New York Districts?

[Dominick Ferone]

I was wondering, I heard the plan is for most places to be district by 2017. Has anyone heard more about New York? The slight challenge may be that it's almost split into three major sections where there are teams. Western/Nortern New York, NYC/Long Island and then the Capital district. But the leaves central New York out somewhat as they aren't as rapidly grown. Also where would the best place to hold District champs be?

[Kevin Leonard]

This is actually a really important subject that the state needs to discuss sometime soon.
New York as a district is complicated in a number of ways.
As Dominick said, New York's FRC teams can be split into three major regions: Western NY, NY and Long Island, and Central NY and the Capital District.

NY currently hosts four regionals: The Finger Lakes Regional, The New York Tech Valley Regional, The New York City Regional, and the SBPLI Long Island Regional.

FLR is often visited by teams from Ontario, TVR this year was visited by teams from Ontario, NE, and MAR, NYC is traditionally visited by numerous international teams due to NYC's history as a hub for tourism, and SBPLI additionally hosted international teams recently.

New York not only faces a problem of teams having to travel distances for events, but also the problem of having teams often visit these events from other areas.

Proposal 1: New York as one district
The basic proposal is to make New York into one giant district. This is not impossible. A district championship could be located in either Syracuse, Albany, or NYC fairly well.
This proposal hurts FIRST's growth abroad, as teams from other countries who traditionally travel to any of the events in NY will have to find new regionals to attend.
It is also difficult to travel to district Champs for many teams regardless of where you locate the DCMP.

Proposal 2:The Upstate New York District
Upstate NY becomes it's own district, with a District Champs located in Syracuse. This leaves NYC and SBPLI as an area with Regionals, and forces teams that had been attending TVR or FLR from Long Island to go elsewhere. Upstate New York also has a much smaller amount of teams without the City.

Proposal 3:New York joins nearby districts
A few proposals I've seen merge Western New York with either Ohio or Ontario for districts. The capital Region could then merge with New England. This leaves many central New York teams in a state of limbo, having to either join one of the two districts, or stuck in-between.
This also leaves NYC/LI without districts.
EDIT: Or with NYC/LI as a part of MAR.

I don't know which is best for the state or for FIRST, and I don't know what other proposals exist.

[Link07]

One interesting thought is the idea of expanding MAR to include New York City/Long Island once everywhere is switching over to districts.

[Dominick Ferone]

There is also a possibility of incorporating Pennsylvania.and/or making the whole northeast one big district.
Incorporate MAR, New England,New York, Penn. into s super district which would incorporate Roughly 525 teams.

[EricDrost]

There is also a possibility of incorporating Pennsylvania.and/or making the whole northeast one big district.
Incorporate MAR, New England,New York, Penn. into s super district which would incorporate Roughly 525 teams.

A DCMP as big as MSC probably shouldn't be the goal.

That being said, I'd be happy with MAR absorbing NYC and LI. It would force MAR to move the district championship closer to the geographic center than out in the middle of NOWHERE in Pennsylvania.

[Mr V]

I was wondering, I heard the plan is for most places to be district by 2017. Has anyone heard more about New York? The slight challenge may be that it's almost split into three major sections where there are teams. Western/Nortern New York, NYC/Long Island and then the Capital district. But the leaves central New York out somewhat as they aren't as rapidly grown. Also where would the best place to hold District champs be?


I'm not seeing any challenges, the 152 teams in the PNW district are spread out across 170,000 sq mi compared to the 147 team in NY spread out across 55,000 sq mi. We have three areas where the majority of teams are concentrated though one of those has a really high concentration. We hold a number of events in the area with the highest concentration, a few less in the area with lower concentration, one in the area with a good concentration and a couple in more outlying areas. Additionally FIRST is likely to eventually move to a system where district points are portable, so going to an event outside of your district will allow you to bring your points home assuming that it is your 1st or 2nd event chronologically.

Personally I'd say that the 150 ish team district is just about perfect. It allows for growth and the ability to hold the necessary events in 5 weeks and a DCMP in week 6 to allow teams sufficient time to prepare for CMP. Once growth exceeds that 10 event limit then it can switch to a 4 week district season with a week to prepare for DCMP or a RCMP.

