Although having fun and competing are our first priority, throughout the season Business also applies to a couple of awards. Most awards can be won at two levels: Regional and Championship. The awards we will be focusing on during the 2010-2011 season are the: Chairman’s Award, Website Award, Entrepreneurship Award, and Woodie Flowers Award.

Chairman’s Award

The Chairman’s Award encompasses the spirit of FIRST, and is the most prestigious award of the competition. It honors the ‘model’ team that best embodies FIRST and its principles, and best spreads the message of FIRST throughout the community. Other evaluative factors include the impact of FIRST on the team and how strong the team partnership is. In effect, this award is granted to the team that goes beyond the technical side of Robotics, to understanding what FIRST is truly about: gracious professionalism, coopertition, inspiration in and appreciation of science and technology, etc. It’s all about the FIRST experience.

Besides the award, winners of the Chairman’s Award will choose a junior or senior (who best embodies the spirit of FIRST within the team) to receive the Allaire Medal (in honor of Paul A. Allaire). The recipient must be accepted into a 4 year degree program at a college or university, and will additionally receive up to $10,000 in scholarship support.

Previous winners of the Chairman’s Award (Hall of Famers) are ineligible to compete again. It is also impossible for rookie teams to win. Additionally, if a team is working on both the Chairman’s award and the Woodie Flowers award (as we are), that team must choose only one to present. Each team will first submit a written application online, then bring to the regional event a DVD (and viewing equipment, e.g. a laptop) demonstrating why the team deserves to win the award.

Despite the aforementioned restrictions, it is encouraged for all teams to complete a submission. The process of applying helps each team understand itself (its priorities, goals, accomplishments, etc.) better. Also, the judges will critique each application, providing insight on where each team needs to expand, improve, etc. Because of the time it takes to read each submission and critique it (each team also gets a 5 minute presentation), teams must choose one regional event to submit their application.

This year, the entry deadline is noon EST February 17, 2011, or 9AM PST.

Since it’s impossible for a new team to win the Chairman’s award, the Rookie All Star Award is the rookie equivalent of the Chairman’s Award. It is granted to the rookie team that best implements the mission of FIRST and inspires students to STEM, recognizing the incredible effort it takes to start a team and time constraints on effective outreach (it takes a while for the message to get out.) To apply, the rookie team simply writes up a Chairman’s award application; it will be judged for the Rookie All Star Award instead.

Website Award

There are three subcategories to the website award: the Regional award, the Championship award, and the Website Excellence award. Website Excellence is an additional award granted to teams with at least 80% of the best possible score, based on judging criterion.

There are three primary categories each website will be scored on: content, functionality, and design. Articles should be recently updated and well written. They should (among other things) explain what FIRST is, what makes the team unique / team history, and recognize sponsors, mentors, and other important people. The website should also support other teams, either by linking to resources or providing resources of its own. Pages should quickly load, and be accessible across all major browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari) as well as mobile devices. The website should implement various forms of media, like photos, videos, etc. Teams should also consider use of HTML and CSS. Besides that, the website should also be aesthetically appealing and easily navigable. It should have an inviting and reader friendly design. Finally, any website that is deaf and blind accessible gets extra credit. Inappropriate language and content and/or copyright infringement will be penalized, or even disqualify the team.

This year, the entry deadline is noon EST February 17, 2011, or 9AM PST.

Entrepreneurship Award

FRC prides itself on being a competition where teams run themselves like a student-run business, and the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Entrepreneurship Award honors the business side of competition. A formal business plan will be given to judges at the regional event, demonstrating how the team has managed its funding and achieved its objectives, and what the team’s business goals are for the future. There will then be a pit interview where two or three people will explain to the judge how the team’s business side functions.

Our first regional event will be at UC Davis March 17, 2011.

Woodie Flowers Award

Dr. Woodie Flowers is the Professer Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He, along with Dean Kamen, co-founded FIRST robotics competition and has been the national adviser since 1989. Flowers was in part inspired to create the program by a program he ran at MIT for the sophomores: he would give them each a few motors and some random parts, and using those materials, the students were to create robots that would compete. This sort of mini-FRC game became incredibly popular, even being broadcasted on PBS in the ‘80s and ‘90s. He has won various awards and accolades, including a Honoris Causa from Andreas Bello University, a Public Service Medal from NASA, and The Joel and Ruth Spria Outstanding Design Educator Award from ASME.Dr. Flowers was the first recipient of the Woodie Flowers award in 1996, and this award is now given to mentors for their outstanding contributions to the members on their team. Dr. Flowers has made numerous contributions to FIRST, making his award highly prestigious, and something that our team has been working towards.

Rookie Inspiration Award

Besides these four awards, Team 2489 would like to mention the Rookie Inspiration Award, which we won our first year, the 2008 season. The Rookie Inspiration Award is given to the first-year team with the best recruiting and outreach efforts in their local community. The Insomniacs had several build-season members that spent a lot of their time leading, mentoring, and helping local FTC teams. FTC Team 548, Geek Squad, took first place at the East Bay regional tournament in 2007, with several Team 2489 members leading and managing the team, including Danny Yeap, Kevin Yeap, and Cyrus Sutaria. Team member Henna Jethani also led FTC Team 455, the Transformers, an introductory robotics team at Mission San Jose High School, and member Albert Yuan led their programming efforts. These members are all prominent alumni in our team history.

For an explanation of other awards in the FRC program, part two of this article is continued here.