[Swampdude]

One thing that I would try to do is make it easier on the teams competing in the finals. This year requiring them to specify what order the alliances would go out, or last year what side they would start from, was stressfull and made it unmanagable as far as getting a good strategy together. Our team wasn't really prepared for the rapid fire matches. You really need a seasoned team management effort in place to handle final matches. At that point your already dealing with any quick repairs, battery changeouts, quick strategy sessions, opponent evaluations etc. For your typical team, this is overwhelming. Especially after already having dealt with 2 1/2 days of straight competition.
So basically when it comes to making rules for the finals, I'd ask that you go easy on us. I like the time out thing, maybe add a couple short ones. It would be nice to maximize in-between final match times as much as possible. I know it cuts into the days schedule. Which is why I think considering how many more teams there are now, you really need to figure out how to fit more matches in per day. This would buy more time for the finals, and help to fit more teams into all of the regionals.
Which means a simplified field setup, scoring and quicker seeding match turnarounds (announcements). If you shaved 30 seconds off every match you buy an hour extra for finals.
Also I suggest you make printouts of the seeding results available to everyone towards the end of seeding on Saturday. This would help us in the alliance selection process. It gets hectic at that point, and that would be a nice little tool to help us all a little better. Some teams don't have the resources to organize a very concerted scouting effort.

Thanks!