision to celebrate 1 WFFA at the district championship was made when there was only 1 district championship (Michigan) and on the heels of a year that Michigan had 3 WFFA due to their three regional events. We were trying to set a precedent that once everyone has a district championship then each would have 1 winner that would represent their set of districts. Obviously, we hold true to this principle today. We thought (and still think) that one winner from each region makes sense if someone came into the program once we are all in districts. Now, the claim from you and others that we recognize less mentors today than before is just plain incorrect. The WFAs have set direction that at every district event the nominees at that event for the district champs are to be called down on the field and recognized. The ONLY difference between this process and awarding a winner at each district is the trophy. Otherwise, ALL of these nominated mentors get recognized. In the old Regional system only the selected winner gets recognized.

We realize that some districts do not call every nominated mentor down to the floor and we are working to set clearer direction on this as it is our strong belief that every nominated district mentor should be called down to the field to be recognized.

This means that once everyone is doing the district model every single mentor that was nominated will be recognized.

Holding on to a failing architecture? I don't think so.

Paul

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

The WFA committee has discussions every year about changing / tweaking the process. We have lengthy face to face discussions each Fall where many dead horses get beaten.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Paul,
thanks for sharing. I believe I've seen some posts on social media where members have posted about such a meeting taking place.

On a tangent,
my personal wish is that the HOF CCA teams also get that chance to have some say in the process/awarding of the RCA's in such a Fall meeting also face to face.

Similar to other things pointed out, personally I believe that there are many programs worthy of the CCA, and that only allowing 1 CCA per year is not enough.
Perhaps having a division CCA finalist at Championships, where 1 of the 4 is crowned CCA, similar to that of the EI division award at Champs would help teams that are close, be given some recognition for their hard work and efforts. The Chairman's Award is such a tough process similar to that of the Robot Competition itself, IMO.

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Paul-

Not necessarily speaking for Mike, but I think the rationale for wanting recognition of an outstanding mentor at the postseason expos plays in to how events recognize outstanding members of the key stakeholders' factions. The championship event historically awarded a Volunteer of the Year Award, a Woodie Flowers Award, a Chairman's Award, and a Founder's Award. Volunteers, Mentors, Teams, and Sponsors make FIRST what it is and the annual championship event provided not only recognition of the outstanding members of the community, but reminded everyone to recognize the outstanding people directly affecting them that make their FIRST experience possible.

Could there be any consideration to recognize the year's WFFA winners at their respective postseason events as a substitute for awarding two WFAs?

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

This seems like a decent way to bring in the "mentor celebration" aspect of the event, without a WFA award at both late-April-FRC-mini-world-split-champs.

Paul,

Thanks a ton for the explanation. I agree, recognizing WFFA nominees at each district event is a great thing. I hope the practice can be standardized further for the 2017 season.

When I said "holding onto a failing architecture", I meant failing in my terms of success for the future of the WFFA and WFA. Obviously, we have different thoughts on a successful outcome for these awards moving forward. Ultimately, I think the group of individuals evaluating WFFA winners will need to grow beyond its current limits (apparently, the individuals that choose winners are past WFA's, and Woodie, and maybe Dean? Please correct me on this), in order to properly recognize the growing population of mentors involved in FRC.

Here's what I see looking forward:

Assuming the number of districts will increase, and the number of teams will increase, it seems that the US will eventually be broken up into 20-25 districts, with maybe 3000 domestic teams (just guesses here). If one WFFA is given out at each DCMP, this results 1 WFFA winner per 120-150 teams, on average.

This ratio is even greater in a district like Michigan, where one WFFA was awarded out of 400 teams in 2016. However, a total of 9 Dean's List Finalists Awards were given at the same event in 2016. Makes me wonder why the Dean's List Finalist Award is able to scale appropriately, where as the WFFA does not scale similarly. It seems odd to me.

I'd suggest considering awarding multiple WFFA's at the district level, perhaps at some ratio to the size of the district, similar to how it appears the Dean's List Finalist Award is handled. I'm sure I'm not the first person to recommend this, so I'd like to know if this option is a no-go for the WFA's.

Thanks,

-Mike

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

For what it's worth, this isn't what has happened at both NE events I went to. Names are shown on the screen and people are asked to stand for applause, and then the ceremony continues. No one is called on by name or called to the stage. If it's the WFA committee's intent that ceremonies at district events are more substantial than this, that's not what's happening. It just feels like a passing announcement thing and certainly not even close to the recognition a regional WFFA would get. The District Championship WFFA award feels exactly like a regional WFFA award; these two things together make it really feel like there is less recognition of mentors in districts and not more. Maybe if ceremonies are tweaked so WFFA nominees are brought to the floor and called by name at districts, the feeling of recognition will be spread around more.

I know lots of thought has been put into the WFA process and it's hard to criticize it from the outside, but I just wanted to point this out.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Sometimes not even this has happened historically--no standing or no slide at all--at least not at a major ceremony. Not pointing fingers and it's possible it does occur at a less visible break, but overall I wouldn't say there's much recognition in the ways I've seen on average.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

At the three GA Districts that I attended this year (Columbus, Albany, and KSU), only one (KSU) showed a slide of the finalists for the Peachtree WFFA. I do not know if this was ALL the mentors who applied, or just the mentors which remained after the district level.

I agree with the idea of ensuring that, at every event, each nominated mentor is, at a minimum, asked to stand as their name is called.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

Here in MN, we have a "mentor parade" immediately prior to the WFFA. The mentors all group according to years of service, and walk in a parade across the field, wrapping around it at the end. Then previous WFFA's are called back to the field, the new WFFA is announced, and he/she comes out to shake hands and receive the award. Something like this could easily be adopted to the district format, having all of the nominees walk out separately for a round of applause.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

This statement reminded me of these alternatives to beating dead horses:

12 Alternatives to Beating a Dead Horse

Does CD count as a volunteer committee? (see #4).

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This has happened at MAR DChamps (and I want to say it happened at a pre-District regional), but not district events. It's really driven down visibility and overall--apparently across several districts if not more. There seems to be a common method across the mentioned districts though: does anyone know where this may have come from and how? We now understand it's not through the WFA committee, but where's the disconnect? It's certainly understandable that the districts would want a to shorten the ceremony or discuss other concerns, but whatever it is apparently didn't reach the committee.

Another note in terms of the WFFA slide - there are at least a few cases in which nominees have not been on the slide. I don't know where the slides come from, and sometimes the MC will find out and correct it verbally. I'm not sure it's always caught though, or at least not immediately. There was a scattered misunderstanding that district events have their own selection tier based on the missing names.

Re: [FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships
 

SoCal, too. Though we add the previous WFFA winners passing the mic around and giving name, year, event, and team somewhere in the middle.