We're super disappointed that the Media and Technology Innovation Award is out for this year. Our Communications student leader had talked a lot about encouraging other teams to apply for it.
My guesses as to why they got rid of it:
- Didn't have a solution for two champs, and had other things they needed to figure out first.
- Comcast NBCUniversal dropped out as a FIRST sponsor or as the award sponsor. I don't have any evidence to back this up beyond that we were told Comcast mostly handles the award logistics, and FIRST doesn't have a lot of influence over the award winner selection.
- Last year, our team had to be encouraged to attend Championships despite the fact that we had not qualified. There was at least one high-level FIRST staffer who had to coordinate with us, and I'm sure they had a lot of other things on their plate. They definitely will this year with two championships.
- The award has extremely low turnout. We were told that less than 200 teams applied last year.
I wish FIRST had some sort of regional-level award for media and technology, honestly. There are a lot of teams that do hard work in the area and don't get recognition for it. It really helps in making FIRST loud, and it indeed could be included in STEM fields in the use of video-editing software, tracking social media statistics, etc. The only award that comes close is the Imagery Award.