Chairman’s Submission: Why Even Bother?

Competition FIRST Impact Award
1

There are certainly many reasons not to bother with a Regional Chairman’s Award Submission this year. It really is too difficult to get this done while you are doing the impossible work of designing, building, and testing a robot with impossible constraints of time, resources, energy, etc.

We all know that a Chairman’s Submission is grueling, impossible work: like everything else in FIRST, like everything else that’s worth anything in life. So go watch American Idol, play with your WII and see where that gets you.

Or consider these reasons to do more impossible work and submit for an RCA:

  1. It is a requirement of Nasa grant teams. Congratulations to these teams and, since the hardest part of Chairman’s is deciding to do it, you are one step ahead of everyone else.

  2. Rookie teams cannot win a RCA, but the submission is used to judge the Rookie All-Star Award - which qualifies a rookie team to attend the championship.

  3. A shameless chance-of-winning-an-award argument: Since so few teams are preparing a Chairman’s submission, you have a much higher chance (by numbers) of winning this award than any of the other awards handed out at a regional. Hopefully we can reverse this trend, so you better take advantage of it now!

  4. It is not really doing something more, it is documenting and showing off what you have done. We are a community. We all have the responsibility to share our experiences and earned wisdom.

  5. Your team will have a scheduled interview with the judges. Even if you don’t win the RCA, it can’t but help your chances to be recognized for the great work you have done. It is very difficult for the judges to get good information on all the teams from the pit visits. This personal time with the judges is in itself very rewarding for the team – the judges are always so encouraging.

  6. An RCA presentation and the preparation will give your team members something (intelligent and interesting) to talk about when the judges come by the pit and say, “tell me about your team.”

  7. Also one student on the Championship Chairman’s Award team will receive the Allaire Medal which comes with a $10,000 scholarship!

So get even busier and inspire us!

Please pm me if you need help, encouragement, editing…this is what I do. If you have a Chairman’s mentor, thank them. If you don’t, let me know and I will do what I can from here.

2

Meredith.

Well said!!!

Teams - whether you realize it or not, you are motivating and inspiring people in your community every day. Document all this success by submitting a Chairman’s Award entry!

Good luck!

3

Also don’t forget that your Chairman’s submission and presentation also work great for sponsorship presentations.

4

I opened this thinking, “This’ll be a thread we have to shut down.” I was pleasantly surprised. Good post, good title to entice people to read it. Repped.

5

We have submitted RCAs every year with the exception of our rookie season when we really didn’t know what they were. That’s okay… we didn’t know the effect that a carpetted playing field would have on skid steering that year, either. We really were rather clueless.

Since then we have always submitted a strong RCA and have always received very positive feedback from the judges, but have never won. Which is perfectly fine with me, because I don’t think winning is the point behind the RCA… it is trying to win. Doing the best you can with the resources you’ve got to accomplish the goals of FIRST is worth more than a trophy, banner, and invitation to Atlanta. Not that the latter aren’t nice, mind you, but with the RCA it is the journey, not the destination that matters.

I have also come to observe that amongst the major “you’re going to Atlanta!” awards, the RCA is probably the least subject to luck. You can build the best robot in the competition, but not win the championship, or build a moderate robot and be the third partner on a winning alliance (or fourth, if one breaks down!) simply due to the vagaries of competition. But if you want an RCA you can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to win one by simply outworking, outhustling and outdoing every other team for an entire year.

I didn’t say it was EASIER to win… just that less luck was involved. As good as our team’s submissions have been, there has always been at least one team (and possibly more) that has clearly outworked us and earned that award. So make an effort in the off-season, and make a submission, and make sure that the winning team really does work their butts off to get that high honour. Your team will be stronger for it regardless of who wins.

Jason

6

I have to echo this. Up until last year, that was our story as well. That all changed in Kansas City when we were announced as the RCA winner.

What has that done for us?

It has made our team more focused than ever. I have seen things from our students that I had always envsioned. There is more interaction between them and the engineers. We have tripled the number of projects that we work on all year long, but the most important to me is that there is more drive for our graduating seniors to get into the engineering field.

So is it worth it to do all that extra work that isn’t ‘robot’ related. I have to say definately yes! The benefits to the future of the students outweighs anything else.

Paul

7

Exactly ditto.

Also, submitting year after year does give you experience in how to do it, which will be very helpful when it seems like it will be YOUR year. Plus, after all of it, send copies to the team parents, they will really be impressed. Sponsors too.

