Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

Do you mean rollout as in the time constraint? I feel like that was VERY unfair. It was hurtful to every kind of team - small teams may not have the spare bodies to write the submission, large teams probably had problems getting the team to get a general consensus on time, and teams who don't have a specified awards/PR team run into the same problems as small teams - who's going to write it if everyone is more robot-oriented?

(and then there are teams such as mine - we're a 30-student team who didn't have a team meeting until Thursday, and our Imagery team, which is our equivillance of a PR team, is both rather small this year and typically doesn't handle award submissions)

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

But since it hurt everyone equally it's okay right??? right??? :D

All jokes aside, the students whose teams were able to nominate are lucky to have something written about them. This is yet another example of how FIRST does not know how to roll-out programs. This brings back memories of when the FIRST alumni site was introduced.

The point is that the award was submitted. The award description does not say that "the award must be written and submitted by fellow team members". If an account had to be created to submit the award, then it is not a big deal especially considering the circumstances under which this was rolled out. It is a prestigious award and honors someone greatly influential while giving students in FIRST an opportunity at something meaningful (hopefully).

My 2 cents.

-Bharat

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

Now that we have our definitions I'd say this event should be classified as 'epic'.

This 'thing' doesn't fall into the category of "should FIRST or should FIRST not" do it. It is clearly a good idea.

The entire system would have clearly benefitted by waiting until next year.

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

I talked to a few kids and mentors today who said they had problems submitting and never even got to submit. They even called FIRST BEFORE the deadline asking for assistance and FIRST did nothing.

How is this a competition of any sort if ALL the kids who deserve to be recognized AREN'T EVEN COMPETING :mad: ?!

And yeah....4:30? Seriously? Could there be a more unintelligent/arbitrary time to submit for an award? :mad:

Epic fail.

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

I doubt 4.30 was arbitrary. I'm reasonably certain that FIRST did not pick 4.30 PM because 200 Bedford Street wanted to screw as many teams over as possible. Likely they had some schedule constraint that mandated having all of them in one place prior to the weekend. At least, that's what I'd conjecture by the 4.30 PM EST deadline.

However, FIRST not going the extra mile to help teams who contacted them for help runs in the face of every experience I've ever had with FIRST HQ. And that's a little bit upsetting, especially when this is much more closer to FIRST's mission than building a robot. :(

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

One thing to consider; we don't know all the facts and there may have been a legitimate reason for the short time frame.

Speculate all you want, but if you consider the complexity what FIRST does every year, rolling out a new award should be fairly straight forward. So maybe the concept has been in the works for some time and something caused the rollout to be accelerated for this year.

Assuming that was the case, now consider that potentially a hundred submissions for each first week regional must be reviewed and two winners selected before 3/4 or 3/5. That includes the evaluators figuring out how to score and select the winners. Ugh... I'm glad they didn't stretch out the deadline.

Reasonable possibilities for the late rollout and the short deadline.

So, this is a great award and I think there are going to be 10 very proud students round about the middle of April. And many proud teams that those members came from, and thousands of students who will be proud to know their teams thought well enough of them to submit an entry.

Kudos to FIRST for another great award and kudos to all the students, mentors, parents who pulled it together to get a submission in under a tight deadline.

I'm sure in the cases where rules were stretched to make an entry, a valuable reminder about integrity in all cases can be read in Jane's post. There are probably many who have not posted about their submission techniques, read that post, and thought to themselves "Oh yeah... thanks for the reminder".

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

The longer you are in FIRST, the more you start to realize that things like this happen too often. It seems as though FIRST things about teams perspective less and less... or maybe it is the sheer volume of stuff. :confused:

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

I'm sure FIRST also had unspoken, legitimate reasons for outright refusing to take submissions from teams who had problems with the TIMS. Problems and essays made available to them before the deadline.

The short rollout ticks me off a little, but I'd be willing to live with it if they were more flexible with submissions that didn't work in their own broken system. That one of the most inspiring students to me in FRC isn't able to be nominated for this award because of a computer glitch and FIRST's apparent stubbornness is something I'm much more angry about.

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

It would have been nice of HQ to take a page from Autodesk's book, who helped teams submit their animations and inventor submissions as long as a request for help or a problem was reported before the deadline time. They were extremely helpful.

Also, my last post seems a bit angry because Chris and I are talking about the same person who didn't get to submit.

Re: FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts?
 

Just checking Bill's Blog and saw this:

>>Did you (or someone on your team) submit an essay for the Dean’s List Award this year? We didn’t ask for the email or home address of the nominee then, but we need it now. We want to make sure every participant receives acknowledgment that they were nominated and Dean wants to include the nominees in some upcoming discussions. If someone on your team was nominated for the Dean’s List Award, please have them send their personal email and home address to DeansList@usfirst.org <<