Hi Everyone :-).
This week’s “Remember that thread?” spotlight concludes the series of qualifying rounds shortage at Nationals 99’.
Both the series and the program came a long way since the beginning of this discussion at 99’, you can see where many of the standard alliance selection procedure came from, the 3rd finals alliance partner being one of the most notable ones (No rejection being another one, though it wasn’t covered in this series).
The most important point of this series is that in the heat of the season, everyone kept their calm and voiced their concern in a levelheaded manner. They presented their case to FIRST, FIRST listened and tried very hard to fix the problem. Though the solution is far from perfect, FIRST demonstrated their ability and willingness to evolve for the good of the program. And as a community, the FIRST teams have shown that they can work together and make this program a better place to be in. Both very important to keep in mind as we approach the 2005 build period.
Without further delay, in this week’s spotlight I present FIRST’s final solution to the 99’ match shortage problem: The new 1999 Nationals match schedule.
Enjoy.
Answers on the Florida Setup - Posted by Nate Smith, Student on team #74, Holland FIRST Robotics, from Holland High School and Haworth, Inc…
New time schedule - Posted by Andy Grady, Coach on team #42, P.A.R.T.S, from Alvirne High School and Daniel Webster College.
And thanks to team 120 and NASA Glenn Research Center, I was able to find a very thorough archive of the 1999 Nationals at Epcot Center:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/OEP/first/archive/1999/national.htm
Also, I thought it might be interesting to dig up a FIRST Historians thread started by Jeff Waegelin, story provided by Andy Baker, that gave us a first-person description of Nationals that year.