[Kevin Leonard]

I'm not seeing any challenges, the 152 teams in the PNW district are spread out across 170,000 sq mi compared to the 147 team in NY spread out across 55,000 sq mi. We have three areas where the majority of teams are concentrated though one of those has a really high concentration. We hold a number of events in the area with the highest concentration, a few less in the area with lower concentration, one in the area with a good concentration and a couple in more outlying areas. Additionally FIRST is likely to eventually move to a system where district points are portable, so going to an event outside of your district will allow you to bring your points home assuming that it is your 1st or 2nd event chronologically.

Personally I'd say that the 150 ish team district is just about perfect. It allows for growth and the ability to hold the necessary events in 5 weeks and a DCMP in week 6 to allow teams sufficient time to prepare for CMP. Once growth exceeds that 10 event limit then it can switch to a 4 week district season with a week to prepare for DCMP or a RCMP.

The problem is that a large number of the teams from New York City have very, very, limited resources, making even a 2-3 hour drive with a team and a robot for many of them very difficult.

The NYC FIRST community is awesome the way they support each other to allow some of the teams to even attend just the NYC event.

However if they had to travel to Albany for a district championship, many would be unable to.

[Mr V]

The problem is that a large number of the teams from New York City have very, very, limited resources, making even a 2-3 hour drive with a team and a robot for many of them very difficult.

The NYC FIRST community is awesome the way they support each other to allow some of the teams to even attend just the NYC event.

However if they had to travel to Albany for a district championship, many would be unable to.

Most of the teams in the outlying areas in the PNW district have very, very limited resources and they have to drive 2 hours to get to anything.

[Mark McLeod]

Many NYC student families do not have cars, nor mentors to drive them.
Many are limited to where the subway can take them.

Every area has it's own challenges.

[Alan Anderson]

The problem is that a large number of the teams from New York City have very, very, limited resources, making even a 2-3 hour drive with a team and a robot for many of them very difficult.

Illinois has a similar issue with Chicago teams. It's something that will resolve itself one way or another.

[Brandon_L]

Can someone run some stats?

How many teams are there in NY as a whole?

How many teams (roughly) are in each of the three areas? (Western, Capitol, and NYC)

[Sperkowsky]

Putting ny in one district is crazy. To go from Eastern long island to the top of the state takes about 10 hours not to mention there is close to 60 teams in nyc and 45 in long island even though geographically we are on top of each other.

[AGPapa]

Can someone run some stats?

How many teams are there in NY as a whole?

How many teams (roughly) are in each of the three areas? (Western, Capitol, and NYC)

I'm counting 147 FRC teams in New York this season. Here's a map.

[Brandon_L]

Putting ny in one district is crazy. To go from Eastern long island to the top of the state takes about 10 hours not to mention there is close to 60 teams in nyc and 45 in long island even though geographically we are on top of each other.

I'm counting 147 FRC teams in New York this season. Here's a map.

Rough enough for my interest. Would it be crazy talk to suggest NYC/Long Island as its own district?

[plnyyanks]

Rough enough for my interest. Would it be crazy talk to suggest NYC/Long Island as its own district?

The biggest challenges in a NYC+LI district would be the lack of (inexpensive) venues - you'd need 5 or 6 events, and finding high schools with the capacity to hold an event would prove difficult. Furthermore, where would the field be stored when not in use? NYC real estate isn't exactly easily available or cheap...

The NYC area poses a lot of unique problems to the district transition, which need some innovative solutions before they start thinking seriously about transitioning.

[smistthegreat]

Rough enough for my interest. Would it be crazy talk to suggest NYC/Long Island as its own district?

Splitting New York into upstate and downstate as separate districts is an attractive solution for a number of ways, for us upstate folks especially. One of the major issues is finding venues for the downstate district events, especially in the city itself.

[Lil' Lavery]

Putting ny in one district is crazy. To go from Eastern long island to the top of the state takes about 10 hours not to mention there is close to 60 teams in nyc and 45 in long island even though geographically we are on top of each other.

How long do you think it takes to drive from one end of PNW to the other? From the Upper Peninsula to Detroit?

How clustered do you think teams are around Detroit?

[Alan Anderson]

To go from Eastern long island to the top of the state takes about 10 hours...

Why would that matter? Even if a district competition were to be held at one of those extreme locations, a team at the other extreme wouldn't be forced to go there.

