Impact Awards Preparation Schedule

Hello, we are team #7285, Beşiktaş Rsports from Turkey. For the upcoming season, we would like to consult on other teams’ Impact Award preparation schedules. Could you please assist us as with answering the questions such as:

  • When did your team start writing the essay, and submit it?
  • When is the correct time to begin Impact Award video?
  • Which type of schedule were to be followed for the Impact Award presentation?
  • How the Kick-Off should affect the preparations, and deadlines?
    Your answers would be an inspiration for us to create a schedule for the following season.

Briefly, We need a timeline schedule to organize the season efficiently about Impact Award.

4 Likes

Hi!

I’d like to start off by outlining how I think about priorities.

  1. Essay
  2. Presentation
  3. Buying snacks
  4. Doing a little dance
  5. Cleaning the shop top to bottom
  6. Video

The impact video is not judged in any capacity. It won’t even be looked at unless you win. There are teams who have the time to put a ton of their off-season energy into their video, which is great! But since we’re nearing kickoff, you should really put the video at the very bottom of your concerns. My alumni team once recorded the video outside of the competition venue in the hour leading up to our judging slot. I wouldn’t recommend that strategy, but I’m using it to illustrate that the video comes last.

Your work and timeline for the essay and presentation are going to rely a little on what student resources you have. How many students are on your “nontech” team? How many are excited to write the essay? How many are willing to do the judge presentation (and who don’t have conflicting roles like drive team)?

The impact award essay submission is due at 3pm EST on February 16th. Tell your team that it’s due on the 15th, and stick to that deadline like heck. You don’t want to be scrambling in the last 15 minutes to figure out who’s your designated awards submitter.

The presentation, presentation materials (visual aids, hand outs, etc), and video are due at your presentation time slot at competition. Prepare to have these done a few days before your first regional.

I see you’re competing week 1 at Izmir (March 3rd). Let’s backdate from there!

Sample Impact Award Preparation Timeline

  • All of January - Begin drafting your impact essay. Read all of the winning essays to see how they’re written, talk to other teams/students/mentors who have written essays, etc.
  • February 6th to February 13th - Final round of edits (ask for feedback from other teams!)
  • February 14th - Have your head mentor indicate a student awards submitter in STIMS
  • February 15th - SUBMIT IMPACT AWARD ESSAY
  • February 17th to February 26th - Create presentation materials and short video, Remember to include your completed impact award documentation using the official definitions.
  • February 27th to March 2nd - Full presentation rehearsals (present to team members, parents, people outside of the team. Get practice presenting to people you don’t know, under time pressure, make sure they ask questions, etc)
  • March 3rd - Travel to competition

For future seasons, I would highly recommend shifting this timeline into your pre-season! The prompts don’t really change year to year, so you can absolutely write your impact essay and prepare for the presentation in October-December. This’ll make it so you can really put it on the backburner during build season.

I hope this was helpful, and please let me know if you have any follow up questions or clarifications!

14 Likes

Hello, we’re glad about your detailed presentation. This schedule seems perfect and applicable. We’ve already discussed this schedule with our team, and it’s approved by everyone. This is going to help us a lot! Thank you!

2 Likes

We began outlining our essay in mid-November. We began drafting our essay at the beginning of December. We will submit it a few days before the deadline.

Don’t forget the Executive Summary questions! Budget time for those, as well!

Whenever you’re ready to and have the bandwidth to do so. While, as @BryceHanson mentioned it doesn’t have to be judged, I very much disagree it should be a last priority. The event staff (not judges) will review the video to ensure it meets the correct file format and submission guide lines, and is appropriate to show on screen. Further still, you CAN use the video as part of your presentation to the judges, if you wish (and you provide an appropriate method to show it to the judges and budget your presentation time accordingly). Finally, it’s also the primary representation of your team’s Impact Award submission to the other teams at your event. You want a high quality video that effectively communicates why your team deserved to win the award.

We generally start working on our presentation once we get a “stable” draft of our essay and executive summary (although some brainstorming may be done earlier in the process). If necessary, this includes the time after the essay is submitted but before we attend our event. Ideally, we can start on the presentation well before that point, in order to have additional time to find/audition the right speakers and give them time to rehearse for the presentation and handling judge questions.

Kick-off shouldn’t have any impact. You can start preparing for your Impact Award essay and presentation before kickoff.

Somewhere in there see if somebody is hosting a “Chairman’s Exchange” (which I guess will get called an “Impact Exchange” now). This is just several teams getting together to give their presentation to each other which can be helpful, especially to new teams (since nobody outside the presenters and one mentor gets to see the actual judging sessions). Sometimes these even happen at competitions.

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My take was based on the premise of a time comstraint, in which case I believe it makes more sense to spend your time on more impactful things. The video, so long as it meets satisfactory guidelines, isn’t as high of a priority for me. I do admit to being hyperbolic in my original post for emphasis.

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