[Dale]

I think what's really needed for the Chairman's Award is some form of peer review. The judges aren't in a position to determine the amount of creative embellishment in those essays and presentations nor do they have time to do so. As a previous poster mentioned, can they can't always figure out the timeline of things a team does.

I'd like to see every essay posted for public comment before the regional. Maybe the only ones who are able to comment are the folks so designated by the coach in TIMs, similar to award submitters and then only on essays from teams at their regional. Those folks could make both positive and corrective comments on others teams essays in a forum.

Those comments would then be available to the judges and give them topics to ask the team about during their interview or in the pits. I'm not sure if the team should be able to see the comments. Just the fact that teams knew their essay would be public and could be commented on would cut down a lot on the exaggeration we see in some of the essays. The judges shouldn't take any comment as gospel but merely a place to start a conversation and maybe then only if they kept hearing the same thing from multiple sources.

Obviously there is room for mischief here with competing teams tearing apart one another's essays. It might be best if they needed to be approved by the main TIMs contact or their designate before they could be posted.

Another thing that I think would be a helpful requirement is a timeline as part of the submission. This wouldn't come out of your character limit but might be part of the executive summary's teams fill out. It would be a bullet list of things the team has done broken out by year.