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Originally Posted by EricH
Something that I would like to see in Chairman's, or even in EI, though I doubt it will be (come on, Frank, prove me wrong!) is for teams to be officially able to "upvote" another team, especially if the team doing the "upvoting" has already won at that level in that year, or is in the HoF.
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I don't like this idea at all. There are already enough cliques and circles in FIRST, and there are plenty of great teams that get left out of the popular crowd.
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From a team standpoint, at many events, it will increase the competition for Chairman’s Award. As this is our most prestigious award, I think that’s OK. Earning Chairman’s Award should be a very competitive process.
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Perhaps it's just how it's worded, but I didn't get a great feeling from this part of Frank's statement. I like to see teams recognized for what they do anyway, not do special things to get recognized. For example, we mentor elementary school teams in our local area because it's the right thing to do, and we want to get more students involved in robotics, not because we're competing to win an award for doing that. The minute you start mentoring or outreach for the purpose of winning an award, in my mind you have already lost.
I hate how Chairman's awards have become so based upon quantitative evidence, that often gets pretty far stretched. I can
say that our program has reached over 10,000 students, with some validity to that claim. However, if you went and surveyed those 10,000 people and asked them personally if our program has had an impact on them, chances are 9,000 or more would say no.
The Chairman's award needs less emphasis on the numbers of students we reach, teams we start, or relationships we build, and more emphasis on the
qualityof such programs, and the stories behind them.