[Chris is me]

A little background: After qualifying in FTC, I linked up with 1714 in 2008 in order to get help building a competitive robot and driving said robot.

Originally Posted by Madison

1. Presuming our FRC team is also in attendance, how do you successfully manage two teams that are not colocated? Do you share tools or have a separate set for each team? Share mentors? Students?

There are separate pits, which you probably know (and granted I was in FTC when there was Vex so tools were more different), and basically what 1714 did was assign a few FRC team members to compete with the FTC team. Mentor help and other stuff needed was "on demand" (i.e. run to the FRC pits), though one parent was there to make sure things ran smoothly. Granted, this was a very independent, student run team; your mileage may vary.

2. How many teams compete in FTC at that level? How many qualification matches should we expect to play?

I played 6. This was in Vex though. (I had a very negative experience with these matches... don't get me started)

3. To what extent should we be prepared to rebuild the robot? After sorting out blue tooth troubles, our machine scored 150+ points in the outer goal consistently and beat the next highest alliance score by ~33%. With improved ball collection, hopefully it won't run out of balls in 15 seconds.

Design is an iterative process; there is no "done"

Seriously, the only way you can figure this out is to watch other regionals and examine photos and video. As a third pick in FTC 2007-2008 it was obvious the robot needed rebuilding, so I brainstormed by seeing what other robots were doing and how they worked.

If you can make your robot better, I don't see why you wouldn't do it though.

4. Is the Inspire Award at the World Championship open to all participating teams or, as in FRC, are only those who've won it at the state level eligible? Is there a formal interview process?

There was an interview process in 2008, but I believe it was for all awards, not just Inspire.