Autodesk's response

[Koko Ed]

As you guys are well aware there have been changes to the AVA award. A few weeks ago a letter was penned and sent to the powers that be at FIRST and Autodesk. We finally got a response:



Dear Jane,


Thank you for your letter. We appreciate it and
want to let you know that
we reviewed it with careful consideration. At this
point, we cannot continue
to judge the Autodesk Visualization Award
submissions at each and every
FIRST regional, believe me, we would love to be able
to do that, because we
know how important it is to all of the teams. But
it's really a matter of
our resources, and we just can't be everywhere at
once. But let's just be
clear about one thing - we have no intent to take
the award away, we will
just celebrate it in a different way.


As you mentioned, encouraging and motivating the
students to get involved in
animation is paramount. So while we won't judge the
animations at every
regional, we will continue to drive regional and
national exposure for the
great animation work students are doing:


* We will keep regional celebration of the
submissions by providing
DVD's to be played at every regional, with the
submissions from teams in
that area. Everyone at the regional will see the
great work being done.



* We will keep peer judging so the students
are actively involved in
determining the winner of the national AVA. This
will be done over the
course of two weeks online and culminating at
Championship



* We will add a web-based celebration of
animations with a "featured
short" of animations that rotate on the FIRSTbase
site every week
(www.autodesk.com/firstbase). What great exposure to
people beyond those
that attend their regional.



* We will add a feature at Championship,
where Ted Boardman (our
animation expert) will recognize different
animations for best use of
animation features (e.g. effects, shadows, lighting,
etc). And again, these
winners will be featured on the FIRSTbase site.



* Lastly, we will add additional animation
training to FIRSTbase to
encourage the students to use the software



In this way, we're keeping the recognition of the
regional submissions and
the peer voting, while allowing us to spend our
efforts on the training that
will get more students using the animation software
in the first place.


Thank you again for your support and enthusiasm, and
please let me know if
there are any other questions I can answer for you.


Sincerely,


Marcy Shanti

Sponsorship Manager

Autodesk, Inc.


Not quite was I was hoping to hear but I will give Autodesk the benefit of the doubt. They have been a loyal FIRST supporter for years and are doing the best they can. I say wait and see.

I woud like to thank everyone who signed their name to the petition. At the very least it was good to see the outpouring of support from the FIRST community for the animators.
Thsnk you.