It would indeed be crazy to put a district championship at one corner of a region, instead of making it more centrally located.

[smistthegreat]

How long do you think it takes to drive from one end of PNW to the other? From the Upper Peninsula to Detroit?

How clustered do you think teams are around Detroit?

The issue with New York isn't that it's a big state in general. It's that there are two pretty significant clusters of teams: one in the city, and one in Rochester, which are prohibitively far from one another to ask any significant portion of teams to travel from one to the other. It would be analogous to having a bunch of teams clustered around Detroit, but then another significant cluster 7 or 8 hours away.

There's also the fact that the downstate teams are geographically much closer to most of MAR and most of NE than the upstate teams.

I believe that the most likely scenario is for Western/upstate New York to form it's own district system soon, and leave the city and the island in regional limbo for another year or two.

[Sperkowsky]

The biggest challenges in a NYC+LI district would be the lack of (inexpensive) venues - you'd need 5 or 6 events, and finding high schools with the capacity to hold an event would prove difficult. Furthermore, where would the field be stored when not in use? NYC real estate isn't exactly easily available or cheap...

The NYC area poses a lot of unique problems to the district transition, which need some innovative solutions before they start thinking seriously about transitioning.
Eastern long island is farms.

Venues arent hard. We have cable vision as a sponsor and sbpli has them as a sponsor along. James dolan is in direct contact with us so I'm sure they are also in contact with him. He owns multiple venues including Madison square garden but that's kinds far off. There's also stony brook and Queens college that have huge easy to get to venues along with Brooklyn tech hs (team 334 i believe) I've been to their school and they have huge facilities. Again all of this id far off as I'm not sure if any of these places or teams would be willing but believe me 5 venues is possible. The Nassau coliseum is losing the ny islanders this year also and I'm sure they need events to fill the stadium up.

Back to the other discussion.

When we do nyc we take the train and a district van to move our stuff. It costs us for the van but the train is payed for by students. That costs us 500ish. When we do sbpli we pay nothing as we get a school bus with a wheel chair lift.

However if we were out of nyc it would cost us upwards of 3k just for transportation.

I lived in nyc for 12 years and currently live in long island. Expecting teams around here especially the manhatten brooklyn and Queens teams to go out of train distance is a bigger deal then you think.

[plnyyanks]

Venues arent hard. We have cable vision as a sponsor and sbpli has them as a sponsor along. James dolan is in direct contact with us so I'm sure they are also in contact with him. He owns multiple venues including Madison square garden but that's kinds far off. There's also stony brook and Queens college that have huge easy to get to venues along with Brooklyn tech hs (team 334 i believe) I've been to their school and they have huge facilities. Again all of this id far off as I'm not sure if any of these places or teams would be willing but believe me 5 venues is possible. The Nassau coliseum is losing the ny islanders this year also and I'm sure they need events to fill the stadium up.

Easy to get is not the same as cheap. If you can find 5 or 6 appropriately sized venues, and run the whole event for under $25,000 (http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2014/District_Planning_Guide_FINAL.pdf) (see page 19), please get in touch with some planning committies.

The reason the majority of district events are held in high schools is not lack of availability of colleges - it's cost. The college events you see are funded in part by massive donations. It's a pretty tall order to rely on them entirely.

I'm not saying venue selection is impossible, but it'll definitely be harder than you seem to think it is.

[Sperkowsky]

Easy to get is not the same as cheap. If you can find 5 or 6 appropriately sized venues, and run the whole event for under $25,000 (http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2014/District_Planning_Guide_FINAL.pdf) (see page 19), please get in touch with some planning committies.

The reason the majority of district events are held in high schools is not lack of availability of colleges - it's cost. The college events you see are funded in part by massive donations. It's a pretty tall order to rely on them entirely.

I'm not saying venue selection is impossible, but it'll definitely be harder than you seem to think it is.
High schools alone there aren't too many but there are huge schools

Townsend haris
Stuyvesent
Brooklyn tech
Are a bunch of high schools with huge facilities with big teams along with being in 3 different bouroughs. In long island most schools could host an event but 329 (patchouge medford) comes to mind immediately. I've been to their school multiple times and with 2 giant adjacent gyms im sure they could manage something. Half hollow hills also hosts an off season event every year although i don't know if it is quite big enough for a district event. I believe 358 has a large school along with long wood most likely being a spot (the superintendent is a huge supporter of first and runs something with sbpli)

With the hundreds of teams in the area comes hundreds of schools and many of them are quite giant.

