[EricH]

Originally Posted by jvriezen

The original proposal had the benefit that FIRST didn't pay for the trophies (willing teams build them) and neither FIRST nor event planners had to do very much, other collect the trophies, get a group of willing team reps together to pick which ones to use, and get the unused ones back to the teams. Event staff would also have to affix FIRST provided brass plates to the chosen trophies.

The bold part is the first problem.

Let me put it this way: You're asking teams to volunteer to do something that a) might not be used, b) takes time, probably a lot of time, and c) has little or no benefit to the teams that do it. You're asking event staff to essentially do an extra round of judging to figure what's "good enough", AND then to figure out which of the "good enough" ones go to which award, AND do some assembly.

And then you run into the problem of teams NOT volunteering... which means you've got to make and ship the trophies anyways, just in case.


You're going to have to come up with a much better incentive for the teams to volunteer in the first place--for the vast majority of teams, it just isn't worth the attempt. (If you're thinking of requiring submission--the rookie teams and a fair number of veteran teams aren't going to be able to, no matter what you do.) And then I believe I hear the Judge Advisers and Volunteer Coordinators calling you--they want you to do the judging/assigning/assembling, something about they're shorthanded again. "Willing team reps" means, in most cases, "mandatory volunteering", which if you can probably guess really means that you get UNwilling team reps.



This proposal makes sense for precisely two places: Offseason events (which do their own awards anyway) and team-awarded peer awards (which individual teams decide to do, build, and do).


That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing a competition for trophy design, and having trophies MADE locally, if that could be arranged. Just not made by teams--leave that to the pros.