Can someone explain to me why FIRST keeps putting off the Chairman’s reveal until after the majority of teams at Einstein leave? It just seems so counterintuitive that the biggest and most important award in FRC gets such a marginal amount of attention, being presented at a time when hardly anyone is around.
Remember when they did it early so the winning team had the best seats in the house
Remember when there was a good seat in the house
Because they moved it to before finals and realized it was too good of an idea, so they moved it back to after.
/s
Yeah, so back in the day they used to announce the Chairmans winners before the Einstein finals. The team would come down, get a front row seat for Einstein, and perhaps most importantly, be recognized and applauded by everyone at champs.
However, 2-3 years ago, I think there was a desire to give Chairmans its own “stage,” so they decided to move the Chairmans presentation to a festival held after worlds.
Now, the rest is history, but as important as Chairmans is, FIRST still hasn’t realized that people are not willing to wait around for just the Chairmans Award winner to be announced, especially an event like Houston.
In my opinion, the old way was better in every way, and I’d like to see FIRST return to recognizing the Chairmans winner as a part of the Einstein show.
- Sunny G.
The root cause is that FIRST CANNOT end Einstein on time. Period. You’d think that after 14 years, they’d have figured out a method. (You think I’m joking? Think again.)
If FIRST could just, for ONCE, end Einstein BEFORE teams had to leave to feed thousands of hungry students, BEFORE teams had to get their students to sleep so they could leave to go home in the morning, THEN teams would be more likely to STAY. End at, say, 6 PM, teams will be more likely to stay. Heck, end at 8 like you SAID you would, and maybe most of the teams will stay. End at 10PM? !@#$&!@$^@!($^!@$^!@($^!@*$^!@ ***NO!!!
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I hope I make myself clear. It’s not that the teams can’t stay, or don’t want to stay. It’s that they need to leave to keep other appointments!
And the solution isn’t necessarily to put Chairman’s first. It’s more likely to be to end on time! (Read: “Sorry, random executive/speaker/video, you got 5 minutes. At 6, your mic is GONE.”) You need to at least TRY.
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Move Chairman’s to before finals - People complain
Move Chariman’s back to after finals - People complain
:rolleyes:
I’m pretty sure it has to do with something about keeping teams around and giving them some incentive to listen to the fillers and what not.
During finals!
Move Chairman’s to before autonomous - People complain
Move Chairman’s back to after autonomous - People complain
:rolleyes:
They could pause between auto and teleop to announce the Chairman’s winner while the judges count the auto points
As someone who stayed around to wait for the Chairman’s Award winner to be announced live it was so sad to see a mostly empty stadium welcome our new hall of fame team.
I was not a fan of moving Chairman’s award to before/during Einstein when it happened, but after the last few years of it moving back to after I know which I would prefer.
From what I have seen in the last five years of being a part of this chaos is that FIRST is going through growth pangs and is struggling to cope. There are a lot of things to discuss about the apparent difficulties in growing so rapidly (a la Two Champs, Districts vs Regionals, etc), but there is no easy answer for any of them.
Having the pre-eminent award at the end makes sense on the face. However, I agree with awarding the organization’s biggest award before the final competition of a long season. Get the team in front of a big crowd, get them prime seating for the final event, allow for them to take it all in with a huge audience.
Hopefully they can rectify this for next season.
Oh- and make certain that the Woodie Flower recipient can be there would be nice. Glenn deserved that at least!
Basically people post on CD to complain.
Which is why so many people in FIRST no longer use or respect CD anymore…
Struggling to cope? Seriously? They haven’t figured it out by now?
I am usually the first one to defend NH, but my goodness what the 
are they thinking?
In the past <forever> years it has become terribly clear that there is no way to run division finals and Einstein on the same day. Yet we continue to accept this as “OK”.
Even the Oscars took the hint and opened their eyes.
When FIRST gives us ample reason to be angry people will discuss it, yes
OK lets get serious here for a minute.
I have been to 18 Championships. I have seen Chairmans presented at the beginning, middle, end, and also at the wrap party. (very strange decision)
Starting in 2000 and for the next several Championships, the closing ceremony was short enough that almost everyone stayed for the Chairman’s presentation out of respect for the award. Then FIRST started making longer and longer closing ceremonies.
Suddenly you had teams that were worried about everything from missing flights to getting enough food for their kids, not to mention putting a teenager in seat for several hours straight. So teams started leaving the building after the last point was scored on Einstein.
One of the saddest things I ever saw at Champs was 2007. MOE won the Chairman’s Award in a nearly empty stadium. The event ran way past time and Teams were running to the exits to catch buses, flights, and get access to the limited food at the wrap party. It was not meant to disrespect MOE, but teams had had enough. Despite all of this, I made Team 341 stay in their seats in honor of MOE’s accomplishments, but I get the reason that other team’s leave.
I think the best solution is two fold. Announce Chairman’s before Einstein Finals begin and please keep the event to a reasonable length. I am so thankful that when 341 received the Chairman’s Award in 2010, that the conditions were optimal. Every year since then, has been poorly planned for one reason or another. The Chairman’s winners deserve better treatment.
And finally, human beings were just not designed to sit in stadium seating for 6 hours. FIRST should heed the suggestions of teams and fix this permanently. Its not rocket science.
I think that FIRST just realized that chairmans isn’t exciting for most people, so they moved until after the exciting bits in hope that they would retain their audience for the fun bits. I know my old team never stayed for chairmans because no one on our team was interested in staying. They could just look up who won the award later so there was little point in staying.
Isn’t this a prime argument to have it before or during matches though?
If you consider it most important to have everyone present for the top award being presented, then yes.
If you consider it more important to have all of your guests shown the “exciting” pieces so that they dont leave early, losing interest in all of the award presentations, no. Or if you think the show should end on the biggest award, no.
I fall firmly into the first category, but not everyone does.