Give me that one diamond in the rough that when polished up turns tragedy into triumph and I’ll vote for you Tabor. But the problem still is that jpearman is a diamond mine. And when it comes to the one name wonders you are also competing against Foster.
This forum, should definitely should definitely be recognized. If it weren’t for it, it would be extremely hard to get clarifications on rules and help for beginner teams
I completely agree that there should be a forum award or something of that sort. I have found this resource very helpful when I was learning about VEX or just engineering, programming, physics, and sportsmanship. I am constantly telling my teams that they should check the forum every now and again so that they can learn something new that they may apply to their robots.
Probably the biggest helpers for me and my team when we have a question or problem would be Tabor and Jpearman. Looking back at the forums that I have subscribed to, these two have been in almost every one of them and have been very helpful. If we can’t find out a way to do an award for the forum, I would like to personally thank y’all for the help that you have provided me and my team. Thank you from Lemoore Middle College High School teams 6419A-F.
I completely agree that people on this forum deserve recognition for their contributions, from teaching and troubleshooting for other people, such as jpearman’s TBH in this thread and TOSS_BOSSES & Foster in this one to unique, creative, and cool design reveals, such as 824C’s lift in this thread (last one, I promise). Just out of curiosity, are the awards given at Worlds created and awarded by the GDC?
Back in 2013 we walked round with tags that had our forum IDs so people could actually match faces with the usernames we interact with electronically. Not that I’m against recognizing the contributions of people on the forums, but on what basis would you give out a forum award?
Also keep in mind jpearman won mentor of the year last season for his contributions.
No, the awards given at Worlds are given out by the judging committee of the RECF.
Two of those guys have already been recognized at worlds in previous years…
Foster Schucker - 2010 Mentor of the Year
James Pearman - 2015 Mentor of the Year
It was originally made for Worlds 2012 (the last one I went to), I lost the code for it, and then re-made it for 2013. It’s still around and available of course. 
I wore mine, " Hi, I’m FOSTER on VEX Forum" in 2011 in Orlando. Met lots of nice people. I saw it during my recent move, so I know I still have it.
They are a good idea, start wearing them at your local events!.
For what it’s worth, I’m betting that James does lots more for his teams, teams in his area and events / worlds than posts here on the VEX forums. :rolleyes:
I keep all sorts of things I really shouldn’t, just tend to throw this stuff in a box. Here are 2012 and 2013, don’t know what I did with the others.
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I’m slowly fading out of existence here. That’s OK. I stopped actually building stuff a while ago and have been focusing on my “education.” Aside from making some pretty renders and answer some code questions, I pretty much just complain about the problems here and there. To be honest though, there’s not much to complain about anymore.
We finally got our way with 3D printing in Vex U. A bunch of the parts I have been asking for, for years now, are finally here, and in general Vex has found a nice rhythm.
As for the forums, it’s a tight knit set of people as it should be. I don’t really feel like an award needs to be given, just knowing that people care is totally enough for me.
I am pretty sure JVN is going to get a framed copy of that post for his wall.
I might get one of these and wear it to a local event (I think the next one on the horizon is regionals) and see if anyone recognises me :D. Quite an interesting experiment 
Probably the last thing that needs to be done at Worlds is the handing out of yet another award. While I’m eternally grateful to the superstars on this forum, and to so many of the kids and mentors who’ve answered my questions and helped my teams with their designs, sitting through the awards ceremonies at Worlds borders on agony. Vex needs to figure out how to break up the awards thing at the end of the event: it’s just too long for us old people to endure. Even at local tournaments my kids are thinking more about pizza than about awards by the end of the day.
Besides that, do people really need to be handed an award to keep them motivated and helping others on the forum? Maybe they will disagree with me but I think the best way to honor superstars like Pearman, Foster, Tabor, et al, is to pass along their knowledge. While awards just gather more Dremel dust, the knowledge thing lives on in the people it gets passed on to.
