Chairman's Award Concerns

[Mark Sheridan]

To me this is very similar to an interview process. Knowing the people who conduct interviews at my company, a large part of the thought process about of the potential candidate is being able to determine if the person actually did what they claimed. It involves a lot of follow up questions, calling up references and requesting the citation of sources. I remember in my interview showing my CAD drawings to demonstrate my proficiency.

I feel all the FIRST judges are experienced enough to go through this very same process. Asking detailed questions would sort out most situations. If we wanted more fact checking. Perhaps being able to cite references would help. If a team had a newspaper article describing their community work, seems to me like a good thing to put in a chairmans essay as a reference. If a team started an FLL team, list the contact info of those teams.

Overall, I feel the judges already know that the truth can be stretched. I am positive they ask the right questions and find the truth. I doubt a team would lack enough integrity to try to deceive the judges. If they did, i feel it would be obvious.