Professional judges would be a great idea! If Autodesk is concerned about the competition taking up too much of their time, that would be a great solution.
They had professionals in the past judge the awards, but getting professionals to judges from a company like Pixar may not be the best idea simply because the animation is not the most important part of the entry. You supposed to utilized Inventor into the design factor. What I’ve been thinking lately is to make a presentation mandatory for the top three teams, and you are simply permited computer files and a projector to display your product to a team of engineers how your system works. In the real engineering world this is how things are done.
Now I like that idea!
I really like the idea of having FIRST participants vote, but obviously the team size issue is a problem. So here are my four ideas:
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Limit voting to something like five per team, so that larger teams don’t have a advantage, but also allows some individuality
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Instead of voting “that one is the best,” rank them from one to five.
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DEFINATLY have the award at the regional level, as Hachiban VIII said “to give the little guy a chance”
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I’m not sure if this is practical, but maybe move the award submision dedline back a few days. Many teams simply don’t have enough members so that a few people can be fully dedicated to Inventor work during the build season.