Quote:
Originally Posted by mrnoble
As head coach I struggled with this one. We have not submitted for Chairman's for years and generally it was because we were simply too busy. Last year and this year we had more students, more time and energy, and ample things that we could say to demonstrate we met the requirements, but again decided not to. Right now, we're striving to be the best examples we can be of what FIRST can do for students and the community because it's true and it's the right thing to do. We felt like Chairman's might lead us away from that mindset into doing things so we could win an award. That didn't feel right. Notice that I am only speaking for myself and my team; I am not saying that other teams have the same issues or should reach the same conclusion. But this winter, we had just come off a successful run in a different competition (unnamed here) in which we took the opposite tack and we ended up feeling a little icky, and we definitely knew we were angling our efforts in community service to win an equivalent award.
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I can see where that's coming from. Part of it definitely is self restraint-- I know on 2220 we have a general policy about Chairman's-- specifically that our Chairman's submission documents what our team is and has done. We don't treat it like a "we have to do x, y, or z for Chairman's," we treat it like an opportunity to tell the judges about all the cool stuff we did over the last 5 years. For my team, at least, that encompasses a lot of outreach and working with/helping out other FIRST teams, which are, for the most part, things we would do anyways because it strengthens our area and our program.
I think I remember Karthik talking about a culture shift in Simbotics around 2010 when the team decided, as a whole, to stop doing things to win Chairman's, but instead focus on doing things they enjoyed doing.
Part of it is definitely catching yourself, but I think the process of submitting in itself is a good way of checking your team's state and goals against those of FIRST.