[sanddrag]

Here are my comments as a 15th-year FIRSTer:

• Revitalize the ability to be highly competitive with lower costs involved (get rid of the practice bot & practice field advantage due to bagging, among other things)
• Bring back the benefit to and emphasis on designing and manufacturing your own solutions, rather than buying a bunch of COTS stuff to put together.
• Reduce annual costs all around
• Incorporate elements that the general public will understand and care about (medieval castle whatnow?)
• Reduce the luck factors in the competition
• Reduce or cap the number of hours spent per year, and especially per week. In some sense, we have all really been duped into entering a competition of who can spend more hours than the next guy on this project.
• Reduce the focus on growing FIRST nationally as an organization, and increase the focus on each team growing themselves an organization
• Increase focus on student skill and knowledge attainment
• Track FIRST alumni
• Provide resources to help integrate FIRST with education, and with schools. Create more tie-ins with education. Organizations such as SkillsUSA have, why hasn't FIRST?
• Provide feedback on the Chairman's Award to teams who request it
• Get the story straight as to what the Chairman's and Engineering Inspiration Awards are and are not, and how they relate or do not relate to one another, and how they are judged.
• Eliminate about 1/4 of the volunteers. Sorry, I know that sounds harsh. The rainbows and butterflys story is that we love all of our volunteers (heck, I used to be one, for years). But the reality is, you look at (offseason) events that don't have as many, and they run very well, because the people they do have know what they're doing, and there's no extra people to hassle you about anything. Most of my most unpleasant times in FIRST have been those in which I've been hassled by a volunteer. I will say it has gotten a lot better in recent times though.