New Submission Format for Chairman's Award

[David Kelso]

I know what you mean...we started our video at Disney World last year and got some super stuff (we still laugh just thinking about it). Well, no one said it was going to be easy and truthfully, the last thing I would summit is a long essay!!

[Andrew Rudolph]

Originally posted by M. Krass


Maybe that's precisely the point?

A whiz-bang "wow" video editing job doesn't do anything whatsoever to show what your team has done that's worth being considered in deciding upon a Chairman's Award recipient.

Videos, animations, and that sort just give teams the ability to dress up what they've done, gloss over things, and overwhelm judges with a false, manufactured facade.

It's a bit like some of Hollywood - All bang, no substance.

Four pages of written word, coupled with a few adeptly chosen photos, will be a better indicator of the drive, effort, and impact of a given team than any cleverly edited video tape. It puts everyone on an equal playing field - a core tenet of this program, in my mind.

I like it. It's fair to everyone, it's less time consuming for the judges to evaluate, it eliminates problems with software or hardware incompatabilities, and it allows judges to carry and easily reference your entry as they meet your team and its members.

I think that you are right, but still a major way to bring people in is a video, and also getting the people to make the video was impartant. And now that there is no video for us to make whats the fun in that. I think a video in tandem with an essay could work as well. Maybe they watch the videos then read the essays. I think the video was a very neat way to show what you do. Also you i think you can convey your impact through images rather words. I.E. Seeing the community you changed rather than just saying there was a community you changed.

[Aaron Lussier]

Ponder this for a sec..

Granted you can only use four pieces of paper but a piece of paper has a front and a back so technicaly you have 8 pages to work with not just four

[MBiddy]

Nope, in that document it said 4 single-sided pieces of paper.

[Redhead Jokes]

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/at...&postid=100338

four single-sided

[Jordan]

Aaron, just FYI, the new rules state "4 single-sided pages." Check out the file I attached to my last post.

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I really don't have an issue with the new rules. Granted, I feel bad for teams that have spent their time and money to produce electronic presentations for this year. Fortunately, my team has only begun to do this and can now stop.

The truth is, FIRST is realizing their weaknesses and is moving in the right direction. Everything they have published about the 2003 season is moving towards less expense and time, and that move needed to occur long ago. From streamlined regionals and the possibility of standardized chassis, to a new Chairman's submission format, FIRST is doing the right thing.

As we can see, FIRST and many teams are struggling because of the poor condition of our economy. Dean Kamen's mission has always been and will always be to have FIRST impacting every student in the world. It is now clear that this will not happen with the current format. It is unreasonable to expect every high school to have any type of team with a budget in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I do feel bad for the veteran teams that now will not have the opportunity to use their video software or custom machine their entire robot. However, the goal of FIRST would never have been reached without changes like these.


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Jordan McNerney
Captain, Team 166

[OneAngryDaisy]

True... I see your point...

However, you have to see the other point of view- FIRST is after all named "for inspiration and recognition of science and technology..

We're supposed to be the driving force of the future- the future is technology and software, so i find it tough to understand how relegating to four pieces of paper can be fullfilling FIRST's title.. After all, the judges only need a VCR, a TV, and a laptop to judge the awards..

[MissDaisyGirl]

my personal reason for being on the robotics team is not just to learn more about engineering. in fact, i'm not interested in that at all. my main interest is computers and the reason that i valued my time w/FIRST so much is that i had so many opportunities to work w/video on the chairman's award, animation w/the 3dsmax award (which is biased anyways and i gave up on when PROS ARE HELPING EVERYONE BUT ME *bitterness*), and just plain old graphic design. but 4 pages of written word?! c'mon, i'm a designer, not an english major. what happened to the many opportunities of activities i could get into? now i'm faced w/writing yet another paper just like in english class? this is so awful. my team has put so much time into logging all of our videos and we came up with this great video idea for our Ramp Riot competition that we were going to pull off. but now...what's the point other than for making videos for yourself? i sure hope they make a new award or something b/c if they don't their missing a vital component of technology, in and of itself. that one point that was made about how will they present the national chairman's award will be interesting to see. what are they going to do, read it? the chairman's award is not going to be as special as it used to be. and as for the 'hollywood bang' stuff that everyone keeps talking about. if you have enough that your team does you don't need that, and if you're using it as filler the judges will know. but then again my team submitted an interactive CD-ROM last year. i was in charge of making the interface in macromedia director and while it worked fine on our computers we got to our regional at drexel and they said they couldn't view it! they were trying to use some old laptop to see our award which had many videos in it. grrr........where was their technology then?

