[ebarker]

If you had to explain the CA in one word, it would be "IMPACT".

But you asked for one sentence so let's try:

short version:
"The Chairman's Award rewards a team for their educational and community impact"

long version:
"The Chairman's Award rewards a team for their efforts to promote educational excellence and change cultural attitudes and perceptions about engineering and science."

Something like that. Saying you are promoting FIRST values isn't helpful to the general audience. That is coded language that only someone "in the club" will understand. And those people already know (or should know) what the CA is. Ditto for the GP part. That has to be translated to the general audience as "good sportmanship" (rough translation) when giving the initial talk to the uninitiated.

Everyone needs to have 2 pitches instantly available.

The first pitch is "the elevator ride". A good one or two liner that explains the world in just a few seconds.

The first pitch is "the taxi ride". A slightly more detailed thing that takes about 2 minutes to pitch.

Some people mistakenly think that FIRST exists to promote robots, like they need some sort of lobbying group. It's not about the robots. It's about the IMPACT !!

The reason FIRST exists it to get people to consider engineering/math/science activities/careers/etc as a positive desirable pursuit. It is to give relevance to all that stuff students study in school and hopefully motives students to pursue careers. It is about wall to wall educational impact, about motivating students to take a forward leaning stance and start taking an active, not passive stance toward learning. Hands on learning is way more fun than chalk and talk.


Ed Barker
Head Coach
Kell Robotics, #1311
Peachtree Regional Chairmans Award 2007