[Kevin Leonard]

According to Google Maps, it takes about 5 hours to drive from the top of Long Island to Albany. That would be the longest drive any team would have to take to get to a centrally located state championship.

Montauk to Albany: 5 Hours
Manhattan to Albany: 3 Hours
Rochester to Albany: 3 Hours
Buffalo to Albany: 4 Hours, 30 Minutes

This doesn't seem that bad, and with some help from sponsors and other teams, I'm sure most teams that qualify for NYCMP that want to attend NYCMP would be able to. As the NYFIRST community, we could figure out a solution to that problem.

Eastern long island is farms.

Venues arent hard. We have cable vision as a sponsor and sbpli has them as a sponsor along. James dolan is in direct contact with us so I'm sure they are also in contact with him. He owns multiple venues including Madison square garden but that's kinds far off. There's also stony brook and Queens college that have huge easy to get to venues along with Brooklyn tech hs (team 334 i believe) I've been to their school and they have huge facilities. Again all of this id far off as I'm not sure if any of these places or teams would be willing but believe me 5 venues is possible. The Nassau coliseum is losing the ny islanders this year also and I'm sure they need events to fill the stadium up.

Back to the other discussion.

When we do nyc we take the train and a district van to move our stuff. It costs us for the van but the train is payed for by students. That costs us 500ish. When we do sbpli we pay nothing as we get a school bus with a wheel chair lift.

However if we were out of nyc it would cost us upwards of 3k just for transportation.

I lived in nyc for 12 years and currently live in long island. Expecting teams around here especially the manhatten brooklyn and Queens teams to go out of train distance is a bigger deal then you think.

There are trains from NYC to Albany. There's even one that ends about a mile from the Times Union Center (which would be a likely venue if we were able to secure it for this time of year).

[Sperkowsky]

According to Google Maps, it takes about 5 hours to drive from the top of Long Island to Albany. That would be the longest drive any team would have to take to get to a centrally located state championship.

Montauk to Albany: 5 Hours
Manhattan to Albany: 3 Hours
Rochester to Albany: 3 Hours
Buffalo to Albany: 4 Hours, 30 Minutes

This doesn't seem that bad, and with some help from sponsors and other teams, I'm sure most teams that qualify for NYCMP that want to attend NYCMP would be able to. As the NYFIRST community, we could figure out a solution to that problem.



There are trains from NYC to Albany. There's even one that ends about a mile from the Times Union Center (which would be a likely venue if we were able to secure it for this time of year).
A train from nyc to Albany costs $42 each way each day. That's 84 dollars per person not to mention that its a 2 and a half hour ride(that's 5 hours of train time per day) it's a logistical nightmare. A nyc event at the javits center (without ftc fll and jr fll you could fit multiple fields and hundreds of teams in there) would make more Sense for the masses but isn't the greatest for the upstate teams even if they are the technical minority.

[MikLast]

Most of the teams in the outlying areas in the PNW district have very, very limited resources and they have to drive 2 hours to get to anything.
Example, Any team on the east side of Washington (though we have the luxury of having the DCMP close this year) and Oregon, especially Oregon.

[Hallry]

It would force MAR to move the district championship closer to the geographic center than out in the middle of NOWHERE in Pennsylvania.

If there are any viable options for this, please let me know...

Man I feel bad for that one team far up north...
http://i.imgur.com/vOdS1ha.png

[Kevin Leonard]

If there are any viable options for this, please let me know...

Man I feel bad for that one team far up north...
http://i.imgur.com/vOdS1ha.png

That's 229 at Clarkson. While it's not great, they already travel large distances to make it to both of their events. This year they attended NYC and TVR.

[Hallry]

That's 229 at Clarkson.

TIL where Clarkson is. For some reason I always thought it was near Rochester. Thanks.

[smistthegreat]

I was on mobile earlier, but I finally have the time to type up something a little more thorough. There are a few options currently available to New York.

