QT Sign-Up and Remote Judging

by | Jan 26, 2021 | Competition, Game Changers, Games, News, Ultimate Goal | 0 comments

Qualifying Tournament Sign-Up

Sign-ups for the Qualifying Tournaments will be on our website (http://www.firsttechsocal.org/) and will open on Monday, February 1st at 7 AM and will close on Saturday, February 20th at 11 PM. Teams will compete in one Qualifying Tournament (March 14, 20, 28, or April 3) but will be asked to give their 1st and 2nd preferences. Teams will be placed on a first come first served basis. 

Remote Judging Announcement 

As we get closer to our “virtual” judged events starting in March, we thought it would be helpful to provide a summary of how we expect judging to work in the Los Angeles region. 

Here are the important points:

  1. All judging activities will occur on “QT Day”.  There will be no “pre-judging” during QT week.
  2. In the virtual environment, game play results/match observations will not be considered for judged awards.
  3. We will require all documents [Engineering Portfolio, Control Award Submission and Judging Feedback] to be uploaded to the portal [TBD] prior to event day.  Exact deadline for this submission will be announced later.
  4. Each team will be assigned a Zoom breakout room before judging starts for the day.  Teams will remain in their own breakout room.
  5. Judges will move from room to room as required to conduct interviews and ask questions throughout the day.
  6. For the morning interviews, we expect that we will have a panel of two judges doing 15 minute interviews with each team every 30 minutes.  This will allow for the judges to have preliminary deliberation times between interview slots.  We expect to begin a.m. panel interviews at 8:30 am.
  7. The morning sessions will allow for you to make a 5-minute presentation.  After this time is up, the judges will have up to 10 minutes to ask questions of the team.
  8. There will be a lunch break – exact time TBD.
  9. In the afternoon, we will do virtual pit interviews.  You will be assigned a specific 20-minute time slot to be available in your breakout room to answer questions from the judges.  These questions may relate to more than one award!  These afternoon interview slots will be held in the SAME breakout room you had in the morning.
  10. Teams are expected to be in their designated rooms ONLY for the 30 minutes [maximum] in the morning and the 20 minutes in the afternoon.
  11. We expect to announce award winners during the virtual closing ceremony to be held late in the afternoon on the day of the event.

As we learn more from FIRST and make decisions on how to optimize the day’s activities, we will be certain to keep you updated.