i am sorry for any argument i may have caused now, prior to or after any of my posts, and i am sorry for starting the O/T'ness of this thread. with that said i want to propose a situation to everyone. You all say that you want the nationals bigger and you want to go, but you may not qualify this year, so i got a challenge for everyone who is not qualified to compete.
GO TO VOLUNTEER!
The only way that first will expand and the nationals can contain more teams, is if the volunteer amount goes up. So if your team is not qualified to compete, go to volunteer. Personally if i saw a team down volunteering that was or was not from around the Atlanta area, and did not qualify to compete but went to volunteer, that would show more inspiration to me and prob many other people/teams then if you had qualified and went to compete. So please everyone if you do not qualify what is restricting you from volunteering at nationals. Sign up and bring some team members, bring some rookies and show them what the whole atmosphere is about. Competing is not the only way for a team to be at nationals. So please feel free to help out with FIRST and give back to them for once, what they have been giving us for 13 years, and that is competitions. And if anyone out there might be so inclined to help out here are a few links that will help you in your "volunteer quest". You can sign up on-line when the system is put back up at
http://www.usfirst.org/volunteer/ and also you can get volunteer info at
http://www.usfirst.org/volunteers/ !!!!!
So if you DON'T go to compete, go to
VOLUNTEER!
~Mike