[rufu5]

While having FIRST come in and hold our hands for us sounds great, the GMAIL solution I have proposed leaves it up for the teams to create this network for themselves. A "home grown" solution such as this happens in every facet of industry, and with a little nudge, takes off and becomes a standard.

This method of communication would be for general contact between teams, such as getting a head engineers contact information, asking general questions, or getting in contact with other students you meet during competition. You wouldn't be sending super secret encoded robot schematics. I know there is a chance for "e-mail stealing" but its a necessary risk, in my opinion, to overcome this "contact gap" that we have now.

I would love it if someone with "high up" connections in FIRST could get them to send an e-mail blast urging teams to join this network to stream-line team to team communication. I don't know what the "TIMS" system was, but it didn't seem to work, considering its gone now. I would really like to know more about it so we don't make the same mistake that it did.

And this is what FIRST is all about as well: High school students coming up with ideas that help out entire groups of people, while not relying on adults or engineers to come up with the ideas for them.