What would be some great things to bring up in our excellence award interview at worlds? Our other MS team will probably be coming in with us so we will give them about half the time. What are some great things to bring up to fill 10 minutes of an excellence interview? We will do a very brief overview of the robot, but the robot discussion will be saved for the design interview. I know mostly what we are going to say, but some suggestions would be awesome!
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You should look at the Excellence Award guide for some details.
From what I’ve seen Worlds Excellence is part robot / part outreach and community interactions.
Based on 2 middle school teams I’d do ~4 mins on the robots. Each team can talk about what is cool and important to notice on their robot.
Then spend 5 mins on the other things about your team. Members, backgrounds, why VEX competition robotics is the greatest thing since sliced bread, how you have changed peoples lives.
Thats only 9 minutes, but it gives a chance for questions and a few seconds to stumble on the words.
Pro tip: Plan your talk, every second, Make sure ALL the presenters talk. Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice. Look the judges in the eyes, and smile. This is FUN. Make a handout with the BIG points on it to give to the judges.
Oh yea, practice!
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To add to this I would say practice with lots of different judges and one at a time.( partially to avoid the bystander effect and partially to avoid judges opinions influencing eachother and overwriting what they actually thought)
A lot of team script their interviews and end up giving the verbatim speech every time. This is inherently flawed. If that is the only way to ensure that your team can give a presentation that flows well than obviously it is what you have to do. But if you can give a speech that is fluid and acknowledge the fact that communication is two ways you will perform better every time. Remember that judges are different and will react better to different things.
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