[Petra Norr]

You should also know that I may (or may not) be inviting entries from a handful of people who are not regular members or participants at the Sphere. For present purposes, Alex has waived the fifteen-post requirement. Whether or not I do will depend in part on the response we get from our regular members. I don't actually know how many of you write children's poetry, but if I'm flooded with quality poems by our membership, I will be less inclined to invite others.

That's such a turn-off. I was interested in this event, but not now.
I want to add this (I want to express my own opinion, and that's all it is): I don't think it's fair to participants to be so vague about the rules. If, now, you want to invite people from outside of the Sphere to submit, then it would be better to tell all participants in advance that, for example, you have 9 slots open for regular Erato members and 3 open for outsiders. And if the outsiders don't come through with their submissions, you can pick the rest from the Erato-member offerings.
But... I personally don't think that the outsider-submissions should be part of the competition at all. Why not have them be part of an open-thread discussion preceding the event?
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And now I'm adding this: If you conduct the bake-off in the way you've spelled out, Bob, in the long run it is no different from the Short Poem Bake-off which upset so many people, including you. In that Bake-off, our submissions were apparently judged as not being good enough to be able to pick the usual 10-12 poems from them; instead 6 (or 8?) poems were posted. And that is what could happen in the Children's Bake-off, as I see it. If our submissions aren't good enough, then outsiders will be invited in. But, as you said yourself during the Short Poem Bake-off, Bob, there is always something to discuss about the poems submitted; there are good sides and bad to all of them, and it's unfair and unreasonable to pick fewer submissions than planned simply because they're judged unworthy to be posted.
Elitism sucks.