How do you feel about how the Autodesk award winners were decided?

[R Stephenson]

How do you feel about how the Autodesk award winners were deiced?
DO you think that after the top 5 that it should be 100% based on vote?
How do you think the decision should be made?


please include:
Does you team take part in the Autodesk award?

[JasJ002]

I think it is completely up to Autodesk. Not because it's their award or that they give so much money to FIRST (which is absolutely amazing by the way). But how Autodesk decides to judge awards will inenvertantly change the products of the award. This affects nobody but the company themselves, and by allowing students to vote for the Inventor winner, we are changing our audience from engineers and designers we have never met, to our peers and fellow Firsters. We are now not trying to impress engineers but students and common people who are coincedentally the audience for Autodesk. In essence what I'm saying is, this may be a positive change for both Autodesk and the award's growth.

P.S. I apologize for mispellings I just got out of a Physics Graded Review.

[MGoelz]

I'm not sure. I think there are positives and negatives.

+ The good thing is that more people are likely to be interested and want to submit and participate in voting if they have that opportunity. It also allows teams to see what the other teams have submitted and first year teams can learn by observance. Autodesk still chooses the top five, and then leaves it up to the rest of us. The engineers are still involved and so are we.

-The only downside I can think of at the moment, would be Autodesk's involvement. It might seem to some outsiders that they just sit back and wait for all the votes to roll in, announce the winner, and they're done. We know it isn't that way. I also think it might seem unfair to some teams, or individuals. It just depends on personal preference.

Our team does take part in the award, and I personally have no preference; either way works for me.

[Evenstar_342]

First of all, the Design Subteam of Team 342 would like to congratulate Team 103 for winning the Autodesk Inventor Award.

I'll take the risk of speaking on behalf of the subteam. After much discussion through out the build season and after the top 5 were announced by students and mentor, we are very disappointed that Autodesk has chosen to have the award decided by student voting. With all due respect to our fellow FIRST students, we feel that even other design students (and overselves) could not possibly try and determine what, technically, is the best entry. We understand that to the best of our knowledge, the Autodesk Inventor award is to honor the best technical entry. Therefore, we are unsure how we, as students without the team's files or methodology, could decide which entry is technically, the superior (although we are biased, of course, and would like to thank all that voted for our entry).

We would like to see two things. Firstly, we feel that returning to the original judging by Autodesk judges, which was fair and impartial, is the best option. Unless Autodesk is trying to encourage teams to market their "product", which is a valid challenge and if so, this reason needs to be publicized; the voting process encourages students to create the best looking product and not necessarily the best technical product. We feel that deemphasizing the technical aspects of the award is sending a poor message to future designers. If Autodesk could clarify what they meant by changing the voting process (other than "we want to get the FIRST community more involved" which they did, in my opinion, poorly; almost no one knew about the contest or how to vote that I spoke to), it would be greatly appreciated.

Secondly, we would like to see the vote totals released for the overall contest (not per team, just how many people total voted). Therefore, we could see if our efforts helped get the word out about the change or whether we, as design teams, have a lot more work to do.

I don't mean to be beating up on Autodesk, these are just the general thoughts that are floating around our subteam as we review the past season. If anyone here is from Autodesk, we'd greatly appreciate any insight, especially if we've missed any sort of announcement about the award change. We also would love to see more teams submitting or at least looking at teams' Inventor work and if this inspires a student to delve more into Autodesk, than obviously that is a great development!Good luck to everyone next year!

[Robert Thacker-]

We have had exactly the same thoughts roaming around in our heads at the beginning of the season. And I still think that this peer voting can cause technicalities. We are really enthused about winning but we wonder about how teams vote. Everyone gets one vote, I think it may be better if a team as a whole gets one vote. Otherwise, what stops a team from creating dummy sites of people (say parents, teachers, or even people that are not part of FIRST) that cast votes for their team. I am not accusing any teams of doing that, but it is a problem that may come up one year. I think the way the award was before was better, personally.

We had a thread earlier in the year where we discussed all of it. Not sure where it is though.

(and thank you so much team 342!)

[andrewk]

Peer voting is a nice thought, but... the way it was structured had two weaknesses.

First, teams were allowed to vote for their own entry- bad idea. That is the best way to invite bias into the competition. Also, all individual student members are eligible to vote. This sounds cool at first, but it sort of gives larger teams an unfair advantage doesn't it? Robert, you made some other legitimate points on this as well.

I love the way that the regional AVA was set up. Rather than determining a winner by vote, all entries were scored (a much more subjective way of identifying outstanding work). And participating teams were allowed one evaluation per entry... excluding their own. You still get peer input, but it's straight from your competitors. Now there's some healthy competition!

All in all, the result of this years competition was amazing! Great job to all Autodesk design teams, and especially to 1625 and 103 for their winning entries

[Daniel_H]

I saw some people voting at the Autodesk booth in Atlanta and it seemed too fast to be an accordingly judging. This is the main problem in my opinion. The old way with judges checking every aspect seems better.

