[FRCOps]

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Team people,
1.) Yes we really did disable Championship registration today due to "technical issues". I'll just say this as the guy who made the call - it didn't work as of 10:00 AM EST due to a setup issue. People who thought they'd been waitlisted? Their registrations were being vaporized. Think we've already p****d some people off? Try dealing with people whose registrations were lost....

We weren't sure when we'd be able to fix it and allow those who qualified to register to go for it. So to be fair to those who could, we shut it down.
Turns out the problem wasn't so bad, and it's fixed and will be ready to go tomorrow morning. Yeah, "it worked during testing". The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

2.) As to the new qualification rules... we had to do something. April 2001 was so big and difficult for everyone to manage that it really started to become a quality issue. Believe that we know a lot of people are not happy with this. We've heard it in emails, the Team Forums, and elsewhere. But Dean and the board - and Disney - want to make sure that above all else, the event encompasses the value of the FIRST experience without sacrificing quality. It would have been a lot easier if the original Championship had had qualification criteria, as perhaps it should have - it would not even be an issue today.

One thing people may forget is that there's only a little over 20 people up here in NH to make this thing happen, and only 12 involved with the Robotics Competition full time. Oh yeah - we're a non-profit. With a whole lot of help from dedicated volunteers, and most importantly you folks who participate.

We understand a lot of seniors were looking forward to Florida and are disappointed because now they won't be able to go directly as part of the Championship. Understandable.

But what's the alternative? If we keep growing 20% a year, in 5 years we'll have almost 1300 teams and 75,000 students. Manage a Super Bowl? over 3 days? Where the audience is the competitors? If people were mad at us about quality & theft issues this year, watch out.

Yes, there are alternatives. But in the end we evaluated and discarded all of them because in some way they are just not true to the values of FIRST. We felt that this was the least of the possible evils.

Time for me to go back to my job. And no, Big Brother isn't watching ;-) Just looking at the reactions.
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