Quote:
Originally Posted by Kims Robot
While we are on the subject of what happens in the room... I wasnt there to see my students (nor did we tape it) but we did get the comment to let our passion show a little more (less scripted). They had tried many many different times to figure out how to say everything they wanted to say, and every time they were passionate, they went well over the 5 minutes, so they opted for partial scripting (important points to hit without actually writing out the words). Every time they presented it, it was a little different, but they would hit the same points, and more importantly (we thought) they got it under five minutes.
So here is my question... how do you show passion and tell your story in under five minutes?
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That's almost identical to what 116 did. We had our key points planned out, and tried to be as fluid and conversational as we could be. We also planned out our points to be fairly easy to switch between. We still seemed a bit scripted and tense during our rehearsals, but (luckily) we nailed our presentation in front of the judges. Additionally, we gave the judges a copy of our "judge's packet" (which contains information about our team, history, chairman's data, robot-particularly parts contending for awards, and stuff like that) which we give to all judges. It helped cover any points we were not able to fit in the presentation. Our presentation consisted of a laptop running a powerpoint, our map (of teams we have impacted), our scrapbook, and the packets. The judge's leafed through the scrapbook as they asked questions, and we referred to pages as appropriate when answering them. Each of the 3 times we have presented they have asked several questions, concerning items both mentioned and not mentioned in our submission/presentation. This was the first time they made all 3 presenters each give an answer for every question though. Each of the previous 2 times there were 3 judges, but this year there were only 2 (although VCU had two judging rooms, probably because of the 27 RCA submissions at VCU).
Some questions I can recall are:
"Describe in one sentence what FIRST means to you individually"
"Describe what you want FIRST to be like in your school in the next 3-4 years" (something like that)
"Describe the biggest obstacle your team overcame this season"
there were several others as well, but I can't remember