Is competing at multiple regionals REALLY fair ?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by gblake

My observation pointed out the obvious fact that at the World Championship and at regionals, the audience, teams and the event organizers devote much more time, ceremony and public spectacle to determining which machine/team wins on the field than they do to the competition for the Engineering Inspiration and Chairman's awards.

I'll agree with the "public spectacle", but I'll temper it by saying that it's because the robot competition is concentrated into brief matches involving very few robots at a time. The other awards have at least as much time devoted to them, it's just spread out much more evenly across both public and private contexts. And if you look closely at the teams who win the Chairman's Award, I'm convinced that you'll find that they put more effort and time into the activities that earned them that award than they do into building and competing with a robot.

Note that the Chairman's Award banner is just as large as the one given to the winner of the final robot match, so the "big banner" observation is irrelevant.

If you want to disagree with my observation, cite some evidence that team make-up and giving back is celebrated (much) more than winning on the competition fields.

Here's some evidence for you: Chairman's Award-winning teams are installed in the Hall of Fame, and they are invited back to the Championship in perpetuity instead of just for one year.

It is my experience that, with rare exception, teams that consistently embody the larger FIRST principles of inspiration, partnership, leadership, gracious professionalism, etc. are more remembered and celebrated than teams that merely consistently field winning robots.