This year we're doing two regionals, both out of town. (The NASA grant to go to Las Vegas was too good to pass up). We decided to skip Silicon Valley since being local really didn't seem to affect how much support we got from club members and the school in general. It's easier to control the students when we're out of town. However, as a lot of the students seem to think the club should subsidize their travel and accomodations, we're trying to keep track of who actually contributes to the robot before handing out resources.
I also think the floor teams should be very familiar with the robot as if we get to the finals, they may have to make repairs on the floor. This happened to us last year in Sacramento. This year no one seems to have the attention span to pay attention to how the robot is going together. This is becoming very frustrating to me. There's so much in the assembly that the students don't have the mechanical skills to really do (or at least these students) but my feeling is they should be watching and learning how it is done. Then when some of the simpler and more repetitive tasks come along, they could take over and finish. But after a few minutes of watching apparently they've spent their attention span and are off partying. I haven't had a day off since the kickoff and it's getting old, can you tell?
