FRC Blogged - Administrative manual is out

[Jessica Boucher]

The only constant in FRC is change. Learning to adapt to change in competition is the best way to prepare for change in real life.

I'm disappointed that this award isn't better received. Here's why:

1.) When the website award was created, it was a big deal to HAVE a website.
As opposed to when the award started, web presence is the norm. Creating the structure is no longer special. Creating important content that transcends the noise is.

2.) Championship-only exposure means better judging. No, really.
From a volunteer coordinator perspective, it was a total pain in the butt to find qualified professionals. Web Evaluator Advisors hated chasing evaluators down to do the judging. Evaluators hated a longer and longer survey. Teams complained for years that the judging was not standardized. Why not call the whole thing off?

So let's mull around the idea of a CMP only award. Who would judge it? The judges? No, they have enough going on and it doesn't fit their schedule. Web Evaluators? No, because they don't exist anymore. A panel of amazing individuals who know their way around the internet? Now you're talking.

Side note: If I was HQ, I would open the award up to any team participating in FRC, not just the teams at CMP. I would hate to see a team make an amazing piece and not get awarded for it.

Other side note: If you're looking for people to join your panel, I volunteer as tribute.

3.) Social Media at its core is a NUMBERS game.
This is my biggest point: why are a group of ENGINEERS not jumping up and down about something that can now be quantified? My pundit guess is that this award goes to the team that can best show their reach into the world, not the team that spams the most.

At the heart of it, it's not just creating the content but explaining your results. And guess what? Explaining the results? Adds to your web cred. My top read post on my blog is still that #omgrobots thing. And that's over a year old.



Bring it on, FRC. I'm so excited to see what comes next.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Jessica Boucher

I'm disappointed that this award isn't better received.

I'm both excited about what the award offers and disappointed in how it is being offered (this will be tempered slightly if in fact all teams can submit and just be judged at CMP). I guess we can't have it all - if there aren't enough volunteers available to judge a higher quality award like this, it can't be offered at every regional.

[Phyrxes]

I'm glad this award changed to better reflect how the students interact with social media and the web in general, our students are more excited that this is no longer focusing on build a website that "mostly only our team looks at" and has shifted toward "this is how the we reach out to our fellow students and other people across the net."

[emekablue]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there no regular season Animation/Design award?

[Siri]

Originally Posted by emekablue

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there no regular season Animation/Design award?

You are correct, the Autodesk awards are gone as of now.

[SarahBeth]

Originally Posted by Phyrxes

I'm glad this award changed to better reflect how the students interact with social media and the web in general, our students are more excited that this is no longer focusing on build a website that "mostly only our team looks at" and has shifted toward "this is how the we reach out to our fellow students and other people across the net."

I agree with this completely.

Still bummed and kind of confused as to why the New Media Award is Championship only. :/

[Zflash]

The Creativity Award seems to be missing as well.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Jessica Boucher

2.) Championship-only exposure means better judging. No, really.
From a volunteer coordinator perspective, it was a total pain in the butt to find qualified professionals. Web Evaluator Advisors hated chasing evaluators down to do the judging. Evaluators hated a longer and longer survey. Teams complained for years that the judging was not standardized. Why not call the whole thing off?

So let's mull around the idea of a CMP only award. Who would judge it? The judges? No, they have enough going on and it doesn't fit their schedule. Web Evaluators? No, because they don't exist anymore. A panel of amazing individuals who know their way around the internet? Now you're talking.

Jess- I agree with most of your points except this one. This issue I have is one that Jared eluded to: what do you do with all of the web/animation/design team members on your team? You shift their focus to the new media award.

So now if every team that submitted for a web award, design award or animation award in the past (I'm sure there will be some who don't submit at all anymore, but just making a point) now submit for the new media award- the judging panel at CMP may be left to sift through 500+(?) submissions. That will take a tremendous feat to accomplish, and unfortunately I think the tradeoff to accomplish such a task will be to have less, for lack of a better term, quality of judging per each submission.

Of course, if less teams submit, it becomes an easier problem to solve, however this seems like it could be quite a task.

I think the new award is a great step in the right direction, I think more teams would've liked to see it kicked off at the regional level however.

-Brando

[RoboMom]

From an engaging volunteers perspective - I will miss aspects of the old website award. I understand that the judging was uneven and the task of judging was becoming more cumbersome. And I never could understand why this wasn't judged through a centralized portal, not regionally.

But judging the website award created an opportunity to have volunteers be involved who couldn't come to the regional and that time frame, but still wanted to "be a part" of the event. There was one year I recruited a group "DC Web Women" to be judges. And through that effort a whole bunch of new people got introduced to FRC.

But it looks like this new award will be an interesting one.

[Jessica Boucher]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

the judging panel at CMP may be left to sift through 500+(?) submissions. That will take a tremendous feat to accomplish, and unfortunately I think the tradeoff to accomplish such a task will be to have less, for lack of a better term, quality of judging per each submission.

Ah ha, yeah, it's certainly a concern. I don't know how FRC will handle that. Now, if I was writing the rules, I would steal from the best - in this case, those who built their business model around it. Influenster is a site that gamifies social influence and encourages reviews on free samples (this is squarely in the sample-size cottage industry that has popped up lately - see Birchbox)

The wider the user's audience, the more likely they are to receive free stuff. The more the users post reviews about the free samples, the more likely they are to get more free samples. It's an addictive cycle for the user, and very beneficial to advertisers who want internet buzz about a new product.

How does Influenster find the best users to send samples?
1.) You're required to list your social reach. That means listing all your sites: Facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. The more services, the higher your score.
2.) You're encouraged to share your audience size and your frequency. Most of these sites can give you stats about your reach. The more people who follow you, the bigger the reach.

Now, how does that translate to FRC? If FRC adopted a similar model as Influenster, which basically works off of a web form, the submission rate should fall somewhere in the 40% range. I'm being generous here: typically submission rates for website at a regional hovers at 50%, but awards which require more information upfront cause the rate to drop significantly. Since a web form is more intel than has been required from the award in the past, this number should fall in the middle. This brings us to 200 teams.

From there, I would weight based upon criteria. Categorize reach based upon outlet and size: high reach in FB, low in Youtube, etc. Then sort to find your top 50. I can see this being done even before the list gets to the panel.

The one grey area I can forsee is the viral anomaly: what if just one video takes off? No one saw many of the current popular memes coming. With good planning (I'm looking at you, 30 members of Daisy), the channels should see upticks in overall reach, but this may not be the case. This is where I think there should be a free-text area for the team to show off a gem to the judges which could place them in consideration.

But that's just how I would do it. How FRC will handle it is anyone's guess.

[Chris is me]

I feel the message FIRST is unintentionally sending is that only Championship level teams should focus on their online presence. When you're a team strapped for cash and free members, you're going to do the things that can get you trophies before the things that don't. It's not even because teams want hunks of plastic - by being awarded at regionals the tasks that can win awards simply become more important.

I don't understand.