Chicken or the Egg (chairman's award)

[CrazyCarl461]

Originally Posted by ali_rockon22

The Chairman's Award has nothing really to do with the robot. I mean when we won it in 2001 our robot was not all that good

The converse of this is definitely true, because there are several teams on the opposite end of the spectrum as well. For example, Team Hammond has won three national championships, as many as six regional championships and yet have still never won a Chairman's Award. Their infrastructure is fine, but is different from most teams because they have a different interpretation of the meaning of FIRST. It is not necessarily a bad interpretation, just not what you would call "Chairman's Award Material."

[jonathan lall]

Mother knows best. While there is truth to the statement that good robots are generally found among good teams, that is more an effect of their infrastructure rather than a cause. Chairman's is about infrastructure and partnership, both of which they dance around in the rules outline. Surely a good robot (or a line of good robots) can factor into a Chairman's decision, but not necessarily.

I highly doubt in fact that a robot's on-field performance will have anything to do with the Judges' taking a second look at a submission. I further think that generally Chairman's judges are busy enough that they won't be watching very many matches (maybe one per Chairman's team, but this is of course complete speculation and isn't set in stone anyway). Maybe if a judge saw the team in the pits doing things to help out, or if the robot had a neat way of displaying a sponsor, etc. it might sway their decision, but otherwise, it's about making those four pages count.

It might just break down in the end to the fact that there are good teams and bad teams, rookies and veterans. Perhaps this is why generally you'll find an effective robot made by a Chairman's team. One could say that successful teams understand what FIRST is about and what is expected of them. And FIRST rewards this understanding with a nice medal, be it Chairman's or Champions.

[Pierson]

I would vote for #2... A infrastructure is key and with a viable foundation many good things can then happen.