[mathking]

Originally Posted by Levansic

Our team put together an iBook this year, to better describe the team and it's works over the last two years, to other schools without teams, potential donors, and parents. This rich media is awesome, and it puts to shame our essay and video that we submitted for the Chairman's award.

Producing the iBook gave us the chance to do some team archeology, as we put summary pages together for each year our team was in existence. Some years, the team existed and competed, but left no trace. Most years, there was a team picture and a description of that year's robot, but not much more. Our last three years were heavily documented, and the competition robot was the least notable item. Our team's progression moved from focus on the game to focus on philosophical tenets of the team, and how they are used to enhance STEM education. I like to see this as a maturation, and a better match with the goals of FIRST.

We haven't published the iBook to the iBook store yet, but it resides on every iPad that graces our pit. We are quite proud of it, and would highly encourage teams to investigate this media.

--Len

We are in the same boat. We had the preview version to show other teams and judges, but we are waiting until after the Championships to publish it. We too had to do some archeology on our history. (I am the only person who has been on the team for all ten seasons.) We have at least some photos and remembrances of each season. As we went along gathering data we got more and more stuff collected. We hope to get every alumnus of the team to contribute a short bio.

et, those who do wind up on the Chairman’s sub team seem to acquire skills and confidence that are priceless.

This is absolutely true. I tell my students all the time that they are not really going to be judged on how competent they are and how good their ideas are. Rather they will be judged based on how competent others perceive them to be and on how effectively they communicate their ideas. If you are good at developing and/or presenting proposals to clients, you will make yourself a valuable employee.