Championship Issues with Judging

FIRST General Forum
1

Hi there, let me open up with saying that it was a real honor being able to represent our team for the various awards at world championships this year. This is Team 781’s second year making it to the championship event with our Chairman’s submission, as well as Entrepreneurship. We’re pretty new to the way awards work at championship and we’re thankful for the help and encouragement that various teams have given us at regional events, over social media and at the Championship event.

Onto the topic at hand.

The main reason I start this thread is to clarify and bring to light some issues we had with judging at the championship event, specifically with non-technical awards (as that is my field of focus). In addition to our eligibility to the usual awards a team qualifies for as they attend World Champs, we also qualified for the Chairman’s and Entrepreneurship awards, as stated above. We kept representatives at our pit all the the time, ready for judges to come by and answer questions, throughout the event. We were informed that judging doesn’t occur on the first day, so I’m not concerned about that, however, judges for non-technical awards only stopped by to ask questions on the second day, with none on the third.

We were shocked by this as the second day only had two sets of judges visit us (the first asked only about our seasons challenges and achievements, while the second informed us that she was judging Engineering Inspiration and asked about our team’s contingency). I was further surprised to see judges frequently visiting neighboring pits multiple times (2-4 times each on the two days).

Now I’m not upset about not winning an award, far from it. Our team is building a foundation on the world scale at this event and it was a pleasure to attend and present for our awards. My awards team did an excellent job answering questions and they tell me that their Chairman’s presentation went extremely well with no missed lines. Overall, I’m proud of my team’s effort at the event.

I am, however, not impressed with the consistency and equality of judging (with no offence to judges of course, they have a very difficult job). Where some teams may have gotten plenty of time to demonstrate their program, other teams (ours included) did not get the same opportunity. I’m even less impressed to have been missed by judges for awards such as Entrepreneurship and Chairman’s; awards that we were supposed to be judged on as receivers of the awards at regional level.

The whole ordeal has left myself greatly offended by the system used at World Championships, and has made the commitment and effort that my fellow teammates made completely disregarded.

So now that my story is out of the way, I would like to hear from other teams about their experience this year. Hopefully it was better, but I doubt we were the only team to have been missed.

And perhaps there are somethings that need to be changed for future years to make the event run smoother and to prevent things like this from happening.

I had been discussing an idea I’ve had with some of my teammates and mentors. I’ll likely send a message off to FIRST Canada to see if this could be set in place for Canadian regional events in the 2015 season. Anyways, this might help judges to find representatives in a safer and quieter environment.

Instead of having representatives stay by their team’s pit, perhaps a room could be set up with tables for teams to set up displays (sort of like a science fair). Here judges and teams could talk to representatives about their programs while out of the way of the distractions of the pit area. Teams wouldn’t need to be using pit space to display resources and information, instead, they would have their own table space to be entirely dedicated to Chairman’s, Entrepreneurship, Engineering Inspiration, ect. It would also be a good place for teams to share resources (which has become a common occurrence the past couple years as we’ve started to establish a strong business and administrative side to our team). Sponsors could even set up booths and such as well to attract the public’s attention.

Anyways that’s my two cents on that. I look forward to hearing positive and constructive feedback, it’s greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time. :slight_smile:

2

Our team had a very similar experience at the OKC regional and Dallas regional, the only difference is we were on the both sides of the spectrum. (sorry don’t have experience at worlds but we encountered similar problems)

At the Dallas regional we pretty far away from all the major and elite teams so judging in our area seemed less common. So we developed the strategy that when a judge would walk by we would offer a button/keychain and from there we would talk about our program.

In OKC we happened to become a bit more popular in OKC and we were able to have more of an opportunity to talk to the judges. Now as someone being judged it is very nice to have that sort of opportunity to explain more. Now being stationed acrossed from 1710 was also very informative for since they ended up winning the chairman’s award.

Now on spacing through the isles and pits, In dallas the isles could become very crowded and the judges would have to step into your pits when a robot was coming through. Which became very hard since you would have your pit team in pits working on the robot. So I agree with your idea about creating a separate room for this.

