[ewhitman]

Each episode (there are 8), will be one challenge. They give us the general idea of the challenge, and we have 30 minutes to write our ideas on a white board, then 5 minutes to present to the judges. The judges pick their 2 favorite ideas, and those people become the team captains. They take turns picking teams from the other 8 contestants.

Once we have teams, they give us the detailed rules and the budget (e.g. 4 days and $10,000). Then we build something. Then we test the devices and the judges eliminate somebody from the losing team. Eliminated contestants are no longer eligible for the grand prize, but they don't go home either, so the teams are always 5v5.

We had pretty good shops to work in (1 for each team) and could get parts from wherever we wanted (McMaster, of course, was a go-to choice because we needed stuff FAST).

They've only shown us the first episode ahead of time, but I'm happy with how it turned out.