Boltman, if anything, is underrated.
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Oh, you said Batman.
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But only paired with the audio at literal deafening levels.
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FIRST should limit the allowed amount of NEOs and falcons like they used to do with CIMs
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FIRST should’ve kept Bag and Tag day
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My wife agreee with this. She says, “at least I had a husband for a couple weeks in February.”
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Are you asking me to prove it? I can’t specifically, except that I recall seeing one with a credits to the production company a few years ago. But you can see the videos online and some are clearly not the work of a bunch of high school students. Is that me making an assumption about the capabilities of high school students? I think I’d call it an educated guess – I know the skills involved in high-quality video production and it’s not just somebody who’s good at Adobe Premiere and After Effects. You’ve got to have people who are good at camera work, lighting, directing, and so on.
I mean, if a team shows up at a competition with a small nuclear reactor powering its pit, I’m going to assume, entirely without evidence, that it wasn’t student-built. Res ipsa loquitur.
That said, I was not aware that the video was only prepared AFTER a team won. I agree that this changes things – my view was that teams ought to do all the work for their own chairman’s submission. If they want to outsource a promotional video after they actually win, then not nearly as big of a deal, although I’m more impressed when they do it themselves – otherwise it has the feel of the cub scout pinewood derby where the dads do all the work.
Hydraulics should be worked into the rulebook as a legal subsystem.
Technically hydraulics is just using fluids to move material. Since air is a fluid, pneumatics are hydraulics. Therefore, hydraulics are legal.
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The video is prepared beforehand, submitted when they present at events, but it’s not viewed by judges until after they’ve decided who wins. So it’s prepared beforehand, but only used if and when a team wins the award. Its purpose is not as a judged item, but to be viewed by the audience after the award is announced.
That being said, if students have access to a video production company, that seems like a great learning opportunity for those students! Years back, our team was featured in a promotional video by FIRST, and the production company spent some time teaching our students about video production and let us have access to all of their professional footage. If that same studio was interested in making videos for us and showing us how it is done along the way, I would be all for that. It gives students interested in video production a direct “in” with a local studio and working alongside a professional. Seems like a win/win to me. Just because one video had credits to a production company doesn’t mean the students didn’t do anything.
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They need to get rid of the Engineering Inspiration award. Not reword it, not rename it, get rid of it. They could make something else, but the current EI needs to be gone.
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Chaotic systems that let the best teams win most - but not all - of their events are completely fine. As long as they still deservedly qualify and then move forwards, it’s fine.
Justification:
Top powerhouse teams are nearly never single-regional teams, and this gives those outside that elite group a chance, especially those who are “consistently-eliminated-in-semifinals-good”.
And seeing as it’s about inspiring as many as possible, CMP is a inspiring event and a single, rare event win is probably a bigger deal to the students of a team that lucked in to it, than to a team that had an unlucky break and managed to accomplish the rare feat of losing an event…so long as the powerhouses qualify, it’s no big deal.
I know for a fact this isnt always the case at regional events. I know a few events that did not follow this over the years.
Personally, I am not convinced the video 100% has no bearing on the outcomes uniformly across all events. Just my opinion.
Ooh. I have a very unpopular one. I miss the parody contest. (It was actually very fun being behind the camera of the two that my kids did, and they both came out great.)
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Semantics 
I want to use an incompressible fluid to do useful things (aka hydraulics). It’s the biggest mechanical system missing from our robots that is used in the real world all of the time.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
You make a massive assumption there, mate. A Boy Scout once built a small nuclear reactor. So I would not just assume that the high school students didn’t do it on their own.
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Nope. You can look that one up. Kid did manage to collect a bunch of radioactive material, but did not build a reactor, let alone generate power from it.
I’m curious of your thought process here. I’m from a team that hasn’t historically had the resources and students available to commit to chairman’s, so I like having an award that recognizes outreach and inspiration without the time commitment to a really detailed presentation and video.
I know this is a unpopular opinions thread. I’m not attacking your opinion, I’m just genuinely curious.
I don’t know if scouting supports this or not, but I’ve always felt that 3707 was better than 1323 in 2019
I love that there’s another outreach award, but my big problem is with the name. The name makes it seem robot/mechanism based, and not a team attribute/outreach award. In order to get another outreach award with a name that fits better, they have to overhaul IE, and just make a new award. Like, if they kept Chairman’s and made IE the Impact award, I would be over the moon. My big gripe is the name, not the fact the award exists.
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