[ebarker]

Tim said things quite well, but for fun I'll add a couple of more thoughts.

I once heard Dave Lavery say he agreed to get involved with a FIRST team because "he didn't know any better". It is a funny comment but leads me to my next point.

A long time ago we decided to chase the Chairman's Award and spent a lot of time thinking about how to do that. do this, do that, do the other, because that is what the "judges want to see".

Somewhere along the way things changed. Doing all this stuff took on its own merits and rewards. We no longer needed the award to tell us we were doing the right thing.

If they no longer gave out the award we would still do what we do. It's important, rewarding, and fun.

Over time we recognized that while getting the award is fun, it is even more productive and fun to take the award and leverage it into more success which is one of the real values of receiving the thing in the first place.

Having said that, we hope to collect a few more awards, but if we don't we will stick to our business and keep on doing what we do.