View Single Post
  #15   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 11-04-2016, 16:53
Andrew Schreiber Andrew Schreiber is offline
Data Nerd
FRC #0079
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Rookie Year: 2000
Location: Misplaced Michigander
Posts: 4,057
Andrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond reputeAndrew Schreiber has a reputation beyond repute
Re: Judge Consistency Between Events

Quote:
Originally Posted by philso View Post
If there is something broken in the Judge Room, it will never be fixed if it is not discussed openly and honestly. Neither the OP nor myself is trying to get them an award after the fact. We are hoping to improve the process.
I'm not saying you are. I'm simply explaining that Judges are NOT allowed to share details about why a team did or did not get an award. I'm concerned that they told the op anything because they aren't supposed to. There's some discussion about how do we get feedback to teams, I'm open to ideas on this.

I can, rather freely explain the general process that goes into judging though. [1] Most of this could easily be gleaned by a careful observer, for other things I'm going to be intentionally vague.

Training

Pit Interviews

Short List

--- I tend to add a another round of Pit Interviews and Short Listing just to get another set of eyes on everyone

More Detailed Interviews

Deliberations [2]

Award Script Writing - NO FREAKING POEMS


I'll work on seeing if I can get a more detailed walk through of the process added to the manual for next year[3]. I don't want the process or what Judges are looking for to be a mystery.


Here's another fun piece of info for you, that deliberations stage is the single hardest part of judging. Know why? Because there's only a handful of awards and number of teams >>> num of awards. Spoiler - we want to give every team an award. Heck [4] worked with a judge who had only heard stories of how awesome FIRST was from Jess [5], she came in and judged at Dartmouth. Well, guess what? her company NOW sponsors a team. Just from talking to students.


Look, I wanna make judging as transparent as possible. I want teams to feel they understand what went into an award decision. But I've been on the other side of someone leaking info from a Judge room. I argued for team B to win over team A. Team A found out... only they only heard "he was arguing against giving you the award". Long story short - it was a crappy experience, I stopped volunteering for a while, nearly quit FIRST it was so crappy. It HAS to be a protected space so that judges can argue without fear of repercussions. I'm not trying to keep the process a secret, only the details.


I'll close with some tips on how to maximize chances of getting a judged award.

- Read https://frcdesigns.com/2015/07/21/5-...n-more-awards/ Kristine is a former Judge Assistant, current Event Chair, and generally awesome person.

- Be prepared, know the award criteria, know what you want to win. Ok, you built some baller vision processing code? Sell the crap outta it, and don't be shy. Go into details! Did you have an issue with a particular filter not working that you worked around? Talk about it. Just remember - some of the judges don't know as much as you do. Explain it to them like they are 5. Plus, that demonstrates you know it.

- Listen to what they are asking you. If the judge is asking about your intake mechanism and you start talking about your FLL teams you are wasting everyone involved's time. Now, if you work in "well, our intake was actually based on the intake our FLL team did last year, I was a mentor on the team. We thought back to that problem and .... " That's bonus points right there. Because now the judge has in their mind that not only is it cool, but when they are discussion RAS/EI they can go "wait, they learned from that and it impacted their performance as a team" THAT is a cool memorable story.

- Have cool memorable stories. How much time do you spend with judges? Ok, now realize they talked to 10 other teams that afternoon. They are overwhelmed with feet per second, shot percentages, OPR, or whatever other technical details. These are people. Talk to them like people. You know what? You have a cool story, you have a favorite part of the bot. Talk about it.

- Don't hand them a binder of crap. A) they have to carry it the rest of the day B) They have to worry about getting it back to you C) Dude, distill this to something I can understand quickly. You know what, it's great you have a record of every shot for any given parameter of your shooter, really, that's cool. But distill it down to an NBA style shot map and it'll stick in the mind a lot better than tables of numbers.

- Talk to them like human beings. No, seriously, MOST judges are just normal folks at the end of the day




[1] Caveat - every JA runs things slightly differently. I'll point out where I differ from what I've seen most folks. There's a lot of good reasons room processes differ but the biggest one is that each group of judges is different.


[2] This is the part I refer to as "chair throwing time"


[3] I don't make the rules, I just make a lot of noise and sometimes things change


[4] And this happened outside the judge room so I can tell this story!


[5] Who is STILL totally at fault for 2Champz /s
__________________




.
Reply With Quote