Why is Engineering Inspiration viewed as second place to the Chairman's Award?

[David Lame]

As a relatively new (three year) mentor, I can say that my ultimate goal in FIRST would be the Engineering Inspiration award. Well, that isn't quite true. My ultimate goal is to inspire great engineering in the upcoming generation. I was just incredibly proud to see some of the student accomplishments on my team this year, not necessarily on the playing field (we didn't have a great year), but on spreadsheets. In code. On drawings. Talking with teenagers about no load rpm, stall torque and stall current. Seeing kids do great things, and knowing that I had a role in it. Very heady stuff.....at least for a geek like me.

Nevertheless, I would also like to win the award. Yeah, it's just a reflection of the real work, but it would still be pretty cool.

With that in mind, are there more specific criteria for the award than "inspire engineering", or whatever slightly longer version of that that appears in the admin manual?

What about the awards statements themselves that are read out at events? I would like to hear what other people did to win the award, and those other awards that are given out. Is there a place I can look up FIRST award citations? A lot of chairman's videos end up on youtube, but if I don't happen to be at the event when the Innovation in Control award or the Engineering Inspiration award is given out, is there any way I can learn what teams did to get them?


As for the specific contents of the question from the opening post, I have heard it said that EI is a second place chairman's award. For me, personally, I would see it as a first place, but apparently, that opinion is not universal.