[Joe Ross]

Ed,

We seem to go through this issue every year. We appreciate the fact that your team has standards for scouting, but perhaps a little more guidance is needed for the students.

Definetly, make sure they start with the FIRST website. I've seen a few cases where people post here for information on a team with contact information on thier website.

Next, show them how to search for members of chiefdelphi. It's gotten more complicated with the upgrade to VB3, so maybe they need more guidance. As Brandon has been diligently pointing out, there are many cases where people are posting before searching for members.

Next, they should use google. Its amazing what type of press coverage or other stuff that can give you contact information.

Lastly, they should post here. If they can't find contact information for multiple teams, they should have all of them listed in the same thread. Also in that thread, they should detail what methods they used to find the team.

One other thing, whomever has access to TIMS on your team can get contact information for any team (or so I'm told). Perhaps you should make that information availible to your students after they show a certain amount of effort in finding that information on their own.