What is your favorite FIRST award? I like the Gracious Professionalism Award, but that might be mostly because my team won that as our first offficial award from FIRST. I also LOVE the spirit awards, partially because i have so much team spirit. I am the only person on the PLANET who would come up with an email address like [email protected] (I don’t want to give out my email address, so no website here)
I love the design awards. Especially the Xerox Creativity award. It definitely awards teams who went out on the limb to try something new and took a real risk. I think it is one of those awards that keep inspiring FIRST teams to build unique robots.
Of course nothing tops the Chairman’s Award. Chairman’s teams are truly what FIRST is about, and they serve as role models for anyone involved with FIRST.
In Atlanta this year I helped out setting up the awards & cleaning & organizing them which was a new experience for me, & a nice relaxing one for the most part if anyone wants a cool volunteer job for Atlanta next year.
The (physical) award that is the most impressive to me asthetically is the Autodesk Visualization Award. The design of that is very very cool. I love how the steel sphere is floating in the cradle of the 3 points. My fav for sure.
It rivals the Woodie Flowers award as far as award design in my eyes. 
The Championship Chairman’s Award & the Founder’s Award (clocks) are insanely heavy btw at about 20-25 lbs I would have to guess.
Those are also pretty cool.
Btw, a word of warning for any of the smaller awards.
The tips of the triangle acrylic portion is sharp!
Watch your hands when picking those up!
I’m going to have to call an <S01> violation to the designer of those trophies.
You’d be surprised…
I agree with Elgin; I love how the Visualization Award looks. If we had one of those in our trophy case, I guarantee it would be front and center.
Symbolically, I like the Engineering Inspiration Award the most. I really like the fact that it involves reaching out to other people, and working with kids in our community at demonstrations and events has been my favorite part of being on a robotics team. Giving back and inspiring people is really a good feeling.
The Judges’ Awards are really fun too, because there’s always a surprise involved with what the awards are for.
I also like the Woodie Flowers Award- what better way is there to thank your mentors? Also, the people who win this award are always great inspirations and people who serve as models in the FIRST community. There are always interesting stories that go along with this award.
It’s hard to have just one favorite award! Can’t I love them all?
I was rather pleased to have the team receive a Motorola Quality Award, 5 years after starting our rookie year with a plywood robot. 
Good deal. Congratulations!
Was the award winning bot also made out of plywood just out of curiosity? Got any links to pics of the award winner to share here?
I’m a big fan of awards with short and easy names. While I think the “business plan award” is super cool I can never remember all the sponsors.
I love the website awards -because you can learn so much about a team through its website…
No, the bot wasn’t in any way related to the plywood robot. They didn’t start giving awards for wooden robots until a few years after we started. I’d have to search around for a pic, but it was the year where we had to pick up balls on the floor and throw them through that chain thing at the goal. The 'bot was just very clean and it was easy to see all the mechanisms and wiring and all that. We had a good ball elevator. It was a 4 wheel drive with the big Skyway pneumatic rubber wheels. It didn’t turn well, but the scrubbing when it did turn helped to feed the balls. It could push very well and get up on the ramp, which was part of the game that year.
Here’s a picture of the Team 975 2006 robot.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=6749&stc=1&d=1216829245
I’m with ReapersRule on this one. Hey, Reaper, e-mail our favorite mentor for me please
I have to say my favorite award would have to be rookie allstars, obviously. That’s the only award our team has ever won.
Here’s to that!
I’ve often thought that the Xerox award should qualify teams for the championship. If you’re willing to risk wining, by trying something new and crazy (even if that new and crazy device doesn’t work perfectly) you ought to be rewarded.
It would certainly encourage teams to innovate.
Agreed
What was the Teacher/Pioneer award? I read about it in our team history I think. It was an award that FIRST gave out to only a few mentors/teachers but I don’t know anything about it or who received it. Do know that my mentor received it though. Anyone know more about it?
I used to think the same thing- I’d never heard of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers before- not part of my world. When I read that they were the venture capitalists that helped Dean fund Segway, I was suddenly very thankful that they ventured their capital on us FIRST-folk. Turns out they are very much a part of my world- AOL, Google, Amazon, iphones, green tech and on and on. Now I feel like we’re practically family.
On a different thought, I’ve really learned to embrace the Imagery Award. I realized that for us, it’s all about joy and a whole lot of green paint… somebody gets an idea or tells a joke and the next thing you know a big group jumps in and it grows until you get an uppet, or a green man group. It’s celebrating that together we are more than just our individual parts… when you’re proud to be seen (from 1/4 mile away) and tell total strangers “I’m with them.”
The 1999 winners were:
- Susan Godez, Team 128, Grandview Heights H.S., Powell, OH
- Kyle Hughes, Team 27, Oakland Science, Mathematics and Technology Academy, Clarkston, MI
- Bill McGowan, Team 11, Mt. Olive H.S., Flanders, NJ
- Chuck Nystrom, Team 173, East Hartford H.S., Hartford, CT
*]Gary Dillard, Team 180 (now Team 1889), Stuart, FL
I don’t know what the award description was though.
I’ve seen posts on past Championship CA winners, but does anyone have a list of the past CMP EI winners. Not sure if they had one since 1992? Just curious.