Contradictory FIRST Statements

[Gabriel]

We got very frustrated last year with some of the contradictions and unnecessary complexities in the rules, getting different answers from different people, the fact that the competition was geared towards "big-budget" teams, etc. I had the opportunity to ask Dean Kamen about this when he was in Hartford and his response was that as any organization grows it has problems with communications. FIRST has grown extraodinarily fast in recent years and I'm not sure whether their staff is equipped to handle the needs of every team. As FIRST designs its competitions it seems to be making them more and more complex, perhaps to prevent loopholes. Maybe the best strategy is for FIRST to create a simple game with simple rules and allow the teams to interpret the rules however they want.