Chairman's Feedback Forms

[elemental]

Hello,

I was wondering if any of you know when and if teams that had Chairman's presentations at the Championships will receive their feedback form?

Thanks!

[waialua359]

Our team has never received a feedback form at CMP, including this year.
The exception is that we got verbal feedback from some of the judges after we were presented the award on Friday evening this year, which were mostly informal.
Two judges wanted to come by, but never did, thinking they would be too emotional and give it away prior to the announcement.

[EricH]

Glenn, I'd call that humongous trophy that you took back to HI a feedback form. The best kind of feedback form, in fact: "You did everything right, now keep doing it better!"

[elemental]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Our team has never received a feedback form at CMP, including this year.

Thank you for telling me. I do, however, remember seeing a feedback form in the judging room towards the end of the interview. Perhaps it was for the judges' personal use.

Originally Posted by waialua359

The exception is that we got verbal feedback from some of the judges after we were presented the award on Friday evening this year, which were mostly informal.
Two judges wanted to come by, but never did, thinking they would be too emotional and give it away prior to the announcement.

I think I forgot to say this yet but congratulations on Chairman's! I was able to watch your fantastic video recently and was amazed by what your team has accomplished!

[Kevin Kolodziej]

Seems as though the mystery of the feedback forms has been resolved, but I have another question: Did your team have any judges come to your pit and specifically talk to your students re: Chairman's topics? We had two sets of judges on Friday morning visit us and ask specifically about the robot but never saw any judges related to Chairman's. I talked to 166 late on Friday and they also had not seen any Chairman's judges. Was this your experience as well?

I talked to a team that presented in 2010 and they said they saw four sets total - two for robot talk and two for team talk.

[waialua359]

Our team had several judges come by on all days, however, most of them wanted to hear about the robot and our sustainability plan. It helped that we had two fairly large banners which outlined our program as well as 2 15 lbs binders on each side with a sustainability and safety binder as well.

I think its safe to say that there is no set criteria that we have seen for the CA in the pits, other than certain judges (including some of the same ones) have interviewed some of our CA team members more than once in recent years.

I would also assume that in a short period of time and roughly 50 presentations held on 1 day (Thursday), that the submissions were read ahead of time, which sparked the interest of certain judges to certain teams.

We made it a point to show our 3 minute video during our 10 minute presentation. However, the one twist was that it had NO sound.
The entire narration was done "live" by our 3 member team.

[elemental]

For my team, I only saw two judges come and each time they were alone. A mentor told me, however, that there were some that came and looked at our notebooks.

At the North Carolina Regional, we barely saw any judges especially after our Chairman's interview. Is this normal?

[Pjohn1959]

Originally Posted by elemental

At the North Carolina Regional, we barely saw any judges especially after our Chairman's interview. Is this normal?

You should have had several judges visit you in the pits on Friday, and more on Saturday.

The Chairman's judges rarely visit the pits.

[Kevin Kolodziej]

At CMP, we had our banner and our stack of (freshly printed) judges reports visible, plus our full pit display with information about everything, and still nothing. Everything would have been in place anyway, but its just one of the things on my list that I wish FIRST would communicate to teams - there seems to be no consistancy with judging from event to event, even from CMP to CMP (the last time we attended in 09 we had one judge stop by, put a sticker on our pit sign to say we've been visited, and that was the only judge we saw all weekend).

That said, since the CMP award was given on Friday this year at the concert, I fully expect that the judges made a "short list" and focused on those teams. However, if the Chairman's Award is the highest award, shouldn't all teams that are being judged for the award at least be visited and talked to and not completely ignored? Maybe we were disqualified because we have high involvement with Vex

At every regional we've submitted Chairman's at that I can remember, we've seen two sets of judges on Friday, one focused on the robot and one focused on the team, and then a third set of judges on Saturday morning ususually discussing a certain aspect of the robot and team stuff. Sometimes more. I don't think we've seen the Saturday judges at events we haven't submitted Chairman's at.

**When I say "chairman's judges" I mean judges that ask about involvment, schools, sustainability, etc...basically, anything non-robot.

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by Kevin Kolodziej

However, if the Chairman's Award is the highest award, shouldn't all teams that are being judged for the award at least be visited and talked to and not completely ignored?

**When I say "chairman's judges" I mean judges that ask about involvment, schools, sustainability, etc...basically, anything non-robot.

Did your team have a 10 minute scheduled interview with Chairman's judges on Thursday? (moved to Thursday because award was given out on Friday.) These are separate judges just focusing on Chairman's and they usually make all the decisions.

The judges in the pits asking the team organization and sustainability questions are usually focusing on the non-technical judged awards like Entrepreneurship.