1. The entire state forms one district. As discussed in this thread, if DCMP is not in NYC, it puts a huge strain on the city teams. If DCMP is in the city, upstate teams have a bit of a travel issue, but it's certainly possible. Another possible issue is finding enough places to put district competitions. You would have Rochester, Troy, maybe Buffalo or Syracuse, and then 4 or 5 events in the city/on the island.

2. Upstate New York forms one, Indiana-sized district. District events in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Troy, with DCMP basically taking the place of the current FLR. In this case, downstate would be left in a bit of a pickle.

3. Western New York joins with Ohio, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. Again, this only solves the problem for the upstate teams.

[Matt_Boehm_329]

I was on mobile earlier, but I finally have the time to type up something a little more thorough. There are a few options currently available to New York.

[snip]
2. Upstate New York forms one, Indiana-sized district. District events in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Troy, with DCMP basically taking the place of the current FLR. In this case, downstate would be left in a bit of a pickle.
[snip]


If you had upstate NY as its own district NYC and LI combined could easily field enough teams for their own as well.

[Kevin Leonard]

Personally I prefer the whole state become one district. Most NYC/Long Island Teams won't need to come to DCMP, and the ones that do can be accommodated for or decline the invitation. Teams aren't required to attend DCMP, after all. Regardless of whether they attend DCMP, teams will be getting double the competition for the same amount of money.

I think the only three locations that could be considered for a district championship are Syracuse, Albany, and New York City. All three have their share of issues. I think Albany would make the most sense due to its central location for all teams in the state. With the great support from local companies like GE and GlobalFoundries, as well as maybe support from FIRST HQ, its possible we might be able to subsidize or at least help the teams with less resources be able to travel to the district championship if they qualify.

If this one isn't possible, either of the other two discussed options are fine as well. New York could really use districts as soon as possible. Some fantastic teams are missing out on a championship because they didn't win, and some others are struggling, barely able to attend one event. Districts would help solve both of these problems, as well as make the state mor competitive on a global scale.

[Dominick Ferone]

While Albany has a nice regional it is a little cramped as it is at RPI. Possibly having district champs in Syracuse at the dome? I'm not to fully sure about the venue but it could be big enough. Or on long island you could use Nassau Coliseum possibly since I know there is an underground tunnel connecting to the Marriott and possibly another center.

Also i just noticed on the map either were not represented,misrepresented or I don't know where Utica is on the map. But it does show just how spread out upper New York is and something that can be fixed in the future.

[cgodzyk]

Man I feel bad for that one team far up north...


We actually have two teams up here, 229 and 5240, they're on top of one another, so its not just one team!

[AGPapa]

Also i just noticed on the map either were not represented,misrepresented or I don't know where Utica is on the map. But it does show just how spread out upper New York is and something that can be fixed in the future.

Good catch, there was a problem with the map website that I was using. Here's a new map from a different website. It shows a lot more teams throughout the middle of the state.


We actually have two teams up here, 229 and 5240, they're on top of one another, so its not just one team!

This is right, both teams are listed as being from "Potsdam" so their markers are on top of each other. This probably happens in a few other areas too, most notably in NYC. There are probably more teams in the city than this map will show because of that. With such a ridiculously huge number of teams in that area, it seems crazy to not have the DCMP there.

[Alan Anderson]

A train from nyc to Albany costs $42 each way each day. That's 84 dollars per person not to mention that its a 2 and a half hour ride(that's 5 hours of train time per day) it's a logistical nightmare.

I wouldn't even have considered trying to do it as a daily commute. Is there a problem with staying overnight? Unless there's something I don't know about lodging costs in Albany, that shouldn't be nearly as expensive as taking the train twice a day.

[Sperkowsky]

I wouldn't even have considered trying to do it as a daily commute. Is there a problem with staying overnight? Unless there's something I don't know about lodging costs in Albany, that shouldn't be nearly as expensive as taking the train twice a day.

think about it

I stay in albany often for gymnastics and my dad is up there extremely often (hes the president of his union)

A standard 3 star hotel room is 120 dollars per night. One room fits 4 people

2 over nights plus 2 ways on the train

Thats $140 dollars per student plus meals.

You have a moderately sized team with 20 students and 2 mentors thats

$3,080

and thats without renting a U-Haul add $400 ish (for a 10 foot truck).

