Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
One thing that may have helped us was a long history lesson of the team for the presenters. Something to do on the long bus ride down. Eleven years (in 2006) is a long time to cover but it helps when the presenters only remember four years back. Kelli can give her take on the history lesson.
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Was that the lesson that I thought would take 20 minutes but took the entire state of Tennessee?
So I thought about your question and figured I would type up a few recommendations that I have learned through both presenting Chairman's in 2006 and five years of Congressional Debate.
1) Know your material. Know everything you can about your team and I mean everything you can! Know past members, team history, robot history, sponsers, teachers, any handouts/posters/powerpoints that you are going to use. Talk to old team members, you get wonderful stories from the past. Most of all KNOW EVERY WORD OF YOUR SUBMISSION ESSAY! The judges do read them and have picked out specific parts to ask questions about. It helps to know what’s going on.
2) Look nice. Its not that you have to wear a suit or anything, but brush your hair and clean the robo-dirt from your nails. It shows a commitment that you are making to the presentation itself.
3) Have something to give the judges! Books are great! But if you cannot afford books have a flyer, anything that they can refrence when you leave, your presentation may only be 5 minutes(on the dot, they will stop you) but any handouts will last a long time after that.
4) RELAX! It is not that bad. When you are delivering your speech if things go wrong just roll with it, laughs and awkward pauses are normal! You are teenagers after all. I started to laugh during my speech but kept going (I don’t know how much the judges understood) and my team wasn’t penalized. Things happen, it adds to the performance and will be something to pass down to future generations of FIRSTers
5) Have Fun. Chairmans’s is a great opportunity. If all else fails you got to give a presentation to some of the countries top business men and women at a young age.
6) Practice practice practice. Things get better with time. Read your speech in front of your team and your parents, criticism helps in the long run. Have people ask you questions about your team, talk to people who have already been in that room, get some of the questions from previous years and answer them. Also… you only get 5 minutes, they will stop you so get your timing down or you may miss out on something big!
And yes, the history lesson was unbelievably helpful!!! Its nice to know the building blocks that have created your team
If you have any questions feel free to ask!
-Kelli