HELP! Posters/ Boards for presentation

Hi guys!

Quick question about the posters you use to present your robot. My team is creating ours and I was just wondering about it.

My team is going to have a picture of our robot on it, but I can’t figure out what to write as an explanation for it. Can you please give me any ideas. Comp is on Saturday so we need to get this done ASAP. Thanks!

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IMO you shouldn’t have any writing on a trifold other than specs, team name, number, and member names, as well as other basic necessities. There should be no need for an explanation. Otherwise, the judges would read the trifold instead of an interview

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In our experience a tri fold is very unnecessary. i’d highly advise against since all the info you would need is already in your noggin, and are the visual aid you need is sitting right in front of you.

if your using it for a presentation for the interview, i would practice just calmly telling someone the various features about ur robot. the interview should be as natural and unawkard as possible.

as generally you going to want as much space as you can get when you go to competitions anyways

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Hello again!

So for the member names, I was wondering if we should out the bios with it, or just a picture of our team. We do have a dedicated space for the jobs and names on our tri-fold.

Thx!

Bios are unnecessary, just do names. I didn’t say earlier because I believe you cane to the conclusion to do a trifold after lots of deliberation, however I agree with @cykaraptor . My old team was required to do a trifold by our coach and it was a waste of time. However, you should do whatever is comfortable for your team.

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I believe that you can both save time and money by grabbing a school laptop and just running a nice little and quick powerpoint about your team. Maybe buy a banner or something else using your team logo, as you can use it for year after year. But, to be honest, your time should be spent building, programming, and driving with little time on being showy and presenting. Time is precious, so don’t waste much on something temporary as compared to something that can cause memories that are permanent.

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@64540A Thx so much. Our team in new to this we r the newb team out of the 4 our school has and all the other teams are doing one and since we have time we thought why not. anyway thx for the info

@Connor thank u so much. we had an open build the other day so we r kinda ahead of the rest. thx for the advice, we can use it in the furture as well.

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When our team won the design award at a competition last year we were interviewed by the judges about 7 or 8 times (!!). I agree with @cykaraptor, we did not use any sort of visual either. In my opinion the most important thing the judges look for is for all the members to have a working technical knowledge of the robot along with a sophisticated design, so I would first make sure all of the members on your team have a working knowledge of the design and make sure everyone is prepared to answer questions!

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@MihirShah thanks so much! Today we r planning to make sure everyone knows bout the robot. Plus our board is almost done. Thank u for the info!

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Hello again! I have another question regarding presentations.

So we we’re wondering the pros and cons of making a wooden poster. We think that it may be good to help us win Design or Excellence (since they both qualify in States). None of us have ever attempted one before, and we were wondering the pros and cons of it.

Overall, is it worth making a wooden board, or should we stick to a normal cardboard board.

Thank you!

Like many others, I would recommend no board. The best way to win design or excellence is to write a good notebook and practice interviewing. There is no requirement or even mention of a poster or…uh…wooden poster in the Judge Guide.

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Thank you for the advice.

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I agree, producing a posterboard is definitely not a requirement for judges awards - off the top of my head, I can’t remember any team here in WV having one for that purpose.

That said, provided your notebook and interview are up to snuff, producing such a board probably won’t actively hurt your chances either - so if there is a particular aspect of your robot design, code, or project planning that you want to highlight in your interview, and that would really benefit from a visual aid, then it’s something you could consider.

However, if you decide to do that, I can’t think of any reason to construct a posterboard from wood specifically - a normal dollar-store trifold would be fine.

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I’m a regular judge. We want to see an amazing notebook and then a good interview.

If you want to get noticed by other teams make a 3x5 or a 5x7 card with a picture of your robot and team number on one side and all the great things you can do on the back. As the season progresses, add your awards and placements from other events.

The ability to network with other teams is a key thing. Teams have a tendency to

  1. Pick a sister team
  2. Pick a team they have worked with before
  3. Pick a team they have talked to and know
  4. Pick a team they have scouted
  5. Pick the next team in the pick list

Move yourself up the list…

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@Foster

Thank you so much for the help!

Our girls are one of the few that we’ve seen in MI that still produces a display board. Its come in handy with people that come out to see the robots and for other teams when scouting. In addition, we have made business cards at vistaprint for cheap with the team name and logo, and you can get business card sized stickers to put on the back. They use these to print what the robot does and how it performs and stick this on the back. They are used as handouts to prospective partners at competitions so other teams have something in their hands as a reminder of who the girls are and what they do - things like, basics of the robot design, that we are currently 3rd place in skills in MI, and 1st place in programming. We have 4 auton programs, two for each color of the field, and they list their contributing score for each part. They also list their average placement and scores for the season.

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Next comp I’m probs just gonna have a paper with answers to common scouting questions so I don’t have to talk to ppl lol

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