Hi, this is the first year my team is doing the chairman’s award and I was wondering what is the presentation exactly because we are going all over the place and I was wondering if anyone can give us advice or tips on how we should approach the presentation because is it like the chairman’s essay or is it something different? please respond when you can and thank you
I really wish you’d asked this a couple of weeks ago so you’d have more time to prepare, but here we are. I can see you’re competing next week, so the best advice I can give you is get a script down today and practice it as many times as you can between now and the time you walk into the room to present.
For the presentation, you have up to 7 minutes for your (up to 3 student) presenters to show the judges who your team is. The remainder of the 12 minute interview time will be Q&A. You can show your video or clips from it, you can bring in posters or other visual aids so that you can show pictures or graphs, or you can just stand up and talk. What you’re going for here is a smooth, professional presentation.
You can (but are not required to) have one mentor come into the room with you to observe, but they can’t talk or help. Your mentor needs to have a good poker face and stay out of the way. I usually find a corner out of the students field of view where I can watch the judges and take notes as unobtrusively as possible. If you want feedback from the judges, make sure you give them a feedback form before you start.
There are a lot of ways to present the information. Some teams go straight business, some teams put in a little shtick. You want the judges to remember you, in a good way. You’re telling the judges the story of your team, emphasizing the parts you want them to focus on. Here are a couple of good examples:
Team 987 High Rollers 2016 (Won at Championships)
Team 27 Team RUSH 2014 (Won at Championships)
Team 1671 Buchanan Bird Brains 2015 (Sacramento Regional Chairman’s Award)
You can find many more examples on Youtube. There is no one winning formula for your presentation. You want to do the best job you can of showing your team’s culture and accomplishments. Don’t try to mimic one of these other teams exactly – be you. This is a good thread with more advice.
I’m also going to point you to Team RUSH’s Chairman’s page. They have a good list of questions to practice for Q&A. Keep in mind that some of those are specific to what Team RUSH does, and you’ll get questions that may not be on their list that are specific to what you do.
Good luck!
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Victoria covered it pretty well, but I’m going to add to the list: Another great resource is the Simbot Seminar Series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_aixQwlNcw , from Hall of Fame (a.k.a Championship Chairman’s Winner) Team 1114. 
Here you will find the videos of all chairman’s award winning presentations from last year (as well as chairman’s videos and essays). FIRST posts these so that teams can see what other winning teams have done. Take a look. In short, it’s a 12 minutes in the room, up to seven of which is spent giving a presentation of your choice. the remaining time up to the 12 minute mark is a question-and-answer session. The presentation medium is up to you, and FIRST also gives you the option of showing your video in the room as a part of your seven minute presentation.
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