[Chris Nowak]

Yeah...this probably will turn out to be a good thing, but I know reding this thread right now that someone I know is going to be extremely unhappy about this turn of events...he is kind of psycho about his creativity with videos and such. This is going to be good for our team, though. We'll just have a smaller and shorter(only work on it for 1-2 weeks) chariman's award team, unlike the past where we've had 6-8 people working toward that same award. Oh well, that frees people up to do other cool stuff and focus more on broader PR(including more community service).

I would definitely agree that if you think your creativity is being stifled, you need to think about all of the other awards out there. Creating PR stuff like videos and interactive CDs is where you should send your people. Videos and such running in your pit can get you an award if they demonstrate aspects of your robot or team. I'll stand by my conviction that theres a place for everyone in FIRST. regardless of their area of talent. If what you're doing is not for an award, you should become even more motivated and make something really cool, grab the attention of others, and maybe in the future there will be an award for it. FIRST is an environment that should be condusive to your creativity.