[Tom Line]

I had meant to start a thread like this. As it was my first time there, I observed quite a few things that I wanted to mention.

1. Regarding shipping: when our team of 5 came into the pits, they saw our crate there ready to go. They started to pull the front off, only to find stuck in one corner on the back side of the crate a sticker saying we were 10 pounds overweight.

For us to ship we have to put labels all over the crate, all 4 sides, in specified positions. At a minimum a very simple precaution could be taken - wrap any crates that are overweight with a piece of caution tape to make it more obvious. This is one of those 'will prevent this from ever happening again' solutions that there is absolutely no reason not to use.

2. Seating. I don't understand why it was done, but the fields were pushed up right against the seats. Basically you could not see the close 1/3 of the field because of people's heads.

3. Saving seats. FIRST needs to reiterate this - perhaps make it the #1 item on the form people sign to come to competition. It isn't allowed. There simply isn't enough room at each field for people to tape signs on a huge block of seats and then have many of those seats go unused.

4. MC's / announcers. Some were very very good. Some were very very bad. I hope that there is some group somewhere that is asked to give feedback on the announcers at each field so that we can improve the event.

5. The practice fields. We were surprised (and the volunteers confessed that they were surprised too) when the fields were shut down during elimination alliance selection and disassembled! A number of robots (I counted an easy dozen) came to the fields to check their robots or make small fixes but were turned away.

6. The food rules around the venue. This is not a pro-football game where people paid $75 a ticket and can afford $4 for a hot dog and $3.25 for a small bottle of water. I know, FIRST probably didn't make this decision and there was probably little they could about it, but I still wanted to mention it. We ended having to leave the venue and walk to other locations (trailer, CNN food court, etc) to get food.

7. The judges need to post a schedule and stick to it for pit visitation. We had to keep members in the pits where they missed our matches. These kids worked hard to generate thousands of dollars to get us there, and they missed a good portion of the time we were playing (even when we were rotating them).

8. Turn up the volume on closing ceremony speeches. We could barely hear!

All in all, the complaints were minor and the event was excellent. The volunteers were friendly and helpful, and we enjoyed our time immensely and hope to earn our way back as soon as we can!