Autodesk's response

[Natchez]

After a decade of watching great animations pass before our eyes, we, the Robonauts, have decided to get into the animation game. Of course, we were disappointed in Autodesk's confirmation letter of their "no regional award" position BUT we were hoping for the proverbial silver lining of a submission extension. We thought that since there would be no regional awards and because FIRST has not posted a submission deadline at their Calendar of Important Dates (please correct me if the submission deadline is posted somewhere), we might get a little extra time to work on our animation. Unfortunately if Autodesk is going to "keep regional celebration of the submissions by providing DVD's to be played at every regional, with the submissions from teams in that area," we are out of luck with our much needed extension. Since we have a policy that all students will build the robot along with participating in a subgroup (PR, Chairman's, Animation, Web Page, etc.), we were really hoping to be able to work on the animation after ship. With this letter, we're assuming that the animation submission deadline will be around February 22nd ... do you think that this assumption is right?

Thanks for all of your work, Jane, Ed, & everyone else who championed the regional animation cause,
Lucien