1) teams that look at and read Chairman's submissions need to understand the architecture of what is happening. In other words, how does their team address FIRST core values without getting too bogged down in the specifics of what the team does to address the points. It is important that people understand how activities ties to the core values.
- mentoring
- helping others
- building a team
- corporate sponsorship
- team spirit
- gracious professionalism
2) public essays does create a system of checks & balances.
3) the business about passing along false information !! - we have a bunch of rookies in 'boot camp' learning about the team. They looked like a bunch of military recruits with the "deer in the headlights" look. We give exam to all team members, rookie and veteran about team history, Chairman's information, and all the rest. The last thing we want is some clown BS'ing to anyone about what is going on. There is absolutely no good outcome to that scenario. If they don't know the answer they need to pass the question to someone else.
Students have to pass a written and oral exam. The written exam will be given in a month. It looks like this:
Teams need to document what they are doing with pictures, news articles, etc. And put it in a scrapbook or some from of communication. We have a scrapbook and a stakeholder report, similar to a corporate annual report.
The issue that we have the most difficulty with is the 'teams started' business. There are other threads that discuss this at some length. We have addressed this issue by stating: "We have directly aided in the development of N new FRC teams", meaning that we have put substantial effort into incubating the team, training the team, helping the team. Figuring out how to assess that is one of the toughest things, what meets the bar and what doesn't. For better or worse, right or wrong our 'bookends' look something like this. A minimal effort is we spend a full day training the team, have them build a kitbot, program it, drive it and phone support thereafter. The maximal effort is we spent 25 or so four hour sessions training the team on everything we could throw at them. There are some teams that spend a few of their build days in our shop getting support. And another team it is completely building their robot in our shop. In every instance there is a guaranteed 8 hour minimum face to face effort, and the instance listed above went up to 100 hours. Phone and internet support always. Agree with it or not that is pretty much our position.
Figuring out contributions like exhibitions, briefings, policy shifts, classroom incorporation, etc is a lot easier to assess.
A team may slip through on occasion by 'cheating' but it isn't going to last long or carry them far.