8

(NOTE: I am pro-impacting community. I believe it is a matter of principle to do something for the greater good rather than for merit. That said, this post may contain some sarcasm, mockary, and seriousness.)

FIRST [no pun, just emphasis] off, American Idol and Survivor are by far the worst television shows on the face of the earth. Meredith, I am disappointed in you! :slight_smile:

Chairmans should be something that comes natural to a team, not something to strive for. You SHOULD help your community for more than a stupid pin (OMG!!! Did he say that?). You should strive to do what’s best for your community regardless if that gets you Chairman’s or not. Example: BEST, GEAR, EARLY, Botball will stay in my arsenal although many FIRST people frown upon.

Now your considerations.

  1. Chairman’s isn’t something you should be forced into doing. You do it because you love what you do. You enjoy helping your community, you enjoy technology, etc.
  2. Rookie teams don’t know what’s going on essentially. You can’t do what the RCA award wants you to do in six to ten weeks. It just doesn’t happen. You’d be lucky to have a great impact after two or three years. Establish your team, THEN your community. If you spend your time doing RCA while you’re starting, and you [your team] die, you didn’t accomplish much in the big picture.
  3. Atlanta is nice, but not everything. (“Oh no he didn’t!!”)
  4. That SHOULD be true, but you’re absolutely wrong. Maybe for some teams this actually may be true, but for many, they see Chairmans as the only reason for impacting their community as opposed to what should be happening: the team’s existence is to impact the community not for Chairmans.
  5. Recognition isn’t everything. Many greats in Math, Science, and Engineering didn’t do what they did for recognition.
  6. Honestly? Come on!! If you don’t have anything interesting or intelligent to say from learning engineering from trying to build your robot then something during the build season went HORRIBLY WRONG!7. I can’t argue with the 10K, and I’m pretty sure.
  7. I can’t argue against 10K. And I’m pretty sure that student can make another $10 bucks off the medal too!!!

Now that that’s out of my system let me say this:
The winner’s of the Chairman’s are not the ones who win the Allaire medal. They are the ones who got some kid to become an engineer, or helped someone respect the trade and contributions of scientists, engineers, and so forth.

Not what you had in mind, eh?

Pavan

9

I think I was tired the first time I opened this thread, as the first few sentences I read, I swore it was going to be a post on the uselessness of Chairmans… but then I reread it after getting halfway through and realized it was an encouraging post… and simply agreed with the others - well said!

And then I started reading Pavan’s post and actually agreed with the first part of it:

Chairmans should be something that comes natural to a team, not something to strive for. You SHOULD help your community for more than a stupid pin (OMG!!! Did he say that?). You should strive to do what’s best for your community regardless if that gets you Chairman’s or not.

And I have actually gotten beaten upside the head (ok thats figuratively) for saying that its not about the trophy before. I will agree that it should NOT be about the trophy at all…

But if you notice, nothing in Meredith’s post suggests doing Chairmans to be able to beat your chest and point fingers at others to say “HA WE WON!” and hoist around a “stupid piece of plastic”. 90% of her suggested reasons for doing the chairmans are for the experience, they have nothing to do with the winning part of it. Heck she doesnt even say “Go out and do all the things that make you a chairmans team just so you can win the trophy or the Allaire medal”. She is simply providing good reasons for teams to submit.

Every year we put our Chairman’s award essay into our Patron Book - a book of our sponsors plus photos from our year, that we hand out to our sponsors and all of our team members and try to distribute around the community. Its almost a yearbook in a sense that we can look back at every one of them and get a good summary of the year. It didnt matter if we won or lost it that year, it was a documentation of our team history for that year, and it was an essay that our students were proud of.

But where I started to lose the track of agreeing with Pavan’s post is where it seemed to suggest that all teams that submit for the Chairmans award are doing things just to win the Chairmans award. I’m going to go out on a limb here and maybe brag a touch. My team had ZERO concepts of any of the awards in 2005 when we first started the team. We progressed all the way to build season and they had no clue what any of it was. Yet they planned out a preship scrimmage, volunteered in the community, visited some local engineering businesses, and raised $12,000 in patron funds from around our community. Once we got into build season, I realized that the only way to get our team to Championships was to win an event or to win the RAS… it was too late to do all the things that make RAS teams or Chairman’s teams, so we just had to write the essay and hope all we had done was good enough. Granted the essay wasnt required, but we werent going to just let that chance slip buy. So the kids wrote up an essay and got really excited about all they had already done, without knowing that they “should” have done these things ahead of time to “win an award”. At Championships we were floored to hear Woodie say the words “A Chairman’s Award Winner In the Making” associated with our team… and that just threw gas on the fire that they had already started. They hadnt done the things they did to win the award, they did them because they thought it would be fun and they were the “right” things to do, and they were rewarded for it. The team and inspiration that came out of that year meant more to them than any piece of plastic ever could, but it sure was a thrill to be recognized. To this day I still hear the kids talk more about the experiences, late nights and funny things that happened, there is very little talk of the trophy.

