Championship's Atlanta 2006 - The Positive

[dlavery]

- The folks at FIRST realized that the WFA award presentation did not come off with quite the level of dignity and honor originally intended, and quickly reacted by adding in an extra opportunity on Friday morning to honor Rob Mainieri during the opening ceremonies. Well done.
- The vast majority of the speakers during the various opening/awards ceremonies were direct, brief and to-the-point.
- I got to dance with Kyle Hughes and Amanda Morrison. OK, they danced and I shuffled, but it was still fun.
- Everyone seemed to be very well behaved, and acting in the proper spirit of the competition. As Woodie says, there are a lot of proud grandmothers out there - thank you!
- The layout in the pits was great - lots of open space and room to get around. I particularly like the fact that the FRC, VEX and FLL pits were all together, and saw a LOT of young kids getting inspired by watching "the big leagues" working on their robots.
- I got to borrow Tony's Segway for the weekend again to tool around - it was lots of fun!
- As always, meeting lots of new teams was a blast and I learned even more about the real impact that FIRST is having.
- Dean Simmons and The Kamen Brothers are even more scary than I remember from IRI.
- An absolutely awesome team walked away with The Chairman's Award. Well done Wildstang!
- I got to meet Koko Ed at 4:00 in the morning in the lobby of the Omni!

-dave

[Not2B]

The ATL - what's not to like?

- The venue was very nice
- All the people first buttons from the airport to the hotel and everywhere inbetween
- The pits were very nice compaired to 2004 (distance and overall).
- The VEX and Lego pits were great to have in the same area. In fact, that really added to the total robot feeling. The fact that the middle school students could come over and look at the "big bots" was excellent.
- The scholarship and supplier row was a nice touch.
- The FIRST store gets better every year.
- The fountains were on this year (not so much in 2004)
- The hotels were very well selected for ease of access, as always
- Rotating anouncers was a great touch. Maybe do a we bit more of that. (I was one of the people that went nuts when Sir Charles came to visit)
- In fact - all the MCs and play-by-play people I heard were good. (Too bad the Thunderchickens were playing, Paul C. did a nice job in Wisconson.)

AND....

Awards mixed with finals - did we do that in 2004? THAT, my friends, was excellent.

It just went very smoothly. Big thumbs up for FIRST.