[Chris is me]

I know it's not possible for you, but one of the best experiences at last year's IRI was being on the drive team and being able to meet some of the fabulous drivers and coaches on the elite teams. Interacting with teams I'd never played before, but only heard of on Chief Delphi and seen perform at Championship, like 47, 217, 67, 469, 1771, 179, 2753, and 68 was a wonderful experience, and for some reason a lot of elite teams have their most inspirational mentors and most knowledgeable students on their drive teams.

As a rule of thumb, other than the drive team work, I just went to teams and asked them questions about things. Usually that would just result in me running into inspirational, "famous", or otherwise really cool people without making an effort to do so. There are many people in FIRST who are inspirational that you can't exactly name off the top of your head. For a biased example, 1714 has some FANTASTIC mentors; still some people I'm honored to have learned from even for the short time I was a student on the team. I highly doubt you've heard of them, but if you went to the pits and asked a few questions, maybe you'd stumble upon someone really inspiring. I'm sure a ton of teams have mentors like this, that you talk to for 30 seconds and walk away going "...wow". Walk around, ask questions, see what happens. The open discussion of design at competition is one of the greatest aspects of FIRST and Gracious Professionalism. You won't regret it.