Thanks for asking. Honestly.
- Make the event accessible to as many teams and people as possible. This seems obvious, but it can't hurt to mention it. Atlanta wants hotel rooms booked? Offer hotel-only packages at a discounted rate and let teams who can't compete come down and learn.
- Ditch the even/odd qualification process, but avoid, at all costs, a robot performance based system. FIRST isn't about the robots -- I think you've all said that yourself -- so now is the time to really send that message home.
- Place more emphasis on various awards by increasing their consideration when allowing a team to attend the Championship event. This might include technical awards, judges awards, animation, Inventor, etc.
I can't express how disappointed and surprised I was to learn that the Engineering Inspiration Award didn't qualify a team to attend the Championship. If it's supposed to be second to the Chairman's Award in importance, why isn't it treated that way? - Create a pool of interested teams. Possibly ask them to pay event registration ahead of time. Then, randomly select a number of teams from that pool to attend. Do this early so as to give them ample opportunity to do other things with that money.
- Eliminate automatic inclusion of inaugural year teams.
- Make points accumulation cumulative across several seasons. It rewards hard work and patience. Teams could then bank those points and choose to use them whenever they'd wish.
My overwhelming feeling is that the Competition has begun to err more toward being a competitive event that rewards winning matches and success at regionals over inspiration and recognition of science and engineering; and of science and engineers. I'd like to see steps taken to correct our course, so to speak, so that we're including as many people as possible in the good experiences the Championship has to offer and doing so in as egalitarian and balanced way as possible.