[EricH]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Out of curiosity, what makes you think there's motion on the overall attitude towards stop-build? I won't claim to know either way, but we had shipping to regionals through 2011, I think, with a slight overlap with Bag and Tag... that means there's been at least 5-6 years of wide spread bag and tag usage, and even longer of Stop Build day. I'm not aware of other surveys like this one going out to give us an idea of what the community thinks of the Stop Build deadline. I just don't see how we can infer any sort of trends from this single data point.

I'd answer with "what makes you think there isn't motion", but obviously that isn't an answer.

You're right, I have no hard data. What I do have is that the discussions on the topic have had a nice uptick in more recent years--time was, Ship Day was an absolute. Ship, or don't compete (without a waiver). Nowadays, I'd say for the last 2-3 years especially, there's been a decided move towards "Hey, so why do we have to be totally hands-off the competition robot again?" I don't think that started before districts and their bags (and out-of bag time--yeah, I'm lookin' at you, MI!) in '09, and I'm still pretty sure that it didn't start before the regionals started using bags a couple years later. I don't think there was much of any serious discussion for a couple years even then.

So there's a bit of an uptick in the discussion activity. I would say that that means increased awareness. (HQ just sending out the survey probably meant that they'd become aware of the discussions, which means they're getting bigger, too--or else somebody asked directly.) Increased awareness will generate some discussion and some thinking. I suspect that several people will change their minds--or have changed them--during the discussions.