So for a single event a low budget team needs to drop $3,500 dollars just to go back and forth to a single event. To some teams that may not seem like too much but speaking for some nyc teams thats their budget.

I hear the talk about having it in albany yes geographically that makes sense

However if you look at density ny long island blows everywhere else out of the park. Also teams upsate have no issues with parents not driving (for the most part) Yes it sucks for those wierd out of area teams but the harder audience and the ones with bigger issues are the nyc teams.

Not to mention that NYC is a cool place to go to a competition.

[Dunngeon]

A train from nyc to Albany costs $42 each way each day. That's 84 dollars per person not to mention that its a 2 and a half hour ride(that's 5 hours of train time per day) it's a logistical nightmare. A nyc event at the javits center (without ftc fll and jr fll you could fit multiple fields and hundreds of teams in there) would make more Sense for the masses but isn't the greatest for the upstate teams even if they are the technical minority.

I would suggest you take a good hard look at the PNW District model before proclaiming that it won't work for NY...

Money isn't easy to come by for most teams outside of Western Seattle and some locations in Portland. Further, we have a much bigger geographic region than NY AND our DCMP was located at an extreme in Chaney Washington this year. We drove 8 hours for the District Championship and we are located in the northern(ish) part of Oregon (though we are one of the southern most teams in the region),


In the end, districts allows you and your team to get more play for the same amount of money. Plus the potential for an event of much higher quality than a regional AND a somewhat easier way to make it to worlds. So before you say something else along the lines of "you couldn't travel to Rochester because of a 5 hour daily commute" please put some thought into it. For that to work, you would have to leave at 4:30am, and would return to NYC at 10:30pm (if you leave at 8)... 5-6 hours before you have to leave again.... hardly logical.


think about it

[snip]

That single event you are referencing would ONLY be for the DCMP (and probably not at an extreme ie. Rochester) if you are from LI or NYC.... An invitational event that you AREN'T required to attend(nor is your entire team). Some of the normal district events would inevitably be located near LI or NYC.

Please get educated on districts before telling those of us in them to "think about" why they don't work for poorer teams.

[Sperkowsky]

I would suggest you take a good hard look at the PNW District model before proclaiming that it won't work for NY...

Money isn't easy to come by for most teams outside of Western Seattle and some locations in Portland. Further, we have a much bigger geographic region than NY AND our DCMP was located at an extreme in Chaney Washington this year. We drove 8 hours for the District Championship and we are located in the northern(ish) part of Oregon (though we are one of the southern most teams in the region),


In the end, districts allows you and your team to get more play for the same amount of money. Plus the potential for an event of much higher quality than a regional AND a somewhat easier way to make it to worlds. So before you say something else along the lines of "you couldn't travel to Rochester because of a 5 hour daily commute" please put some thought into it. For that to work, you would have to leave at 4:30am, and would return to NYC at 9:30am... 6-7 hours before you have to leave again.... hardly logical.
rochester is 8-9 hours away from the nyc long island area so thats not really a thing to do in a day let alone a good area for a dcmp. Albany is different but whatever.

To clarify Im not saying the model wouldnt work. Im simply stating that the dcmp should most definitely be in nyc. New york needs the district model but its a complicated area. NYCFirst and SBPLI would probably work together to do a lower state dcmp and that is a power team of hardworking volunteers. The Javits center would be perfect for a dcmp. First of all its right in the middle of nyc. Penn station is in walking distance which means all the long island and nyc would be set for transportation right away. Theres also much more press attention in NYC. getting first on things like the today show while dcmps are there or good morning america are very viable things.


I understand the district model to an extent. Im just stating the challenges with ny a place I have lived my whole life. I have lived up state I have lived in nyc and I live in Long island I know this state the people, the teams, and the challenges that come with it.

Im sorry for saying think about it (when reading it sounds harsh didnt mean it to be)

[Dominick Ferone]

1) The argument of distance if it were in Rochester you could always fly there.
2) NYC while yes it does hold a big regional each year, it has also been highly known to have field issues.
3) If a lot of teams from upstate came for district champs in the city hotel prices would be astronomical.
4) Syracuse can end up being only a 4 hour drive from the island.(if your leaving from around Nassau Suffolk border.)

For champs we would need a big place to hold it. Currently New York makes up about 5% of all first team. (its very close in size to PWN) So that means about 60 teams would go to champs.

