In the Air Design Challenge - The Winners

Hi everyone,

First off, many thanks to everyone for their support in the votes as well as along the way. Additionally congratulations are in order for the Winner and Honorable Mentions as well as a round of applause for everyone for their efforts.

Secondly, there seems to be some issues with the results and I would like to add my two cents into the matter.

I understand how you feel Ambrogio Sir since I have been there myself. There have been time when I have spent endless hours working on something and felt my sacrifices were in vain.

     Everyone here produces content at their own pace and it takes time and effort as well and to say I did "A few short Posts" is not entirely correct. I have taken the time to do my research, work out the design, write up what I could and I am sorry if they pale to your standards but I am sure someone finds them useful.

     Having a lot of friends on the community and in real life is something I am guilty of and I am quite proud of it. I care a lot about the people around me and who I come in contact with. I appreciate you and your efforts as well and I hope in due time, we can reach a point where you would consider adding me to your list of friends.

     To argue if "someone" takes a challenge seriously is also something I would like to comment about. I am not sure how that can be measured since a lot of these design challenges work around the world with different people with different backgrounds and variable responsibilities. I did my homework in this instance and put in the time and effort to do what I did. I agree my progress was slow but that does not mean I filled up an application for the heck of it. I hope you understand.

     I am not trying to nor will I ever try to justify why I got so many vote. It was a peoples choice poll and yes I have friends who know me and cared enough to vote for me. I do not think that gives anyone the right to challenge the results or the win. I have lost challenges in the past and I respect e14's decision everytime even when it is not in my favor.

     Fredrick Sir, you are right when you say that I missed a few posts and we have a long thread of discussions that need not be repeated here and my reasoning was made clear far ahead of time. We have made suggestions and hope that future challenges have a more "agreeable" rule.

     Dragan Sir, I appreciate your point of view and I would like to add something with regards to the "Lobbying" as you mentioned. I teach around 600 engineering students every year who fortunately enjoy being in my class. It would be incredibly easy for me to muster up at least half that number of votes with a single call which I would consider unethical and hence out of question. This I say because I want to thank the people who voted and I appreciate their genuine support.

I have worked hard in the past and I have been appreciated for it as well for which I am highly grateful. I try to help out and produce useful content to the best of my abilities and in the course of time I have made friends who have helped me learn and become a better me. I am NOT ashamed of the fact that I have well wishers rather I am humbled by this fact and I hope this activity has not lessened the number. I put people, my friends and family before any THINGs because I believe that is the real wealth of life. This place is like a virtual home and the members a like minded family and I hope this gets resolved with no ill-will among us.

If there is still anything to be discussed, I request the concerned to open up a discussion in the Top Members section and leave this thread for other winners to be congratulated on. My apologies to the E14 Team and Dr. Christian DeFeo if they feel I am the cause of any inconvenience.

Sincerely,

IP

I understand how you feel Ambrogio Sir since I have been there myself

Really? Could you point out where there has been such an unfair behavior (please also have a look at the mcb1 post regarding you tweets)

I put people, my friends and family before any THINGs because I believe that is the real wealth of life

Come on, we are just talking about a design challenge, not about the meaning of life. BTW, I firmly believe in correctness and playing fair

Anyway (and this will be my last post on this topic), let's put it in this way: would you give a "A+" to a students of yours that in a classwork answered just one question out of 10 just because he or she has more friends than others? For sure such an evaluation criteria has never been used by any of my professors...

It should be advisable that someone put shame on this kind of unfair behaviours, or -in my opinion- the level of the challenges will inevitably drop. Who will bother about making a well thouight and built project if I can get a prize by simply tweeting and making some sort of public relations?

Hi Ambrogio,

I think you're absolutely right, it is not good to canvas for votes, however I wonder for those who occasionally tweet etc., it probably doesn't seem like canvassing. Also, possibly many of us didn't see any tweets. (I view or tweet perhaps once per year). By looking at the mix of votes, probably Frederick would have had the next highest amount of votes. Frederick had a strong project too, I guess it would be tight between Inderpreet and Frederick on this particular challenge.

I have a different theory: if there are some very strong projects, e.g. from person A and person B, then instinctively people may vote for person C since they believe A or B will win the main prize anyway. That may be just human nature to vote this way, although it is not logical of people. I could be wrong.

Anyway as a result I believe the honourable mention is an important mark to achieve. (I would believe that : ) - It reminds me at university - I didn't win the award for my degree project, but I got an honourable mention, so I had to be happy with that). I also agree it is nice to win something however, just saying that it is more complex than we might wish once we factor in everyone's voting habits.

Anyway, Ambrogio, congratulations again for the honourable award, your project was amazing I thought, and you had rich detail that I (and I am sure others) will learn from for years. I can see you're passionate about engineering because you want the level of competition to remain high (as do I). Inderpreet and Frederick and others deserve our congrats too, without them there would not be such amazing high quality competition from you, because they did work to a high standard too. (I wonder if we can blend bits from the projects to produce the ultimate 'in-the-air' solution by the way).

Hi shabaz

please don't misunderstand my posts

My intention is not to get any prize. I wouldn't say anything if fvan would have been awarded: he demonstrated to be a serious challenger and kept on working on its project till the end of the challenge (and I didn't checked but I'm quite sure he didn't send any tweet). I just want to point out that may be there is something wrong in how the Community award is conceived

Probably in (my) human nature there is something that force people to fight against injustice, and I strongly believe that not playing fair in a competition is really something to blame

My thoughts exactly. Being the second in the poll might give the impression that I'm being a sore loser though. I hope that the people that know me (a bit) know better than that.

In my book, Christever and Ambrogio should have been the two winners, as I should not be eligible myself for not using the mandatory components.

The fact that similar issues have happened before and the rules are still not enforced or modified, is a problem. I fear that a precedent may have been set, and people now know that the rules can be ignored without consequence.

Hi Ambrogio,

I totally understand, and I have the utmost respect for you that you're striving to advance the community.

Hi Ambrogio,

I totally understand, and I have the utmost respect for you that you're striving to advance the community.