[Billfred]

Personally, I think shortened matches are not the answer. If you do that, you're spending more time in the queue, which is understandable. However, I'd rather be spending that time doing other things, like tweaking this, reprogramming that, and the occasional break for when nature calls. You can't really do that in the queueing line.

I'd personally like to see 3v3 return--the madness is perfect. However, let's up the match length to 3:00. You'd have fewer matches and fewer field resets, meaning that (in theory) your field would be in use more. With Dean's homework at Kickoff this year being to draw folks in off the street, I think keeping the excitement up is a big deal.

I would also assume the fix-it window falls under radical tournament ideas as well. I like the concept overall, but some areas just seemed ridiculous this year, most notably programming, the control system, and cosmetics. I would say that programming needs to be excluded from the fix-it window; as I said in some other post, the kids aren't gaining anything by coding it all and re-typing it at the event.

The control system, in my opinion, needs to be let go to a point as well. Since teams have the same capabilities on the OI, I would personally allow changes to the control board that can be made without altering components (other than programming) on the robot. By doing so, you'd be allowing more folks a chance to do neater things such as mini-arms, instead of having to zip-tie two joysticks to a board the day of the regional.

Finally, there is the issue of cosmetics, such as labeling. When 1293 shipped Ockham this year, the panels were bare metal, with no sponsor logos in sight. Because it wasn't in the crate, we couldn't legally print off those sponsor logos until the pits opened at Palmetto. So that's what I wound up doing on my Thursday morning--walking to the Thomas Cooper Library in the pouring rain, uphill both ways, to print off three copies of our sponsors, at a total cost ot $0.75.

Overall, I like the idea of limiting fabrication time. However, I think some flexibility should be involved for things that can either be worked around, or involve no real fabrication.