I understand that there isn't much room in the pit, and that there are only @5 "display" tables at LA Regional. Are the display tables first come first serve? We have 3 science project display boards that display our team's activities.

Was brainstorming today. How 'bout a walking billboard with the story about our team? Person wears a front and back board.



How can a video be shown by a walking around person?

Our pit from last year
 

Attached is a picture of our pit from last year. In this picture, you can see these things:
1. a video screen on top of our pit,
2. banners w/ team name and partners (sponsors)
3. our 1992 robot hanging on the upper left side of the pipe structure.
4. some fancy red & blue rope lights

Other teams even do more. Some of the more impressive pits last year were from teams 48, 103, 175, and 343 (among others).

Andy B.

Very cool. Thank you for posting that. Others going to post their pit pics?

Hey, you know what would be really cool? Building a robot (or using one from a previous year) and putting a TV screen on it. Then you can let it roam around your pit area or bring it over to other teams...

Cuz of our public exposure this year, a toy store owner is donating to us the 5 ft walking talking robot she doesn't want anymore. We haven't seen it yet. We've talked about the possibility of a video screen. Don't know if we'd ever take it to regional or national, but hoping to take it to SCRRF's robot workshop. We'll see.

Don't know what ours looks like yet, but oh the possibilities...
Robot Mascot

Hey guys-

How about putting all that effort you were going to use promoting your team to FIRST to the better use of promoting your team and FIRST to neighboring communities or helping a struggling rookie team?

Maybe a 4 page essay puts takes the emphasis off spending time to win an award and changes it to spending more time actually doing what FIRST is really about- getting more kids involved.

Off my soapbox now

WC

The process of going after the chairman's award was crystalizing to our team where we needed to pick up the ball and run with it.

We were able to do both - go after the chairman's award, and get the word out to nearly double our team #'s, get a lot of publicity in the papers... Just haven't had ANY luck finding a team to mentor. We personally contacted local private and public schools without teams. Only one bite. We might be mentoring a lego team for a small private school. Our mentor is informally mentoring a team in the town where he works. We're spending time getting SCRRF off the ground tho.

FIRST has been pushing this for a while
 

I remember a couple years back when FIRST first tried to do this and asked the question in the forum. It was a resounding answer no but it has been in the works for a while. I personally do not like the idea of have only four pages to work with but I also did not like have the size restrictions and 15 minutes to work with the first time they gave us them. Then when it went down to 10 minutes I didn't like that either but I have dealt with it and so can everyone else. It just gives you another chance to show how creative you can get.

That's very true, but all the same, 4 single-sided 8x11s is a huge limitation on content. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but 10 minutes of moving pictures/sound/what have you, is worth way more.

Another thing - if team resources or professionalism of the submission has anything to do with FIRST's decision to change the format, then I would have to say they're taking a step in the wrong direction. The proverbial playing field doesn't need to be levelled - it's the content that counts, not how it's presented. Just like how you can have an ugly robot that is really good at it's designated function - it may not look nice, but it can win the competition.

Very true, but when you don't have a performance factor to figure in(such as in your robot example), and you are dealing with solely subjective criteria, whether it is intentional or not, how well something is presented will, in most cases, affect who comes out on top...

Re: Our pit from last year
 

[quote]Originally posted by Andy Baker
[b]Attached is a picture of our pit from last year. In this picture, you can see these things:
1. a video screen on top of our pit,
2. banners w/ team name and partners (sponsors)
3. our 1992 robot hanging on the upper left side of the pipe structure.
4. some fancy red & blue rope lights
====================================
That's a cool pit!

BTY: I believe the 4 sheets of paper restriction is
the submission phase of the Chairman's Award only.

During the interview phase which can take place at
the judge's room you may be able to bring presentation
material (within limits) to show the judges-
photo albums, postboards, etc.....

:)

Interviews.......
 

Re: Our pit from last year
 

Team 48's pit was two pits down the aisle from the TechnoKats' pit in Florida (thanks for the compliment, Andy). You can see it in the background of Andy's picture. I've attached a picture of our pit area at the Canadian Regional. Here are some of the key features of the pit wall we built:

1. Modular extruded aluminum and Lexan construction - easy to set up and tear down - we could pack and ship the entire wall in a crate along with our robot cart and tools.

2. Overhead lighting and scrolling LED message display for match times/scores, team information, etc.

3. Central lockable storage bin and plenty of shelves for tools, laptops, and other items. This kept our pit area free of clutter and gave our team plenty of space to work on the robot.

4. Delphi banner and posters with our team name, logo, and pics of our robot, Xtremachen5. I've seen other teams put up similar posters in their pits which contain Chairman's Award-relevant information. We also had a TV/VCR (not shown) that we used to replay match video and display our Chairman's Award tape.

I asked FIRST about the new format and
 

I asked FIRST about the interviewing process for
2003-
Q1: Will the interview be at the pit area or in a separate judge's area?

A: Specific interview locations are not yet determined and are
site-dependant. Some sites have very limited ancillary sparce, so the pit area is the only location-- announcements will be made on site at each regional as to where the judges will interview the teams who have submitted chairman's award submissions.

Q2: Are teams allow to bring or show "items" to the judges during
the interview process?
A: It's an interview- not a presentation with visual aids.

Hope this answers some of the questions.

The change in the Chairman's award submission came to me as a suprise to me too! I mean for years now our team spent hours upon hours on the video editing. Now what do we do???


Most of you are mad because you have all these nice new toys (OOOHHHH Toys) for video editing and now have no use for them. well here's an idea. Make a chairman's award video and use it in your pits. Our Team for example always makes a pit tape showing off our robot. You could combine your chairman's award video ideas into a video like this. This way you can play with the toys and not have to worry about time limits and stupid computer problems or possesed computers while on a strict schedule.

:D :D