[Brandon Holley]

The people at HQ and AM work very hard, I don't think anyone in this thread or involved in FIRST is questioning their efforts. However, I do think teams who have been deeply affected by this (my team included) have a right to look at the system and ask how it can be improved (many of us ARE engineers, or think like engineers....).

I think the draft system is an obvious leap to take, and is probably closer to the "ideal solution" than the current system. I do think there is an intermediate step that could be taken as well.

Market-driven ranking of the products is a good start. Poll all of the teams in October and ask them to rank what their top 5 selections would be given the catalog of FIRST choice options. Based on quantity of votes and quantity of product available, rank the choices more logically.

The Talon would obviously be high up on the ranking. Although there were 400 available, no hard limit allowed teams to buy them up ~10 at a time. By implementing a hard limit for this item, or a more cost prohibitive limit (25 credits?) the # of Talons available to each team would have been reduced. This allows more teams to get their hands on useful equipment. Maybe teams won't end up with enough speed controllers to outfit their entire robot, but now more teams will be able to outfit 30-50% of their robot with speed controllers.

I think there are many options available, and my hope is that we can provide constructive feedback without it being misconstrued as "attacking" staff members. We're all very passionate about this program, and we all invest a lot of time and money into it.

I have a duty to my team and our sponsors to ensure we are being put in a fair position with regards to how our finances are spent. Luckily- we are a team who can absorb the cost of a misfired FIRST Choice without it devastating our team, however I know for a fact many teams are not in this fortunate position.

-Brando