FIRST Ribbons?

[Billfred]

Alright, I've done ROTC for four years. If you didn't know, we've got ribbons. If you meet certain criteria, you get one, such as Outstanding Flight, Leadership, Good Conduct, et cetera. When I graduate, I'll have nine (not counting repeat awards)

And I'm thinking--how hard would it be to adapt the concept to FIRST? I mean, right now we've got teams with all sorts of awards, too many to list in a concise manner. So if we had a ribbon system where X ribbon represents X award (and clusters, little things pinned onto the ribbon mean a repeat award), wouldn't it be easier for other teams to find out at a glance what the team (or individual--can't forget the WFA folks) has done?

Even if they don't become physical ribbons that are pinned on (not that anyone would have a problem with that--we've got enough holes in our shirts from buttons as it stands), I figure that a team's ribbon bar could be printed and placed on the robot/pit space/et cetera quite easily.

Thoughts?

[Jessica Boucher]

Well, it would have to be something that FIRST did, it couldn't be done by a team. Now, the obvious question is, how's the cost? Having it in the pit would be interesting, I wouldn't want it to be a pin or anything...too logistically unnecessary for an organization of FIRST's size and manpower. But to even have a printout (like is done with the team name & sponsors in the pit), might be worth it.

There's something really cool about being asked to explain stuff like that. On my purses (I have three that I rotate between), I have different FIRST memorabilia attached to them: On my red bag is the gear that I recieved in 2000 from BERT, on my black bag is the yellow TJ2 metal cube, and on my blue bag is a gear that I picked up off the ground this year at the NYC regional. (I also have a piece of 80-20 that I recieved at NJ this year that is floating around my room somewhere, eventually it will go on my 4th bag ) I get asked tons of questions about each of them, and it's a great conversation starter.

But honestly....something is going to replace the to-be obsolete banner system. Now that teams are allowed to buy banners for not only the awards that don't automatically get a banner, but only for participating, the banners don't mean as much as they used to at competition. The banners were an easy, standardized way to run around the pit and see who has done well already...and something has to come around to replace it. Whether it's ribbons or not, is up to FIRST.

Note: I'm not saying that offering banner sales is a bad thing, because I strongly feel that the payoff of having the thing in the team's community is of much better worth than the price of not having it mean as much at competition.

[Ali Ahmed]

Yeah I think that is a really good. I am in the U.S Naval Sea Cadet Corps and we get ribbons for stuff too. And just to clarify to people who don't know ribbons are the little rectangular things that you see people wear in those military movies on their right breast. You see generals and what not have a whole bunch of them. Anyway it woulg be cool if FIRST had a ribbon for each award and they print it with the team numbers they put up in the pits.

[Billfred]

Well, the AFJROTC variety are $0.50 for a ribbon, and a dime for a cluster. Given the fact that that's a bigger market, I'd imagine a FIRST ribbon would cost a smidge more. (And, if you were wondering, the ribbon bar to mount 'em on was $2 or $3--can't remember which).

So I guess it would be a pain to get ribbons for individual team members, unless you had a biiiiiiig stack in the pits and were able to work out an easy system of doing it. Personally, I think that a team (or teams) could handle the task, if we could all put a standard out. Next thing you know, they'll have massive internet communites just for FIRST! (ex post facto dry wit alert)

I'm going to sketch out some designs and attach them in a few...lemme know what you think.

[gburlison]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Well, the AFJROTC variety are $0.50 for a ribbon, and a dime for a cluster. Given the fact that that's a bigger market, I'd imagine a FIRST ribbon would cost a smidge more. (And, if you were wondering, the ribbon bar to mount 'em on was $2 or $3--can't remember which).

If you think that cost might be a factor, you could just research the available ribbon patterns from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and ROTC programs. I assume there would be a huge variety to choose from and they could be bought from companies that already supply the military. Get the CD community to agree on which ribbon matches which award. Teams could either buy the ribbons, or print up a graphic that displays their accomplishments. For the really prestigious awards, maybe a device made with the triangle-circle-square could be produced to add to the ribbon.

For example, if a particular ribbon is designated to stand for a regional chairman's award, the triangle-circle-square device would be added to that ribbon to indicate the Championship chairman's award.

Teams could could list all of the ribbons that they have earned, and individuals could list all team ribbons that were earned while on the team.

[Billfred]

Alright, I've been fiddling with it a bit--here's my list of awards, in rank order (by the FIRST press release after the championship):

National Chairman's Award
National Champion
National Finalist
Divison Champion
Division Finalist
Engineering Inspiration Award
Autodesk Visualization Award
Autodesk Inventor Award
Autodesk Rising Star Award
DaimlerChrysler Team Spirit Award
Delphi "Driving Tomorrow's Technology" Award
GM Industrial Design Award
Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Entrepreneurship Award
Motorola Quality Award
Xerox Creativity Award
Rookie Inspiration Award
Rookie All Star Award
Top Seed
Top Rookie Seed
Judges' Award

(All of the above awards except for Division Finalist then repeat themselves on the regional level, with name changes to fit as needed.)

Longevity Award
Woodie Flowers Award
10-Year Volunteer
5-Year Volunteer
3-Year Volunteer
1-Year Volunteer


Have I missed any awards that FIRST gives? Basically, I went Championship awards, then regional awards, then individual awards. Yes, I know that the Woodie Flowers Award is a very high honor, but this was the only place I could think of putting it. I guess that can be banged out later.

The longevity award is my own creation, awarded for competing in a FIRST season. Its purpose is twofold: first, anyone who makes it through a build season deserves an award, and second, to provide an easy way of knowing a team's age.

