We have many different binders for different awards with information targeted for each award. Is it ok to ask the judges what award they are judging?
Thanks in advance.
They won’t tell you–and even if they do tell you there’s no guarantee that you’re actually going to get that one. And they’re likely there for multiple awards anyways–there isn’t a pair per award but there are several pairs for technical and several for non-technical, in general.
What you MIGHT ask is “technical or non-technical”? That the judges are more likely to answer. Or (with some experience) your judge talkers will be able to figure out within three questions whether they’re there for technical awards (grab those binders) or non-technical awards (grab that set of binders).
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When I judge I tend to turn that around - what award do you want me to be judging for? It cuts out the awkward phase where the team wants to talk about their climber for Engineering Excellence and I’m asking questions about their drivetrain because I don’t know that.
But Eric is generally right - judges rarely split down to individual awards, they do tend to split between Team Attribute and Machine Attribute. Some events have judge groups do both at the same time but I’ve always found that higher stress for all parties.
General rule - if they come up and ask “tell me about your team” it’s for team attribute. “Tell me about your robot” it’s for machine attribute.
But what about Chairman’s - this is VERY dependent. Nothing says it is all in the interview rooms. Most times it tends to be though.
And EI? Idk, I’ve been a judge for a decade now and have been a Judge Advisor - for the life of me I still can’t say I know how to win this award.
But also as another rule - you’re welcome to ask pit judges whatever you want (within reason, like, don’t be creepy?)
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“Before we get started, in this mess of 60+ teams at similar levels at the Long Beach regional, what are you really looking for to stand out? That can be hard or soft skills/qualities”
I used to ask this to figure out what they’re judging for AND how to win that award. Sometimes they will highlight that nobody has mentioned a ratchet climber and you can focus on that. Usually I’d get an answer like… we’re from GM, focusing on the Industrial Design award and excited about unique design features!
From there you can tailor your answers, pull out the design binder/Onshape Mobile, and highlight that you’re studying industrial design in college next year!
Source: am studying industrial design in college next year and did exactly this to win Industrial Design award in 2018
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Based on the definition, it’s about your outreach in the current year, whereas Chairman’s is the last 3-5. Since we were banned from presenting Chairman’s this year (it’s nice to discover that after you have written a good chunk of the essay, thanks to conflicting rules about team separations) and weren’t eligible for Rookie All Star, our “Chairman’s team” turned into the “EI team” and presented the last-year outreach info rather than going into any of our past work (which they were allowed to do but it would have been useless information given the EI definition).
At our events, it’s really easy to tell which judges are which, because they do this:
though at the first event the judges asked “tell me about your business plan” so they thought they were talking to entrepreneurship judges (which used to be a separate thing but apparently no longer is?) and spend the whole time talking about that instead of the outreach and ended up winning that award.
This happened to us as well, which was pretty confusing for the kids. For us it ended up being moot for the event, but I suspect there are some great EI teams that may not have been on the board because they were only ever asked about their business plan.
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