I think what you meant to say was that your team uses audio and video well in putting a spin on what you do.

FIRST isn't about spin. The Chairman's Award is a spin-free zone. You did it or you didn't. There is no salesmanship here, and there shouldn't be. It's about your accomplishments, not your skills. Your accomplishments come from teamwork. Your Chairman's Award submission comes from reality.

If you want to make a video, go right ahead. If you want to win the Chairman's award, stop worrying about the submission and start worrying about the better things you could be doing with your time.

Mr. Krass hit the nail on the head with this remark. When you have a team of 5-6 people doing videos or other high-tech presentations on your activities so that you can win the Chairman's Award, if you do not also have 50 or 60 OTHER people actually DOING the activities, you are missing the point.

The current format requires only 1-2 people for a few hours, even a small team of 14 like ours can afford that, nor will it make a big impact on our other activities. But a video style entry would have required 25-50% of our team to do properly, it just wasn't worth the effort to us.

Chairmans award
 

yes the chairmans award is about the team, but its not about the people, its about ideas. Its about initative, and creativity. By not allowing for this in their essay format they are essentially saying that being a monotonous paper-pusher is acceptable and a goal of FIRST is to turn us into drones.

For many awards such as the buisness plans I feel that the goal of it it to present a concrete goal and for this an essay with graphs is approrriate, but for an award that signifies free thinking this is an awful regression on their part.

Format
 

Well, in response to those who say there's no room for creativity...
I'm the layout editor for my school's newspaper, and I see plenty.

This is my team's first submission, so we didn't have the video edge. Instead, I'm looking at laying something out nice and well in Adobe PageMaker that will accomplish a nice polished effect with plenty of room for graphics and all that, in the allotted four pages.

This doesn't seem too difficult - and it doesn't have to necessarily be an essay, but maybe set up as a newsletter or yearbook type style that allows graphics and maybe short pieces strung together in a way that flows both visually and textually.

Just my two cents worth...

Aaron Knight, Webmaster, Team 891
Note: our current web server is down, you can look at our mirror at:
http://www33.brinkster.com/first891/

addendum to my 2 cents
 

If you use a program like PageMaker or Quark, you'll come up with something plenty eye-catching enough...

Our mirror's changed (for the better): first891.topcities.com

'Later
Aaron Knight
Webmaster / Team 891

here here
 

This is the first time that our team has submitted a chairman's award, and I think that the new format levels the playing field. All videos and animations do is provide for yet another virtual outlet to try and make your team look better than it is. You can say anything you want or make it appear any way you like in a video, but if you are going to convey it in words, it's a whole new ball game. You actually have to know what's really going on within your team and what it's all about.

Good luck to those of you that have become accustomed to flashy facades, because now we get to open the door and see what's really behind the scenes.