[Kevin Sevcik]

HOUSTON did not drop the ball guys. The Lone Star committee and the Houston Convention people tried as hard as the could to make it work. They were not included and consulted by FIRST incase you did not read Lucien's post. FIRST let the teams down and didn't put on a good Nationals and didn't give themselves enough time to make it good. You think Atlanta was better this year? Do you honestly think FIRST learned nothing at all from Houston and that they hit themselves on the head until the forgot everything everyone told them about Houston? They learned from their mistakes and brought that knowledge to Atlanta, and that's why Atlanta was successful.

To reiterate, Houston was nothing but absolutely, fully, and totally supportive of FIRST. FIRST turned a deaf ear the suggestions and advice from the local committtee, and they let the FIRST community down. Obviously FIRST realized the error of their ways and fixed the process in Atlanta, but it is in NO way the fault of Houston or any of the FIRST people in Houston that Nationals last year had problems. You can ask anyone who has attended LSR if the Houston committee knows what it's doing and how to put on a good event.

I will attempt to put it in terms that any FIRSTer can understand. Imagine you are a mentor of a rookie FIRST team. The team has an excellent machine shop at its disposal, CNC, the works. You and a team of expert FIRSTers and engineers are brought into the team 2 weeks late, but you know you can pull off a great design.... but the kids just won't listen to you and you can't do anything without them thanks to the rules of the team. You tell them how to make a great robot, and they go off and make every rookie mistake known to man. Imagine your frustration. Imagine how you would feel when other teams look at your robot that sort of runs and tell you that you did the best you could when you know that you could've done better if only the kids would have listened to your advice....

Except, of course, that all good FIRSTers know that rookie mistakes are due to inexperience and don't assume the team is fundamentally flawed and useless because their rookie year wasn't the best, don't they?