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