[Nate Smith]

As the trainer for the Registration System Supervisor volunteer position(the job that oversees the system used at the events this year), I can shed a little more light on this subject.

As has been mentioned, last year in Atlanta, there was a test done of a computerized volunteer registration/checkin system. This has been expanded this year to the regional events. What happens at the regional(usually starting with the volunteer dinner/meeting on Wednesday evening) is that each volunteer is initially checked into the system, and marks are made to ensure that the consent forms are handed in, t-shirts are given out, etc. This allows for more accurate reporting back to FIRST. After this initial checkin, volunteers are given a name tag with a barcode on it, which allows them to scan in each day. What the Fast Pass does is provide the barcode as a quick way to find each volunteer during this checkin process. While it is not required, without it, the person operating the checkin system has to manually search for each volunteer, substantially slowing down the process.