Holding regionals in expensive arenas with expensive lighting and sound and charging $9000 for two events is a bad model that stunts FRC's potential to grow. Put events in high school gyms with fewer teams per event. Make it possible for every team to attend two events for their initial $5000 registration fee.
Zondag says it better than I do in his FIRST in Michigan district system FAQ.
The excessive speeches on Einstein are a huge gaffe that they keep repeating every year. Find different way to honor and thank our generous sponsors that are not counterproductive. Bombarding students with speeches is quite ineffective. At least make them really short and sweet - they are not supposed to be keynote speeches, are they? Or limit the number of speeches to ONE or TWO. And as much as I respect and admire Dean Kamen and all of his contributions to society, his quiet manner of speaking is not very energizing. I couldn't even understand half of what he was saying because he speaks so quietly.
Einstein should be shorter. Give out more of the awards at a different time such as the opening ceremonies. Maybe give out a couple more awards at the division level, or heck, give all of the awards except CA and a couple others as division level awards. For the time slots that need to be filled between Einstein matches, how about some compelling videos? I think a well made 1-2 minute video can be more effective at delivering a message to high school students than a speech by the CEO of a company.
Let's get rid of the 6 week build season (also discussed in Zondag's FAQ). We built these robots in 6 weeks... except we didn't. It took my team the whole time leading up to the Championship to get our robot to where it ended up. We used the withholding allowance and installed stuff at each event. It is pointless to make us bag it and work on a practice robot - it simply consumes a bunch more resources and slows us down some. I think the attachment to the 6 week build season is mostly sentimental.
It has been a great season overall. I posted in both threads, and I listed a bunch more items in the positive thread than I did in this one. Great job on 2013. I hope FIRST continues to make some changes in places where it makes sense.