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Originally Posted by Billfred
Are we to interpret "expanded to all teams" as teams won't be turned away with a good application, regardless of how many good applications there are?
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Great question, and I have to answer that in 2 parts.
1. Last year there was a lot of internal turmoil on whether or not we would allow "rookie" teams (defined by us as teams with less than 3 years experience) to be a part of the DAQ Pilot Program - this was mainly due to the "perceived" level of experience those teams had with the competition, and whether or not they would be good candidates for figuring out how to use the technology during the season. In the end it didn't matter, we still had a handful of "rookie" teams with applications as good or better than veteran teams, and they were accepted without hesitation. This year we wanted to make it clear (though maybe it turned out to be clear as mud) that we would accept applications from any team, as long as they are registered for an event, no matter how many years experience the team has.
2. To tackle your second question: last year we defined a specific number of teams we were looking for to participate in the pilot program, and in the end we extended that number by quite a bit because we just had that many good applications. This year we have not officially announced any specific numbers. Realize however resources
ARE limited - we'd love to give out 1300 of these things to FIRST so every team can have one, but at a $269 unit price it's just not affordable. We have a certain number of the devices in storage ready to be shipped, and if we need to order/build more because the applications are just that good then so be it. We have a maximum number in our head and if we reach that on the first round of applications we'll decide if we need to increase that or stop the application process. I look at something like that as a good problem to have, and we'll deal with it as it comes up. I'll just say we're looking to hopefully add no fewer teams than what we had last year, with the upper bound based on budget and a small fudge factor.
You might also like to hear that NI has decided that we will be giving teams the LabVIEW 8.20 Full Development Suite this year - no more "student edition" nor watermark on the software!
-Danny