Well that just a little information about what happened to us. Sorry if I’m all over the place. :slight_smile:

3

Well, having been at championships for the past three years and the pit representative for those 3 years, judging works differently each year. With Chairman’s I think they short list teams based on the submission and go from there, similarly, with a submission available for Entrepreneurship I’d think they do the same. With Engineering Inspiration on the other hand, I think judges visit every team because we (384) weren’t Chairman’s or EI winners at our regional but were the award winners for Galileo. Also, we have to consider that the judges must look at 100 teams total, so each team might only get one set of judges, before a short list of teams to visit is made.

I think that non-technical awards being judged in the pit is actually a good idea. Entrepreneurship, Chairman’s, EI etc. are about the whole team, not solely outreach. I learn so much more visiting someone’s pit and asking about their outreach when their robot is there too than I do when there’s an empty pit. Having the whole team and the robot there, gives the judges and any other people the chance to really hear your team’s story and truly gain an understanding of your team’s core values and mission. Personally, I feel that moving the non-technical judging to a different location would be a great disadvantage, not only to the portrayal of the team story, but also to the public because they would only learn about the outreach or the robot and not how the team functions as a whole.

But that’s just my two cents :slight_smile:

4

This happens at Michign too! It “seems” like some teams get very little or no time from judges. As a new team couple of years back we felt this happens to new teams and we need to build “reputation” by winning some championships. The reason for us to feel this ways was due to circumstances similar to what DJP wrote. We say judges spend lot of time with powerhouses and veteran teams while newer teams side, judges were not frequenting. We believe many veteran teams do a good job, have a good robot, have a good team, etc., but this definitely does not mean newer teams haven’t done their job. Also with Dean’s list essays, one year the essay status on STIMS remained unread even after the championship. We don’t know if that’s how it works, but makes us wonder why?

5

Last year at Championships, 4464 was not visited by judges at all for Rookie All-Star because they “did not know where our pit was” and assumed we were not present. We only managed to speak to judges when a few of our students, frustrated by not being visited by any judges, tracked down a few of them and asked them to come to our pit.

Championships are great and I have greatly enjoyed going both this year and last, but the judging certainly could use some work.

6

TLDR: I agree that judging could use some work, but the way I understand it is that in championships one set of judges is assigned to a certain group of teams (maybe 15 teams). After every judge visits their teams they group and make a shortlist for each award. Then award specific judges visit each pit and they see every team on the shortlist for the award.

What is sometimes confusing is that some judges seem to visit pits not to judge but just to check out the robot, like a spectator.

I was the judges representative from team 1678. I talked to every judge that came to our pit, which from 3 regional and champs comes out to about 20 judges. Our team received a different award ( 4 total) based on pit judging from each event we went to.

What I noticed is that at each event the first set of judges asked general questions about the robot and the team and took notes. Soon after that the judges were informal and didn’t take notes. Then sometime later we got judges who asked specific questions which in retrospect really pertained to the awards we received.

I am not a judge so maybe one could enlighten us, but this is what I noticed.

7

brycen66 you pretty accurately described what you should experience in the pits from the judges at a typical regional.

Judging at Championship follows the same general pattern, but it is a little more intense considering the division is 100 teams where a typical regional is 40-66 teams. The majority of the pit interviews were done on Friday at Championship. So 20-25 judges need to visit 100 teams at least twice (machine attributes and team attributes) with 1-2 judges on Friday. Add in trying to find teams that may be queuing and you can quickly see it is a daunting task to visit all the teams on Friday.

A group of judges are assigned to review the Entrepreneurship submission, so you may not have a pit interview focused on that award, depends on whether additional information is needed.

Chairman’s award submissions are done in front of a panel of Chairman’s Award judges in a separate interview room. If your team was eligible for the Champmion Chairman’s Award, they should have signed up for an interview time at pit admin. This award does not typically include pit interviews.

8

rsisk, that is very informative. Most of these procedures aren’t well known to some teams. Going forward, it will be nice to know.