[miketwalker]

Unfortuanately, nobody will do anything for free. Your payment might be (say for mentors) to see your kids doing so well. For engineers it could be to help them have more engineers in the future. For Dean Kamen it might be to help him promote segway (which he always seems to do). For Disney, it is to make some money. I am both sided on this debate. On one hand Disney might make profit but not as much as they could be, as said earlier in this discussion. On the other hand, rookie teams and large teams cant afford it. I am more onto the side of agreeing with it though. Is it fair for a team with 100 people to pay the same as a team that only has enough sponsors for 10? Yes $75 is alot if you put 100 people into that. I think it helps balance it out though. Maybe they should change the registration fee since you do pay at regionals already. The restrictions on going to Nationals are good and bad. Some teams should go but cant cause of restrictions. But restrictions keep it possible to even hold the regional. Another thing I would like to throw into this mix that I saw earlier was about FIRST becoming much larger and more publicized. The public is going the wrong way. They are going more towards battlebots and now they are making some high school battlebots show. Battlebots is educational in a minimal way. Only a few people build it, its serious competition, no second chances, and your not trying to perform advanced tasks, your just spinning a saw, wedging them, or using some pneumatics to flip them. I think CNN or some big network should hold a 30 minute segment, maybe once a week or two showing different competitions. This could bring the nation to notice FIRST more. Many dont know FIRST exists. I'm sure when you tell somebody who has never heard of FIRST, 90% of them say "what is it like battlebots?". This is a terrible vision. A network must try to help publicize us even if it's not that often. To show the better competition and get even more students into this. Which is what FIRST is all about, trying to change the youth from being more into sports but more into things they will actually use. Well that is my 2 cents.