[Michael R. Lee]

When we found out about the original Championship qualification rules (odd/even), we balked. But that was a quick fix to the issue. A lot of us balked because well, we're not g. I was lucky enough to be on a team that automatically qualified that year and so were a few friends that I met the previous year.

And here they've come up with a solution, I say a solution. And I challenge you to come up with a solution yourself and post it here. Can you? Would you? Then you go tell FIRST what to do. Those of us in GEU110 (Engineering Design here at NU) there's this thing called the engineering design process that we're learning about. And part of it is evaluation and design analysis (not necessarily together). It may change or it may not.

I understand your guys’ complaints about not being able to go. Last year, I chose as an individual whether to go or not to go to Houston. I chose not to go cause of a whole bunch of reasons. Did I want to go, yeah? But I also had to be somewhere else at the same time. Did it bite, yes it did. But I had fun doing what I was doing so it all balanced out in the end. Yeah, I missed some of my FIRST friends who went, saw a FIRST friend who didn't go. And I'll agree with you that one of the best places to get people hooked on FIRST is the Championship Event. But how big can they possibly make it? We maxed out Disney, and they have pretty big parking lots (trust me, being from FL, I know how important that sales tax revenue from all the tourists are) and not to mention there are an extensive number of hotels on property and in the Orlando-Kissimmee Area.

But you also have to understand the magnitude and scale of putting on such an event. And putting one on at that magnitude isn't easy. Have you ever walked all around the Epcot Parking Lot, just not through the tents, watched the film showing them (of course at x time) of them setting up the tents and all? It’s a lot of work. Did you hear the guy from Disney telling us how many pounds of hotdogs, hamburgers, etc... that we all ate? To FIRST I would like to say this, it’s the same thing I said to the adult mentors I've worked with for the past four years of high school and in its essence: "THANKS FOR EVERYTHING GUYS."

And one more thing, all our concerns/complaints, they were probably brought up at the meeting when they were drafting this new criteria.