[Jon236]

Fellow FIRSTers,

Thank you Leav for your comments. I was proud to present Leav with the Volunteer of the Year award. Leav represents the high quality we have seen amongst Israeli students, and now, alumni. In fact, there seems to be a strange illness which 'infects' those now in the IDF who were on FRC teams.....the only cure seems to be tireless efforts at the Israeli Regional.

As one of the volunteers (JA, Field Setup, etc) who has assisted every year in Israel, let me state the facts:

First of all, let me state that key volunteers (Israel & US) worked tirelessly around the clock with 0-2 hours/night sleep. Our FTA's worked 40 hours straight aided by Israeli coffee and hummus.

1. The FIRST Israel team had to make some very tough decisions because of the tight constraints and circumstances we faced. The team's interests were always in the forefront. We are all upset that we didn't have a perfect competition.
2. FIRST Israel did an exemplary job in communicating issues to the teams; they simply didn't like the facts.
3. In Israel, we use 2.4 GHz with 802.11n, NOT g.
4. We had the benefit finally of a secret Military Intell Comms unit (they guys who can make your cell phone explode) who worked around the clock to get the system working.
5. Working with Andrew from NI (who was fantastic!) and the IDF guys, we were able to ascertain that the issue was partially one of bandwidth, one of team software, and perhaps unknown hardware issues. Basically, we have seen what happens when a complex operating system meets limited bandwidth and hardware.
6. FIRST HQ support was always available by skype, but they hadn't had this
problem in the US.
7. We have been thanked by many teams, including the rookie Bosnian team who stated they want to come back next year.
8. There will be an audit with FIRST Israel and FIRST HQ to do a failure analysis; the results will be valuable to all of us.
9. At the end of the day, despite the field disaster, it was a great educational experience for the teams in Gracious Professionalism.
10. All awards were given out, with the exception of the Coopetition Award and the Highest Rookie Seed award. Due to the late hour, we needed to finish by 9 pm or the plug would be pulled by the stadium.
11. We had a great Event Manager, Faza. They do a fantastic job; but they don't do routers.