[MikeDubreuil]

I think this year has marked a low point in FIRST history. The year where FIRST showed that they truly do not care about their primary customer: the teams. FIRST demonstrated incredible negligence with the field scoring system and ranking software.

First week regionals should not have major software issues. Every regional should consistently be good. It is not appropriate for teams to pay their money and get a worse experience simply because software was poorly tested. It is not acceptable to “shake out the bugs” at early regionals. Shame on FIRST for allowing this to happen. In the business world, the real world, this amount of negligence would not be acceptable.

It is quite ironic that this years game is called Aim High when FIRST obviously does not set the same standard for themselves. It should be no wonder to FIRST why the team retention rate is dropping with each passing year. They have isolated teams by not embracing us as customers.

Although this post may seem quite negative I do think there is one positive to the year. We still inspired high school students. FIRST may have alienated mentors the most this year out of any other but this mentor will be back next year. I just hope FIRST will “get it” next year.