[Rich Kressly]

On the whole, I'm very excited about going to Atlanta. It's a great city and I have wanted see it for a long time. Congrats to FIRST for negotiating a long-term deal in a prime location that has the potential for major media exposure and a lot to do for the students.
I too, at this very early stage, have the same "two building" questions Joe does. In addition, the thing I really didn't like about the Houston set up was how it affected judging and team members in the pits. I hope we can provide a solution for this over the next three years.
We made the decision in Houston to leave team members in the pits at all times to be available for judges. This means that two or three students were not able to be with the team during our matches which detracts somewhat from the team experience. Instead they watched the big screen in the Astrodome and we kept the cell phones open for them to hear. Still, knowing we had some of our seniors (the most experienced who can best tell our story), at their final event, having to sacrifice to that extent for the team, was a little uncomfortable to me as a teacher advisor.
I know other teams that left their pit empty for up to 45 minutes at a time, around each of their matches, in Houston. This obviously led to some "missed opportunties" for teams to tell more of their story and accomplishments to the judges, which is a huge part of what FIRST is all about.
I'd be very interested to hear a judge's point of view on how the two building set up worked for them, whether or not they found more empty pits than usual, if they were able to find their way to see match play as much as they wanted to, and what their suggestions are for improvement.
This may seem like a minor point, but I think, given some creative problem solving, we can work at providing the kind of judge-team interaction we are accustomed to seeing at regionals for the championship as well. What are your thoughts?