Anyone else out there concerned about the difficulty deciding on which regional to attend when we await word from FIRST about who will be able to bag? Ability to bag will likely encourage many teams to try to attend regionals within driving distance vs flying across country, right? Any bets on when we will be told who outside of Michigan will get to bag?
Encourage teams to attend close regionals: YES. However, that does not mean that teams should be deterred from attending far regionals. This is just a policy to that if your a team like one of the 4 FIRST teams in Manchester NH (40, 131, 238, 501) would not have to ship because it is just across town. (I do know that the teams who will bag will be more that just across town but just used these teams as an example.)
My say, if you want to attend a far regional, sign up *like to GSR;) *. In those cases FIRST will let you ship. As to when we are told who gets to bag besides MI, possibly in the next couple of weeks and if not KICK-off.
I suggest contacting your Regional Director and asking. I found out yesterday that the Autodesk Oregon Regional will be a crate only event. 
If FIRST is really serious about saving them (and us) money, then why not open the door to all teams so they can decide what works best for them? The problem with a late reveal of who else gets to bag is that decisions will already have been made and it will be too late to take advantage of drive distance regionals. We have lots of options around here (hometown Las Vegas Regional 20 minutes from school as well as those in nearby states within a day’s drive). If bagging really worked out as well as feedback suggests, in all fairness we should all be able to save shipping fees (which still puts the vast majority of teams hoping for economic parity with Michigan teams…)
I am on the LVR Regional Planning Committee and close to the Director and we haven’t heard anything yet…
Then I’d suggest contacting FIRST directly or just asking the director to do so rather than hearing people’s opinions on CD. We’ll be asking our RD tomorrow, I’ll post here if anyone cares to know. (I doubt most places will be bagged events btw).
If regional directors are willing to give this information out to their teams, I see no reason why FIRST shouldn’t put out an email blast, assuming they have already decided for all events.
It was posted to Bill’s Blog that hopefully, the list will be out sometime yet today…from my experience(and as Bill mentioned) there’s more to consider than just if they want to let you do it…some venues have a “dockworker’s union” or something similar that prevents anyone other than the union from loading or unloading trucks. So there’s the matter of if they are willing to unload 40+ individual machines, all irregularly shaped(rather than 40+ crates on a single trailer.) Bill explains it better than I can as far as what else they are waiting on…
The list is out http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2009/09/rest-of-todays-post.html
This year teams outside of Michigan attending Kansas City, Sacramento, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, Waterloo and Toronto FRC Regionals will be included in the pilot “Bag and Tag” program while Michigan teams continue the “Bag and Tag” program at all Michigan Events.