Good list John. Our criteria are similar (DC is our 'home'), with two more notable questions for the 2nd Regional:
- Which regional would our Sponsor(s) prefer that we go to?
- Where can we go such that the local economical and regional engineering influences are different than ours?
In the past one of the sponsors has requested a specific regional because it then allowed us to give that company's site (local to the regional) a demonstration of FIRST and our program.
Additionally, traveling to other regionals further away from us has allowed us to get out of our own locally-based paradigms of funding, design processes (i.e. software development cycles), and general style. To this day the Cheesy Poofs and Pink would be simple team numbers on CD, except we went to Las Vegas in 2007 and Florida in 2009. It also allowed us to meet up with Exploding Bacon in Florida to get to know the advantages/challenges to an NPO-based team over many days in person rather than via email. Philadelphia ('08) is laden with teams who are just as great off the field as they are on the field, and the matches were very exciting for Drexel having such a 'small' venue.