Anyway, congratulations team 103, I sincerely think you deserved it.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

I'm not a sore loser... Not at all...

However, I am not particularly interested in entering the Auto Desk Contest next year.

I understand the importance of beautifying your entry and including every detail - its impressive and demonstrates mastery of the program.

But it isn't practical! you don't need to model all the chains and wires!

Teams that go the extra mile to include those details deserve the championship trophy, but teams that use CAD simply to design and demonstrate robot functions need to be encouraged too!

I would like to see regional awards for CAD that would give the little guys a chance.

[JasJ002]

Originally Posted by Hachiban VIII

I would like to see regional awards for CAD that would give the little guys a chance.

The problem with this idea is that there are some regionals that have maybe one or two teams with entries, and you can't just give away awards like that.

[BuddyB309]

the voteing had some advantages as well as disadvantages.

-I like how autodesk was trying to get more students involved. But many students didn't know that they were suppose to vote for the autodesk awards. They didnt even know that there was a firstbase site. I like how the judges screen out top five and leave the final desicion up to the students. It makes the contest more fair then it being juged by some people we have never met before.

-After the top five were announced, the voteing seemed like a giant campain "VOTE FOR ME!!" The structure of first base was very frusterating. First a member of the team had to fill out there personal info and then send an email to there account so they could activate it. Then they had to wait to recive an email from their team cordinator so they can get the team password so their account can be fully oporational. If this is happening all at the autodesk booth, there is no way that they are going to get the team password in time. My team was pulling people from the pits and asking them to vote. Most of the time the student never heard of firstbase. Everything seemed like a mad race to get votes at the end.

Another thing i would like to point out is that the students who have never messed with 3ds max before dont know what to look for when voteting. I didnt know what to look for when voteting for the inventor award untill some one came and said "Oh, just vote for this team." and i did. I felt like i was doing the same for my team. People didnt know what they were looking at untill i came along and said "Oh just vote for 1625." I dont know, It something didnt seem right.

[Theflexmaster]

Personally I'm still a bit bitter about not being picked in the Top 5 for Animation, but whatcha going to do . In the end, I don't think having voting by peers is professional by any means. With voting, the most colors or special effects wins. Most don't take into account the difficulty of projects among other things. So I'm saying don't have voting unless by judges. Voting is always biased no matter what.

[Skute327]

I personally don't agree with the voting system at all, and I wrote the following to the autodesk feedback section

I Highly dislike the voting system, it is very unfair. it turns the award into a popularity contest. a larger team has a huge advantage, and most teams have not even heard of this site , and don't have accounts here, it is difficult to create an account, I am student team leader and it took me 2 days to find out my "team password" so I could create an account to vote for my own team. many people don't understand the idea of the award, and aren't sure who to vote for, if voting system is kept, it should 1 be more publicized, 2 be easy to sign up for, and 3 be one vote per team.


after reading again, and posting here i realize it was a little harsh and not very GP, the way i worded it, but i do feel this way.

I don't think having voting by peers is professional by any means. With voting, the most colors or special effects wins. Most don't take into account the difficulty of projects among other things.

I completely agree with this, and I couldn't have worded it better!

[pmax]

Folks,

First off, congratulations to _all_ the teams for their hard work and a great season. It is encouraging to see the quality of both the designs and teamwork improve year to year.

We appreciate the comments and want you to know we are listening. This was a pilot year in a peer voting method, and of course we want to improve upon it in the coming years. Keep the comments coming, especially while they are fresh in your mind, and know that they can have an impact on how we structure the award in the future.

Kind regards,
Pete

[Ben Martin]

What if, on Autodesk FIRSTbase, the main contact of each team designated one student to score the Autodesk Inventor award? This student could score each of the top five entries like Autodesk scores them. The downside here, though, is that you still have the chance that the student picks the entry with the most outstanding graphics.

In addition, we could include the opinion of Autodesk as well. Autodesk could take their score and add it to the average scores of all the teams. The team with the highest combined score would be declared the winner.

In this way, Autodesk gets 50% of the input on the winner, and FIRST Robotics students get the other 50%.

Anyway, it's just an idea.

[R Stephenson]

... i didn't like how it was 100% voting, because it ended up being a popularity contest. and not about the work but i think there still should be a vote, keeping the students involved.

Autodesk gets 50% of the input on the winner, and FIRST Robotics students get the other 50%.

This is exactly what i was thinking but with more Autodesk involvement also like the idea of one vote per team it gets rid of big teams having an advantage, the registering process has to be much easier it took a while to register which probably turned people away from voting.

I would like to see regional awards for CAD that would give the little guys a chance.

I like the idea, don't really know how to do it, but maybe something on a smaller scale, like having a best in country .. and maybe because of the number of teams in the US have a best in the region such as "best in New England"