[GaryVoshol]

We had two of their representatives with our team. I only got to see them on Sat as I was reffing FLL on Thurs and Fri, but it certainly was a pleasure working with Tim. He wanted some pointers on strategy and such - I think he could give some tips to teams himself.

The NZ government is very much behind the regional, and is providing funding to both the event and to teams. They expect to have at least 24 teams there. I mentioned it would be best to have at least 30, so that after alliance selections those not picked would have other teams to comiserate with.

I asked him specifically if they were going to allow teams to come from the US to NZ, and he said he didn't know if that had been decided. I mentioned that there were a few teams with budgets that might allow consideration of going.

Someone else I was talking to said that the Hawaii regional opened up Chairmans to rookies, because most of the teams were rookies. Is there any truth to that statement?