Chairman's Videos: At what point do they become part of the judging process?

[Karthik]

Here's what the game manual has to say:

Originally Posted by 6.4.3.4 Interview Process and DVD Requirement for 2013 Season

All teams submitting for the Chairman’s Award will be interviewed by the Judges at the event. Chairman’s Award interviews are limited to ten minutes total; five minutes for a presentation by the team (which includes set-up) and up to five minutes of question and answer led by the Judges. Not more than three team members (students and/or adult mentors) from each team are allowed to present.

Teams submitting for the Chairman’s Award must provide a DVD to the judges at the start of their Chairman’s Award interview. The content of the video must be in English and should explain what the team has done to earn the Chairman’s Award. The video may be shown to the judges during the team’s 5 minute presentation time or the team can choose to not show the video during the presentation time. Even if the video is NOT shown during the interview, a DVD must still be provided to the Judges in order for the team to be considered for the Chairman’s Award. In addition, the team must provide the equipment for viewing (i.e. laptop/speakers etc.) the video. Teams who do not submit a DVD to the judges will not be considered eligible for the Chairman’s Award and will not be interviewed by the judges. This is applicable at all events including the FIRST Championship.

Note 2: The Chairman’s Award is our highest honor and teams who receive the Chairman’s Award represent the highest standards of FIRST. When the Chairman’s judges have narrowed the selection to two or three teams, these contenders for the Chairman’s Award at all events will have their DVD viewed by the Judge Advisor for appropriate content and to ensure that the above guidelines have been met. Although the Chairman’s judges will not be judging your video as part of your submission, a DVD with inappropriate content will disqualify a team for the award.

So the official line is that you must submit a video to be considered, however the video is not part of the official judging process, but can work against you.

As for the discussion of video quality, it is very possible to make a professional looking video without professional expertise or equipment.

http://youtu.be/qFwz3FZqiuc

Like 341, this video was done completely in house by our students, edited on one of their Macs. The red background you can see is actually our bumper fabric. (My reaction was priceless when I discovered where our "missing" roll of red bumper fabric actually was...)

That being said, this video was truly a labour of love. We wanted to make a video that we'd be proud to show off to the FIRST community if we won the Chairman's Award. The amount of time that was put into this video rivaled the efforts put into Simbot Jordan. Despite the manual telling us the video wasn't being officially judged, we felt that to win the Chairman's Award on the world stage, we needed to have video befitting of that grand platform.

We did not play our video during the interview. However, it was a major part of our Chairman's Action Plan. The essay was for getting factual information out about our team's story. The presentation supplemented the essay's content, emphasizing the areas we felt deserved the most attention. The video was for showing the softer and more human side of our team; what it means to be a Simbot and the emotions we've felt about our journey. You're only allowed 1500 words, 5 minutes of presentation and 3 minutes of video, you need to maximize this time/space by minimizing duplication.

My advice to any team submitting for the Chairman's Award in the future? Start early, devise a strategic plan, brainstorm ideas, search for inspiration, begin production, iterate and improve repeatedly. (If this sounds suspiciously similar to the process for building a robot, it's because it's the same) Win or lose the award, a well done video is a piece of art that will tell your team's story forever. As you can tell from this post, I'm somewhat attached to our team's video...