The only issue I have about using DoD ribbons is that they're uniform items. And one of the biggest no-nos in ROTC is mixing uniform and civilian items. I mean, if the Pentagon came out with an announcement authorizing their use, then I'd be fine with it. But until then, the rules is the rules.

[Venkatesh]

Are they ribbons or medals? Does that make any difference? =)

I love the idea. This makes very good sense to have ribbons, as they would convey information about the team's performance without making people sound too proud or too modest. I wish you luck in trying to officialize them.

Btw, they also look flashy.

[Jessica Boucher]

Longevity Award
Woodie Flowers Award
10-Year Volunteer
5-Year Volunteer
3-Year Volunteer
1-Year Volunteer

I'm assuming with those you're referring to personal ribbons, which I would advise against to start. If we're doing this for the teams themselves, then let's start with the team awards and then build from there. I mean, the volunteers already get pins, and it wont take much to make the wfa's pins, if that's the direction they wanted to go towards.

[Alex Golec]

I personally like the idea of ribbons; it makes it easier for every person on the team to have their own "mini" award. The only problems I see are standardizing the ribbons, such as color, size, whatever with FIRST and the teams, figuring a way to label them (I think this is a must) with year and event, and events could be labeled with the letter-code first uses [GL MI GAL CMP etc...], and distributing to events so that all members on a team recieve one, and there aren't too many extra to leave lying in a closet.
One though I had for the whole distribution thing is to have the ribbons made after competitions, with the team giving a desired number or so... but then this leads to the figuring out costs part, which is confusing for me right now.
Also, along with standardization of the colors, I think division colors would need to be standardized also. I looked around for the division years 01 through 04 and found that divisions almost always switched colors every year. Any scheme would work, I personally like this year's colors. It'll boil down to 3 base colors: red, white and blue, and then one "oddball"... gold, black, green, whatever it ends up.

That's just my complicated thoughts on this idea.

_Alex

[Billfred]

Venka: Ribbons. Medals are a little too blingy, even for ROTC. (We only get to wear them three times a year, tops.)

Jessica: Touché...although Longevity was a team one. Guess that's easily confused, given how I put in the line breaks.

Alex: I'm not too sure about having the event's name on the ribbon--we're talking something about the size of one DB15 connector (best size reference I could think of). Besides, if you win regional chairman's at the Peachtree Regional, is it any different than winning the regional chairman's at the Palmetto?

And one other question: Divisions had colors? Never heard of that before.

[Cory]

I kinda disagree with the order of importance. Engineering Inspiration is the second highest award FIRST gives, and should be second behind National Chairman's award.

I think that Sportsmanship and Entrepeneurship, plus all the technical awards should be higher than team spirit. How hard is it to get a bunch of people to dress in crazy colors with crazy hair and then make tons of noise? Now how hard is it to run a team like a business, and create an outstanding robot?

I do like the overall idea though.

Cory

[Billfred]

Alrighty, now the really fun part begins.

Like I said, that was just copied from FIRST's Championship release. I wasn't trying to spin on anything, except for my additions of the game awards (which were mentioned ahead of Chairman's, which I knew wasn't right) and the longevity award. So, here's my general feel for how it oughta be put:

National Chairman's Award
Engineering Inspiration Award
National Champion
National Finalist
Divison Champion
Division Finalist
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Entrepreneurship Award
GM Industrial Design Award
Autodesk Visualization Award
Autodesk Inventor Award
Autodesk Rising Star Award
Motorola Quality Award
Delphi "Driving Tomorrow's Technology" Award
DaimlerChrysler Team Spirit Award
Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award
Xerox Creativity Award
Rookie Inspiration Award
Rookie All Star Award
Top Seed
Top Rookie Seed
Judges' Award
(insert regional awards here)
Longevity Award

Note that this list leaves off the Woodie Flowers Award, mainly because I'm really not sure where to put it, or if it should be in at all. I mean, it's one of the highest awards in FIRST, but it's an individual award. If it was awarded to the team where the WFA recipient was from, we'd be set. (IMHO, it'd fit fine right after Engineering Inspiration.)

Have I missed any awards? If so, let me know!

[Alex Golec]

What I meant by Division "colors" was basically whatever color fabric they used for each division, so this year would have been ARC red CUR white GAL green NEW blue, and 03 A-red, C-black G-white N-blue (I think thats correct) Basically it could allow you to differentiate between the division awards, so the ribbon would show what division the team had won in.

OK, I now do realize that the area is small, but couldn't it be possible to fit something like IL 2004? I guess the only purpose of this would be to allow a team to keep track of its history in the ribbons, so if there was a ribbon display people could come up and say "so this team was at this and that event last year and they accomplished this that etc.."

Also, by the importance order for awards, I think there are general ranking groups, instead of a 1 to whatever list. And by time-saving coincidence, the "value-ranking" of awards is pretty much determined by trophy size:

Tier 1: CMP chairman's
Tier 2: CMP winner, CMP eng. insp., Reg chairman's
Tier 3: CMP finalist, Div/Reg winner
Tier 4: Reg eng. insp.
Tier 5: Reg/Div finalist
Tier 6: everything else*

*Although I do also agree that the Delphi/GM/Entrep awards to me are larger than the others

This is how FIRST has somewhat grouped awards, but I'm not completely sure what an award's value would have to do with the ribbons. (bigger award, shinier ribbon? )
Just my two cents (so counting last time I have donated 4 cents so far to this idea)

_Alex