[Sperkowsky]

For champs we would need a big place to hold it. Currently New York makes up about 5% of all first team. (its very close in size to PWN) So that means about 60 teams would go to champs.

I have gone to nyc the last 2 years this year wasnt in it but helped out other teams. and never noticed any field issues. I think I know what your talking about though as some of our mentors and alumni have talked about some sitatuon where there was a big field glitch and they had people come in for extensive testing. Its all fixed now from what I have seen.

NYC would be the place imo to host a dcmp as I have said maybe not the javits center. Places in queens are much more afordable. St.Johns University comes to mind in queens they have huge sports facilities and could comfortably host a 60 team regional. Even hoftstra (sbpli) hosted a 51 team event complete with full 10x10 pits, a practice field, and media areas.

What im wondering now is if first is really looking into this or if this is pure speculation

[Insanity000]

Because of such a dense population of teams in NYC i would propose NYC being their own district, or maybe even combine with New Jersey. This solves many issues for the NYC Long Island teams like travel cost, distance etc. For venues though im not quite sure how well that would work out but im sure it could be figured out.

As for upstate teams, why not have them join with a smaller state/state with less teams to create a district. For example i don't believe upstate alone has enough teams to be a district and neither do many of the surrounding team. If upstate combined with Pennsylvania, Ohio, or west Virginia that would be enough for a district.

[Alan Anderson]

Thats $140 dollars per student plus meals.

Yep, that sounds reasonable. As I thought, it's a whole lot less than the $250+ for transportation you seemed to be balking at when Albany was first suggested.

Maybe I'm out of touch, but spending $140 (plus food) to attend a three-day out of town competition seems fine to me. Your students should be able to do that much fundraising for their own benefit.

[Kevin Leonard]

Yep, that sounds reasonable. As I thought, it's a whole lot less than the $250+ for transportation you seemed to be balking at when Albany was first suggested.

Maybe I'm out of touch, but spending $140 (plus food) to attend a three-day out of town competition seems fine to me. Your students should be able to do that much fundraising for their own benefit.

And remember, this is only for the teams that qualify and decide to go. 5027 recently did a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for the world championship and raised something like $20,000.
If the students don't want to raise the money to go to the District Championships, they don't have to.

That being said, something like 2/3 of all teams in New York are located in the city or on Long Island, so an NYC district championships makes a lot of sense in some ways.

While Albany has a nice regional it is a little cramped as it is at RPI. Possibly having district champs in Syracuse at the dome? I'm not to fully sure about the venue but it could be big enough. Or on long island you could use Nassau Coliseum possibly since I know there is an underground tunnel connecting to the Marriott and possibly another center.


There are other venues near Albany, heck RPI has other venues that could host a larger competition. My personal choice would be the Times Union Center (formerly known as the Pepsi Arena). It's plenty large enough to hold the state championship for years to come.

It's also a mile away from an Amtrak station.

Regardless of what plan we choose to take, planning committees and regional FIRST advocates should come together to discuss a plan for the state's transition to districts- sooner rather than later.

[Dominick Ferone]

I have gone to nyc the last 2 years this year wasnt in it but helped out other teams. and never noticed any field issues. I think I know what your talking about though as some of our mentors and alumni have talked about some sitatuon where there was a big field glitch and they had people come in for extensive testing. Its all fixed now from what I have seen.
Back in 2012 and 2013 we experienced quite a few issues. We had to replay 2 or 3 matches and they even had everyone shut down their smart dashboard and disabled cameras if i remember correctly, which hurt many teams.


What im wondering now is if first is really looking into this or if this is pure speculation
What I heard is the possibility of having most areas district by 2017.

[plnyyanks]

Please get educated on districts before telling those of us in them to "think about" why they don't work for poorer teams.
Everybody who wants to make serious proposals about NY making a transition to districts should read the entire District Planning Guide (http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2014/District_Planning_Guide_FINAL.pdf) thoroughly. It contains all the guidelines FIRST HQ gives to a region when they want to move to districts. I'll try and hit some of the main points

Money
When a region goes to districts, they need to make their own organizational entity (for example, NEFIRST is part of ingenuityNE, a 501(c)(3) created for the purpose of operating New England districts). This organization is responsible for planning and paying for everything a district does (it'll own full field(s), other assets, and pay for the competitions). Think of it as a regional planning committee on steroids. Third event registration fees go entirely to the district, but the organization has to fundraise everything else (support from HQ is minimal, especially after the first year).

