What to do for events? HELP!

[sanddrag]

Hi,

My team right now is trying to decide what events we should attend. We are in the LA, CA area. We currently have $6100 for this coming year. An additional $4200 is locked away for future savings. We will be getting $1000 more very soon making for $7100. We are confident we will raise at least another $5000. That would bring us to $12,100.

That amount is good enough for registration for two regionals, building a $3000 robot, and having $100 left over for pizza to celebrate when we win.

However, left out of this figuring is the cost of transportation and rooms. The rooms can be payed for by the students, but the transportation must be payed for by the team to avoid excessive individual cost. Say our home regional is LA, (pretty close to us) and our second regional is Phoenix, a six and a half hour drive. There is no way the school would let us take private cars so we would have to have a coach bus like we did last year.

Here's the dilema
The bus costs about $3500 to have it entirely ours for three and a half days with a driver. Last year, this was payed for from ROP (Regional Occupational Program) money. This year, we don't get that money because we don't have anyone who is ROP ceritified to teach the robotics class at our school. So, we wan't to find someone who has been an engineer for at least two years in the past five years to get registered with ROP so we get a free bus pretty much. The real only purpose of this person would be to get the free bus to Phoenix/San Jose/Sacramento.

So, we want to have a bit more fun than just one home regional so here's a few options we've thought of. Add robot costs of $3K to every plan. Rooms are payed for by those traveling.

1) Go to ONLY a traveling regional - Phoenix, Sacramento, or San Jose. Cost, $5K registration, $3.5K bus. Total - $8.5 K

2) Go to LA and an off-season traveling like CalGames or IRI. Cost $5000 registration+$300 offseason registration+transportation to offseason ? Total - $5300 + transportation.

3) Go to LA AND Phoenix but find an engineer to get certified with us so we get a free bus. Cost - $9000 registration for both events.

4) Go to LA and Nationals some how raising enough money for the flight there and transportation while we are there. The costs would be $9K in registration and enourmous travel costs.

Obviously Choice 3 seems the best but we would have to find somebody to get certified so we get the free bus.

How to we tell an engineer "We'd like you to join us but we don't need your help, only the money your certification brings us." That's probably not an easy thing to do and have work.


This is really a big decision my team has to make and I value any input from anyone here. We are a fourth year team. We have attended the LA regional our first two years and the LA and Phoenix regionals last year. We have never gone to Cal Games, IRI, or the Championship.

Would somebody please help me piece together the best plan or at least make some plans more presentable for my team.

Thanks a lot.