My point here is not to blame judges, but asking the judges to be judicious about their skills and what they can judge and what they cannot when given a judging event which they don't have a clue about. Yes we did get a rookie judge team which had no clue about. Misjudging can disappoint any team that gets affected.
Request to the organizers while assigning events (Project/robot/core values) to the judge volunteers, to atleast put one experienced with a rookie and not both rookies. I could see our judges during the event and their face clearly tells they had no clue. Kids presented their project and solution to experts and they all got appreciation.
While I understand judges are volunteers and humans, sometimes having inexperienced judges and no knowledge on the topic can be really hurting. Its not sour grapes (we have been to states and won awards earlier, so winning an award is not a point at all). Point here is the feedback given shows that the judges were not paying attention to the presentation at all (which I noticed during their questions, as they were asking questions that were already clearly explained and also given a handout the bio's of the experts they showed their solution).
It was clearly visible from the feedback that our team were not judged correctly (even judging correctly may not have changed the outcome) and kids were completely let down after they saw the feedback from the judges for the project. They have done a lot of research and the subject on the space radiation is huge, One comment was that the solution was not original, explains it all they didn't have a clue what the solution was.
So long mail is not to change the outcome of the event. But, an effort for other teams not to get affected by misjudging and inexperience. This is not to hurt feelings of volunteers who are doing excellent job, but suggestion to make things better.
Thanks,
Sreeni Konanki
Team Geminids - 23731