[Larry Lewis]

I believe that sharing what your team does to help promote FIRST in your community and to inspire other teams to push themselves is why FIRST created the Chairman's Award.

In order to achieve the mission of FIRST they needed the teams to understand that in order to truly change the culture, the program just can't be about the robot. I needs to be about how the teams promote the vision of FIRST to change our culture. The robot is just the vehicle to get people inspired to carry out the vision.

I think that sharing your Chairman's essay is a way that you can consolidate all the things that your team does to promote FIRST with other teams. By doing this it collectively makes all the teams better, and has a bigger impact on our culture. This is one of the primary reasons why we share all of our essays and videos on our website. I guess I would not make this mandatory but I think there is a lot of value added in sharing what you have done with others.