[Craig Roys]

Please keep in mind (as a couple of other posts have stated) that this is a PILOT program. There seems to be a lot of jumping on the negatives - instead of giving a negative, how about adding a possible solution? I did notice one post do this with a possibility for inspection process. I realize that many of the possible negatives being brought up are done so with the intent of helping to point any potential pitfalls, but I think we need to try to be a little more positive and open-minded about this. Change is not always bad - it's okay to get out of your comfort zone a little bit once in a while. Otherwise, how would you ever learn anything new??? I'm sure there will be some difficulties, but at the same time I'm sure they will be corrected as we go and the events will go on without anyone being seriously maimed or worse (at least not because of this change). At the end of the season we can step back and look at how things went and see if this is something worth pursuing. What worked well, what needs to be changed, etc. Individual teams do this with their robot when implementing changes throughout the season - now FIRST is doing the same with the overall competition.

I, for one, am excited to try this and will maintain a positive attitude throughout. MI teams have a chance to possible steer the direction of FIRST (hopefully for the better), but it will only work if everyone goes out with their best effort to make this work or figure out what needs to happen to make it work (if it will work at all). Again, we will never know unless we try. Let's try to keep this a positive thing.

Just my $0.02