Hello, a question that may seem silly but is keeping me up at night is about the presentations in our pits, in my team’s two years of official competitions we have always prepared for the judges’ standard questions, we have practiced questions of different types and how they can be answered in the best way, however, some time ago a member of my team commented that he had seen something on some forum where the team commented that there was a scripted presentation that they made without any type of question from the evaluators, I looked in the manuals and until here in Delphi boss, but not I found nothing about this, could someone who understands this subject help me?
1 Like
Pit presentations are rarely scripted, in my experience. They’re intended to be informal Q&A processes where judges ask questions to learn more about the team, then nominate a subset for each award, and then determine who should win each award.
For Impact judging, they’re almost always scripted, but those are entirely separate.
That said, you’re allowed to prepare for the judging process however you’d like. I don’t know of any judges that would stop you from giving a fully prepared pit presentation, but I can’t say that would never happen.
4 Likes
Thank you very much, in this case the interview with the judge can be conducted in the way our team prefers, whether with traditional questions or with a script? If this is really the case, is there any criteria within the awards that reflects the conduct of the team’s presentation?
I think prepared but not scripted for the pit. Look at the workbook for ideas of what questions might get asked and have a plan to answer
4 Likes
Thank you very much, do you have any more books or information like this about assessments, if so where can they be found with the updates for 2025?
This is key - you never know exactly when the judges will show up, so it’s best to have all students able to give good, consistent answers. At least enough to stall till the more/most knowledgeable folks show up to be able to talk through the details.
The best years we’ve had usually involve students and/or mentors reviewing the judging guidelines, thinking through how they would answer each question and picking what they want the judges to know about the most.
From there, we prep a little “talking points” brochure that we have available to hand out at the pit.
Additionally, that’s the study material for any student that will be around the pit. They’ll want to be sure they at least memorized and can regurgitate the key points. Even better if they understand most of the points, and have stories from the build season they can tell related to the points.
1 Like
Could you explain these “talking points” better and what they are like?
