Frank Answers Fridays - Chairman's Award Deadline

[cgmv123]

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...Award-Deadline

Today’s good question comes from Jacob Bendicksen, a member of FRC Team 1540, the Flaming Chickens, from Portland, Oregon, USA

Question:

Hi Frank,

My name is Jacob Bendicksen, and I’m the Co-President and Outreach/Marketing Manager on Team 1540, the Flaming Chickens, from Portland, Oregon.

I was looking at the 2016 season calendar and I saw that the deadline for submitting the Chairman’s Award is February 4th, almost three weeks before Stop Build Day. In my team’s experience, Chairman’s has usually been due around Stop Build Day—can you explain the reasoning behind the earlier deadline?

Thanks!

Jacob

Answer:

Hi Jacob,

Good question! We have four event-based awards with submission deadlines near Stop Build Day: Chairman’s Award, Dean’s List, Entrepreneurship Award, and Woodie Flowers Award. Our experience is that many teams make their submissions very close to the deadlines, so we typically split those deadlines, with two being due one week and two the week following. This prevents ‘everything being due at once’ from a team perspective, and eases the strain on our customer service infrastructure.

Last season, having deadlines for Dean’s List and Chairman’s Award only one week before the first events, on February 19th, caused extreme stress on the judges as a great deal of time and effort goes into preparing to judge these awards. So, we decided to move the submission due dates one week earlier. Further, we noted that the greatest number of issues and concerns raised by teams dealt with Chairman’s Award and Dean’s List submissions. Having both these due on the same date limited our ability to provide an appropriate level of customer service to teams, as we attempted to field calls and emails from a large number of stressed teams about these two important awards at the same time.

Putting all this together, we moved our submission deadlines for 2016 to February 4th and February 11th, rather than February 12th and February 19th as they were for the 2015 season. Also we split Chairman’s Award and Dean’s List to be on different weeks, rather than the same week. Considering which award should have the later date, we recognized that teams may be using the current build season to evaluate which students they wish to nominate for Dean’s List, and that an extra week would give more time for observation. Further, when it comes to the Chairman’s Award, while the submissions are due on February 4th, teams still have until their first competition to hone their presentations, create their videos, and develop supplemental documentation if they wish, and these efforts represent a substantial part of the work in getting ready.

So, for 2016, the Chairman’s Award and Woodie Flower’s Award submissions are due on February 4th, and the Dean’s List and Entrepreneurship Award submissions are due on February 11th. One additional change you may have noted – the deadlines are now at 3PM EST rather than Noon EST. This should put the deadline for submission closer to or after the lunch hour for more teams. (Though we recommend no teams wait this long if they can avoid it!)

I apologize for not making an announcement of this change earlier, I certainly should have done so. Hopefully, with three months to go before these submissions are due, teams will be able to adjust their plans to these new dates. We did put these new dates in the email blast that went out yesterday, so all currently registered teams should be aware, and we will be repeating this information regularly.

Thanks!

Frank

Frank Answers Fridays is an occasional blog feature where I’ll be answering ‘good questions’ from the FRC community. You can e-mail your questions to goodfrcquestion@usfirst.org. Please include your name, team number and where you’re from, which will be shared, if selected.

Note that Frank Answers Fridays is now "occasional" instead of "weekly-ish".