There are some resources on the NEMO resource page on judging. I did a presentation at a workshop last fall.

Disclaimer. I have not been a FRC judge for 3 years.

[elemental]

Originally Posted by Pjohn1959

You should have had several judges visit you in the pits on Friday, and more on Saturday.

The Chairman's judges rarely visit the pits.

Actually, we did not have any judges talk to us on Saturday*. We did see a few speak to the rookie team we were mentoring and stand near our pit area watching us. It was much more of a surprise for us this way.

As for the judging at Championships, I can't complain about anything. The judges that we did see were nice and were genuinely interested in what we had to say. Also, our team understood that we had a very, very, small chance of winning anything so we focused on making the most of our time there by having some fun.


*Clarification: a few did talk to us but mostly about the tournament, how things were going, etc.

[waialua359]

Judging at regionals on Fridays (1st day of real competition) in the morning does in fact ask teams in the pit about sustainability, business plan, etc.
That specific award has always been given on the 1st day of awards. The judges discuss and hopefully decide by lunch time, after which we see a majority of them either watching matches or talking to more teams.
Whether its a standard or not, several judges have spoken to us at many regionals in recent years about that specific award, one that we have won at a regional every year since 2008.
In San Diego in 2010, we were a little disappointed when two judges told us at the end of Friday that they forgot to go to our pit, and decisions were already made.

As a suggestion, i would have your pit spokesperson(s) ask judges if they would like to hear about your plan, if you have one.
Its not so much that we are trying to win that specific award, as much as we work really hard 24/7 in putting a plan in place annually and sacrificing a lot of time and effort just so that our team can compete like the rest of the mainland teams year after year. Our kids are proud of showing judges and other teams just how hard they work to achieve their team goals.

[Kevin Kolodziej]

This is all quite helpful.

Perhaps we have been operating under false assumptions.

Based on my time served as a judge for FLL, after the interview process, the judges work together to create a list of teams to focus on and then go visit those teams in the pit. This is likely the same for the judges that are seen on Saturday at a typical regional.

I always THOUGHT that the judges you see in the pit that aren't specifically talking about robot stuff work collectively along with the chairman's interview judges to share information and determine a short list for all awards. After all - you might hear something in the chairman's interview that you don't hear in the pit that might be related to a non-technical award, or you might hear something in the pit that expands upon something that was touched on in the interview. I always thought these judges talk to each other to get multiple views of the same story. But it seems that is not the case? I guess that makes sense to a degree - otherwise, why have the interview at all and not just do more pit judging, which makes it impossible to give everyone an equal opportunity to tell their story.

I know how hard the judges work. I've been a judge for several years in FLL and for our local Vex competitions. I've always come away from those 1 day events wanting to know more about the teams, so I just find it surprising that something like the Chairman's Award would be judged solely on a 10 minute interview and a fairly short essay (comparatively speaking) at a 2 or 3 day event. Not a complaint, just an observation. Not what I was expecting.

I also don't think I've expressed my congrats to Team 359 - CONGRATULATIONS! When I saw the list of eligible teams this year, you were at the top of my list, so I'm glad you finally got it! And thank you for the insights in this thread. We've got a loonnnnnng way to go to get to your level, but I think we're headed in the right direction =)

[Debbie]

We did not receive any feedback on Chairman's from World's. It was a little disappointing. I also don't get why they don't have more than one winner. In the robot end of it, there are 6 teams per division that go home with a trophy and then 6 more that go home with the grand champion trophy... But only one team gets acknowledged for Chairmans. ..Why is that? Why don't they give out division Chairman's and then an overall winner.. or acknowledge 2nd - 10th place or anything other than just picking one. For that matter, why aren't there any awards on the division level except the tournament winners? I thought I remembered that they did awards for more than that in each division, but I guess not. Still would love to see our judges feedback sheets if they are floating around somewhere! I hope they make their way back to us!

[ebarker]

Giving out a divisional Chairman's is an interesting concept. Once upon a time they had honorable mentions. Probably the reason there are not divisional Chairman's is because of the uneven distribution. When creating the divisions there is not arrangement that evenly distributes advancing RCA winners.

While I have no real insight into the inner workings of RCA and CA judging I would expect, or hope for the following.

RCA - The judges should have spent at least two weeks studying the submissions, then do the interviews, and then possibly quietly confer with floor judges and sort it all out.

CA - The judges should have spent a month reviewing the submissions as they are available coming out of the regionals. Statistically half the pack or more are regular visitors to the CA arena and they should follow these teams progress, and I think they generally do that.

These two awards cannot be judged in a day. Homework has to be done before the interview day. imho....
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