to sum it all up: angry, disappointed, yet open to what others have to say, and thoughtful

[Redhead Jokes]

can it be three dimensional at all with appliques, stickers, etc?

[Jordan]

Originally posted by OneAngryDaisy
After all, the judges only need a VCR, a TV, and a laptop to judge the awards..

Yes, the judges only need a TV, VCR, and laptop to view them.

However, those three things total a minimum of perhaps $1200. Multiply that times the number of judges it takes to evaluate up to maybe 800 ten-minute entries in only eight weeks and you have a lot of money.

Add to that the amount of equipment each team needs to own or have access to to produce even decent video and it simply isn't feasible.

Originally posted by MissDaisyGirl
but 4 pages of written word?!

"Content can be any combination of text and images." Read the attached rules before jumping to conclusions.

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Jordan McNerney
Captain, Team 166

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by OneAngryDaisy
However, you have to see the other point of view- FIRST is after all named "for inspiration and recognition of science and technology..
[/b]

Amen!!!

Our team was just beginning to learn the video software, consider learning the CAD...computer beginners were getting intrigued.

[OneAngryDaisy]

Jordan-
Last year at two of our three regionals only twenty-some teams entered the regional Chairmans award- that totals out to about three or four hours of tape

FIRST doesn't have to buy brand-new laptops, TV's, and VCR's for the award- I'm sure the facilities could provide some- I know as a fact that last year the judges at Drexel were using a very old Compaq laptop

Also- the winners at Regionals advance- so in total only eighteen-some submissions are sent to Natonials- not 800 at one time

I'm not trying to bash you- just expressing my feelings-

[Jordan]

OneAngryDaisy,

I was exaggerating. My emphasis should have been on what a team needs to have to submit a competitive entry. That is what I find to be unfair about the past submission rules.


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Jordan McNerney
Captain, Team 166

[Madison]

Originally posted by MissDaisyGirl
my personal reason for being on the robotics team is not just to learn more about engineering. in fact, i'm not interested in that at all. my main interest is computers and the reason that i valued my time w/FIRST so much is that i had so many opportunities to work w/video on the chairman's award, animation w/the 3dsmax award (which is biased anyways and i gave up on when PROS ARE HELPING EVERYONE BUT ME *bitterness*), and just plain old graphic design. but 4 pages of written word?! c'mon, i'm a designer, not an english major. what happened to the many opportunities of activities i could get into?

Well, try looking at it this way -

You still have an opportunity to do graphic design and animation work. Now, however, there's also an opportunity for an English major to join the team as well! I'm sorry you lost something you enjoyed, but it's not as if everyone dislikes writing.

4 pages of written words can be very powerful and compelling. It's been good enough to last through millenia, so I don't think that FIRST is too good for it.

Again, I think this is very positive. It levels the field of competition for this most coveted award, it reaffirms the goal of the award, and in my mind, may go a long way toward legitimizing the purpose of the Chairman's Award in a way that I've never seen.

English majors - come out, come out where ever you are!

[OneAngryDaisy]

Jordan

I completely agree with you!

That's the one good virtue this format brings- equality. I think it might be the true meaning beyond the change- If you noticed most of the regional winners last year were the ones with the most money (I'm not insulting those teams or saying they won because of money, I'm just saying they had more to work with)

Now the quieter teams have a chance to emerge