[Wayne TenBrink]

FIRST is about inspiring young people to think about careers in Science, Technology, etc. How do you objectively measure the affect of the MI format on inspiration? In my opinion, it would be important to measure the format's affect on the expansion of the program (perhaps measured by the percentage of students in a region that have the opportunity to participate). This would take some time to do.

There is a concern about "quantity vs. quality", but what qualities are we talking about? If the new format led to a situation that drove students away from science and technology that would be a bad thing. If the average quality of the robots was diluted by a bunch of newbies and under-resourced teams, so what? This program isn't about us mentors and it isn't about the robots. The major learning benefits come during training, planning, and build - which isn't directly affected by the competition format.

As for the two day format, the lack of Thursday practice day increases the risk of schedule delay due to undiscovered field issues, and increases the liklihood of "no-shows" for unresolved robot issues. Those could be measured easily enough.

I don't think it is valid to associate field issues and the MI format. Any delays and communication problems at TC were apparently no worse than anywhere else. For the most part, they were associated with the new control hardware.

We were at Traverse City this weekend. Thursday evening check-in and inspection was a big help. We initially had communication problems due to firmware updates (thanks to Jim Sontag for fixing us up). Again, not specifically a MI format issue. It would be nice for teams attending their first event to be able to do a functional test on Thursday evening.

Our students don't seem to care about missing the out-of-state travel experience (not that we had money to go to a second event anywhere with the standard format!). Anything that involves getting out of town, staying in a hotel, eating in restaurants, and hanging out with other friends is OK by them.

I like the MI program. Anything that gets us into 3 competitions for less money than 1 is alright by me. Last year, we only had money for one regional. Our robot was badly damaged on Friday morning, and wasn't fully back up until Saturday morning - that squelched most of our "competition season". It wasn't particulary inspirational. The MI format would have helped us a lot.