Like seriously. Every other award name makes sense. But Chairmans? Is it Chairman’s or Chairmans, or the all-too-common ‘Chairmens’? What about the chairwomen and chairchildren, too?
Every other award has a simple, straight-forward name. Safety award is for safety. Autonomous award is for autonomous. Even Engineering Inspiration is about inspiring others through engineering.
But Chairmans, the most important and sought-after award in all of FIRST, doesn’t have a self-explanatory name. When someone tells a spectator “We won a Chairman’s award”, they will say “Whats that?”, followed by [I assume] a long explanation trying to explain what exactly is chairmens and why it’s so important.
What suggestions do you have for calling chairmen’s award something else? The FIRST Mission award? The Don Bossi award? The Segway award? I want to hear your suggestions.
This is my biggest annoyance with the name. Its the highest honor you could achieve but it doesn’t have the same ring to it as, say, regional/district/territory/etc winner.
Here is a quick poll to get some feedback:
Keep it the same
Rename it to “The Most Prestigious Award”
Borrow from sports - something along the lines of MVP (MVT?)
I do generally like the name of the ‘FIRST Inspiration Award’ if we are being real here. Similar to Engineering Inspiration, but makes more sense than Chairman’s.
I like the name FIRST mission award. Maybe it’s not momentus enough, though. Most valuable team is also okay. It gives you a sense that it is the hardest and most important one to win. However, maybe a different word besides valuable could be chosen to reflect it being about off-field contributions.
Are the pyramid comments about how the award has become more about promoting FIRST rather than STEM and FIRST values in general? Or are they just jokes? Satire?
I’ll second that. I like that it has inspiration in the name. As the “most inspiring team” or something. Or the “FIEO Award” (For Inspiration, Education, and Outreach)
Although chairman’s awards are not exclusive to FIRST. The are many industries that have them and they usually mean about the same thing (a significant contribution towards a goal or ideal) Many people have no idea what they are unless they, or someone they know has won one. Having a more descriptive name would help both students and outsiders understand the goal of such an award.
If even considering renaming (which I am against), something like MVP wouldn’t match. An MVP award is given in sports for a single year’s accomplishments. Something like a lifetime achievement (maybe not worded exactly that way but something of the sort) would fit much better.
The thing is about the current name: it’s hard to explain what it is. Nothing can change how confusing the award is when first learning about it, not even changing the name. The award is, in a sense, so broad that it can’t be understood unless taking a look at how individual teams embody it. It carries momentous importance to FIRST in so many ways that it wouldn’t be right to pick a specific direction (like outreach or communication) because it would limit the goals of the Chairman’s award.
I personally wouldn’t like the award name to be changed to the MVP or MVT awards as described above. Calling it these now makes me have to explain that the award is not about robot performance at all despite the nature of the competition making it seem like it would relate to the best performing robot.
I do however love the idea of naming something along the lines of the FIRST Inspiration award. It easier to explain and sounds like an important award just from the name. It would take me a couple years to get used to chairman’s being called something else and I think that’s where the most opposition to changing the award would originate from. In the long run though I feel like it would be the right choice.
How about we call it the “FIRST Inspirational Leadership” Award? Seems to be what the Award is celebrating, and I’ve never seen the Chairman of the Board ever give out the Award. Have I just never been paying attention at Champs?
