Should Chairman's Winners Be Required to Publicly Post Essays?

[Rich Kressly]

When I made the move from 103 to start my own team (which became 1712 in 2005-06), I made the decision that everything we did (robot, awards, etc) would be shared publicly "as it was happening" or as close to that as reasonably possible. For our Chairman's efforts that meant publishing our entry in a whitepaper here as soon as it was submitted - and, for the time I was involved (through 2010), we usually had it published about a week before the deadline in an attempt to encourage more teams to submit "same season". We would also share our outreach activities and documentation during the course of the year as well.

My rationale? More sharing = stronger community.

However, by 2004, I had the benefit of already having a piece of nearly all the FIRST banners, medals, and trophies one could ever dream for (save an on field world title) so in that sense it was very easy to proceed with this type of philosophy.

However, requiring the publishing of CA entries is something I used to feel very strongly about, but now I'm more or less indifferent about it. I'm fine with it if it happens, I'm fine with it if it doesn't. If a team decides not to share a CA entry, but conducts workshops, published models of outreach activities, mentors rookies, FLL, VEX, seaperch, whatever ... is that any less valuable? There are soooooooo many ways for an exemplary team to share, model, strengthen the community that it's really hard for me to say these entries must be published.

While, from a "telling an incredible story" standpoint, I'd love to see a ton of these entries archived for public access in a single place, I also see the potential negative to it as well ... negative scrutiny... If team X presented their CA at the same event as team Y who won the award and team X decides they were better, team Y "lied", blah, blah ... then a whole lot of people will start spending time justifying why they should have won as opposed to taking the model, learning lessons, and moving forward to grow.

To me, I've always believed this. There are FAR more Chairman's worthy teams than there are Chairman's Awards to go around every year. Just like I wrote in that "this is the year" post so many years ago about "gracious professionalism" not being a "gauge to judge others..." the Chairman's Award is a logical extension of that. The entry should be used to measure and monitor a team's own growth and drive the team's decision making about planning for the future. Documenting and presenting "the story" is a vital part of that process and, blue banner or no blue banner, it's the most important endeavor your team can undertake.

As long as there is a choice to publish or not, then there is no "wrong" choice.