[Jim Zondag]

Jason,
I didn't know that other areas had made any serious attempts to implement low-cost strategies before. As I said before, none of the planning for this was deliberately done in secret, but until the idea got approved by FIRST, there was nothing to talk about publicly. Any other similar past proposals are catagorically the same, no news until it becomes news.

Perhaps the difference here is timing; after multiple attempts from various areas, combined with the current state of the US economy, FIRST finally agrees that the time is right to try something new. One thing I will say, this was not easy, and it took a long time to convince FIRST that this pilot should be allowed to proceed. We have the benefit of having some very persitent individuals as our leaders.

The local situation here is as follows: in 2008 we had 3 regional events. All of these are at capacity and cannot be increased in size. We have recruiting and growth targets for adding new teams which cannot be met without adding another regional. Our Regional Event planners already have diffiiculty finding the funding to run the exisiting events on the traditionaly cost model and it looked very unlikely that we would be able to properly fund a 4th event. Hence the pilot: for the same event support costs from our sponsor base as our current 3 events, we are now going to do 8! Ambitious? Yes...Risk Free? NO!....More Sustainable in the long run? Absolutely!

"A ship is safe in the harbor, but that is not why ships are built."