Wasn’t mentor of the year given out at opening ceremonies. (I really should remember but I don’t)
Personally I think more awards that I found to be important would be worth it especially if they were early on in the tournament. The issue for me is that there are so many awards I don’t find to be important. Obviously though I bring a hyper competitive view point that is not really perfectly in line with VEX’s goals.
I think it would make everyone that voted or whatever feel like they had given something back. I know being up there to hand jpearman his trophy was one of my favorite VEX moments and I hope it meant something to him knowing how diverse of a group of people he helped.
It meant a great deal, you know that Griffin
Going back to the OP’s question.
I think the forum should be given a greater presence at worlds. There are still many students and mentors I talk to who have never heard of vexforum. We (well RECF, IFI or whoever owns the site) should use worlds to get the message out and market vexforum as a resource available to teams. Last year we had a social media center (small area with internet), it would be great to expand this into a vexforum area where teams could have access to computers to post and answer questions. Perhaps we could have some marketing material added to the registration packet that would encourage new members to go and sign up at the event. We could even have a time set aside to meet your favorite vexforum mentors and/or students, that would save everyone running around the convention center looking for each other.
I am not sure how is this going to work out. I can imagine most of us will be running around like crazy during world.
But it is definitely a good idea worth exploring. I remember I missed Tabor in this year world when he came looking for me and Torqueative (or Paul) and I just couldn’t find each other during 2014 world.
As the original poster, I am not wholly in disagreement with FullMetalMentor. I, too, have come to that time in my life when i wish to declutter more than collect. But I don’t think the intent of my original post was to simply add more awards. That initial post asked for some formal recognition concluding as follows:
“So can we look at formalizing some recognition even if it is just a recurring slide on the big screens in the pits. And if it comes to fruition, pics please. So we can say thanks in the halls”.
Considering the broad spectrum of individual efforts across the months, years and for some past decade, the current awards are not unwarranted even if the seats in Freedom Hall are not the most comfortable. But as noted above our recognition need not be another Dremel dust magnet. A series of forum superstars slides on a continuous integrated loop with the match results will give much more recognition than any walk across the stage. Call it a Hall of Fame (though VEX already has one of those) or perhaps for the more recently less heard from Cody–Hall of Shame(jk, there is always room here for irreverent ranting against “the Man”). This also need not be by any vote though I think most know who we would vote for. I don’t know whom they are but I know that there are mods on this forum who work hard to sustain its integrity and decorum and I would trust their selections, even self selections any day.
I would concur with jpearman that this forum is still an unknown resource for many and while there are times when there is a game changing post that I may secretly hope that not everyone noticed, i too think the game and community would be advanced by adding it to more teams’ toolboxes.
I’d rather have more Vex/IFI or RECF participation in the forums than another award. Having some PR booth or presentation at worlds is an excellent idea, but only the start.
I don’t think Vex and RECF folks are actively participating to the common board threads. If you look a long time ago you would see conversations from Vex/IFI folks versus leaving it up to the public members. Karthik seems to be the one person contributing but nearly solely in answering official questions or telling people they have offended someone (both are very valuable).
If Vex wants this forum to be a great place, I would hope they increase their contribution rates to when Vex was smaller and getting started. Cultivating the community should be one of their priorities to not only sell parts but continue the caliber of which the program has developed.
People roll off as they age out - look at the post counts and ask who’d that?. Some stay but not many and not at the rate they once did. The forums may need a bit of help from the people who actually get paid for this. Heck, IFI has quite an intern base, let them see how they can propose greater direction and interaction from the IFI/RECF crew.
Part of the vitality of the forms is dependent upon care and feeding from IFI and RECF to actively contribute for the next generation of Vex participants.
To be honest, if there were going to be an award, programming help would go to jpearman, and the most helpfulness and useful will go to Cody. You guys are extremely great, and I love the ability to chat with everyone around the nation with the same needs and wants, even though I sometimes spam the forum. Thanks everyone, and I hope everyone has a great day!