Lessons Learned - The Positive

[Billfred]

-Lunacy forced everyone to take a step back and think about their drive systems. A lot of (but not all) of a team's dogma and secret sauce took a back seat this year. It was rather refreshing.
-Having human players all around the field made the game more interesting, particularly when players were smart about their usage of balls. Having nowhere to hide kept the match moving...usually.
-The cRIO switch went pretty well. There are definitely places to improve, but neither of my teams had any issues this season.
-Q&A was pretty straightforward after the normal first week tomfoolery. The battery-as-withholding-allowance ruling was a little rough, but I applaud FIRST for altering the call before it impacted a week of events. All told, I only recall one or two decisions that induced groans out of me. (More on that in the other thread.)
-The effects of G14 were expressed very clearly on-screen.
-I applaud FIRST for at least trying to select a game piece that could be found locally for many teams. They got burned on it this year, since Wal-Mart decided to discontinue the orbit ball just before Kickoff, but I can't fault FIRST for that.
-I liked the Chairman's video component. It seemed that the teams who won handled it well.
-It seemed that the nature of the game led to fewer breakages among robots. There was still a rash of no-show-itis among teams at Bayou in qualifying, but I can't think of any event where an alternate was called in (much to my personal chagrin, as Backup #2 on Curie).

I'm sure I'll think of more.