Flash forward to this year, and I will be honest, for about 6 months this year, our students were pretty set on not wanting to submit, and none of us were going to push them into it. But it was never a question of if we would write the essay or not. They were going to write it, but just not submit it. At one point, we even talked of giving our presentation in the pits, not bothering with the judges. They didnt want to be stressed about it and they didnt want to deal with the issues with “competition”. They just wanted everyone to see all the hard work they had done. And to me, thats what its all about. Whether you submit or you dont, Chairmans is a valuable process, and can be a very insiprational one as well. Win or lose, in my opinion its the process that matters, not the trophy itself.

I struggle at this time to identify any teams at all that meet this criteria:

  1. That SHOULD be true, but you’re absolutely wrong. Maybe for some teams this actually may be true, but for many, they see Chairmans as the only reason for impacting their community as opposed to what should be happening: the team’s existence is to impact the community not for Chairmans.
    Sure I have assumed that was the case in the past, but in meeting the teams and spending time with them, you realize its not true at all. It may seem that way from the outside, but 90% of the time thats just a small feeling of jealousy. I will admit it because I have been there. And sure, sometimes things are started for that reason, but then if the team realizes how much fun & value are inherent in the action, they often start doing it for the right reasons.

And to finish off my book, Pavan, I know in general your posts tend to have sarcasm and cynicism, but I have to ask if you have ever met any of the Championship Chairman’s teams. All of the ones that I have actually gotten to know have been much more humble than I would have ever thought. They dont do things for the award, they just submit for recognition for all they have done. They do things for the right reasons, and many of them continue to do things for the right reasons. We are blessed to have the XCats right here in Rochester, and they are an amazing team that welcomes and helps all others. A few years ago, MOE was in the pits next to us at FLR and our kids just fell in love with them, they were so open, sharing and loved to help others. I like to think our kids have drawn inspiration from those teams, not to do things to be Chairman’s winners, but how to really enjoy FIRST, become a family and draw every ounce of enjoyment out of doing everything they do. Chairman’s Trophy or not, the genuine actions and inspiration are what we all should strive for. And heck, if the Chairmans process documents our history and gives our kids valuable presentation skills in the process, all the better!

10

The amount of effort to enter and win a CA, IMO, is at the very least, the same amount of effort of everything else you do in Robotics (construction, fundraising, planning, etc.).
My suggestion is to get a team dedicated solely to documenting the rest of your team’s entire program. i.e. video, reporters, photographers, editors/writers, etc.

11

Pavan,

PLEASE - I do not watch American Idol or Survivor, however I am suffering from a little “Wii tennis elbow.”:eek:

12

If, say, something drastic were to happen to the robot so where you couldnt compete at the event, would you still be able to submit an award?

13

You could certainly still submit a Chairman’s entry by the 19th, but your team would need to attend the event for the judge interview.

14

Yes, and I believe there was a team that went and presented at the Championships last year, and didn’t bring their robot.

15

I’ve been a Judge at the Phoenix regional for the past 4 years (or is it 5, it’s all such a blur). The RCA definantly makes the judges talk about the participating teams more because they have the chance to hear more about a team. Of course you’re talking about the hometown regional of Team 842 too :slight_smile: Freddy does an amazing job with that group of kids…

Like mentioned, its really hard to assess a team from the brief interviews done in the pits, it has to do with the fact that many students don’t know how to talk about their team or robot when a judge walks up and most of time, information has to be coerced.

The RCA gives you plenty of practice for that and will make you more confident about your team. FIRST isn’t all about winning the robot competition (although you can’t tell some teams that), its about learning skills that will help you to be a better person and hopefully give you some tools to help you achieve whatever you’d like to do in life. Its not limited to the six week build period, it can be a year round endeavour thats as big or small as your team wants it to be and that’s the difference between this program and many of the others that are out there. It’s also the main reason why me and my guys beat the heck out of ourselves developing the FRC FMS system to give FIRST the best thing we can with the many challendges that are associated with its development. We believe in what we’re doing.

So DO THE RCA, you’ll feel much better about yourself in doing so.