Events are recommended to have a total budget of ~25,000 (as compared to ~150,000 for a regional (see Regional Planning (http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/regional-planning-committee)Guide, budget section). This is a substantial decrease in costs - especially compared to the NYC Regional, which I've heard costs upwards of $500,000 to put on. There's a reason that (I'd say) the majority of district venues are donated or heavily subsidized - budgets are much tighter and FIRST HQ provides much less assistance. One of the most important parts here is having a strong sponsor/team base who can secure and help plan venue costs.

The district championship is planned like a regional, with a corresponding budget. For a district with 8 events and a championship, you're looking at over $300,000 in event costs (not even factoring in the fact that NYC events will inevitably be more expensive than average). Then factor in other asset investments - a 10 event district needs to own, store, and transport two full fields, a new set of carpet for each event (and transportation of each new set of carpet to the venue), plus the many other little things you need. A field costs ~20,000 for the perimeter, ~2,500 for the plastics, plus all the electronics (can't find data for that, but I'd guess ~10,000). Point is, it all adds up and gets very expensive very quickly.

Events
You need to have enough events spots to ensure that every team can register for 2 (with each event small enough to guarantee 12 matches/team). The sweet spot is typically around 40 teams per event. They should occur in venues with reasonable cost (see above) and be close to as many teams as possible. This is the major problem for NY because it has pockets of high team density, and these pockets are pretty spread out. That means there needs to be smart planning when deciding the size of the districts and location of events. A full state district would probably need 10 events, split evenly between the pockets of teams.

Volunteers
This is probably the most overlooked part. It takes a lot of manpower to run one event, let alone 10. There are a number of key roles that require training beforehand and there's a limit on the number of experienced people to fill those roles. If there aren't enough people to staff events, you can't do districts (this is the current issue facing Minnesota).

tl;dr - There's a lot of components that go into making the transition to districts that you probably haven't thought about. It's a massive logistical and financial problem that requires significant effort to undertake. The people in charge of making the decisions are definitely aware of the desire to switch and are trying to make it happen (and I've talked to some of them about it), but the fact no public announcements have been made means they haven't had real progress with these issues.

super tl;dr - Just read the district planning guide (http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2014/District_Planning_Guide_FINAL.pdf)

[plnyyanks]

Back in 2012 and 2013 we experienced quite a few issues. We had to replay 2 or 3 matches and they even had everyone shut down their smart dashboard and disabled cameras if i remember correctly, which hurt many teams.


I was FTAA at the NYC regional this year. I'll tell you that the Javits Center is an absolutely awful wifi environment. The venue has a number of its own networks all over the 5G spectrum, and a massive hall is not conducive to good reception, either. I know this year, we tried to really stay on top of the wifi environment and make sure it was as good as it could be, and I think that's partially responsible for the lack of major field issues.

[Alex2614]

There is also a possibility of incorporating Pennsylvania.and/or making the whole northeast one big district.
Incorporate MAR, New England,New York, Penn. into s super district which would incorporate Roughly 525 teams.

The plan is for Pennsylvania to go with Ohio, along with West Virginia and possibly western Kentucky. This was the proposal last I heard.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Interesting thread. One thing that I didn't see a response to is:

High schools alone there aren't too many but there are huge schools

Townsend haris
Stuyvesent
Brooklyn tech
Are a bunch of high schools with huge facilities with big teams along with being in 3 different bouroughs. ...

These are the selective schools, not the largest schools. Per wikipedia:
Townsend - 1100
Stuyvesant - 3000
Brooklyn tech - 5400

By contrast, these are non-selective (but still excellent) public schools in Queens, New York City. Both have FRC teams - one rookie; one established.
Francis Lewis - 4000
Cardozo - 4000

While Stuyvesant is a large school, it isn't conducive to a FRC event because you need to take an escalator or elevator to get everywhere. There aren't even rooms to have the pits and field on the same floor. By contrast, Francis Lewis is a flat school. They've been running a FTC qualifier which has gone well.

[Bluman56]

Interesting thread. One thing that I didn't see a response to is:



These are the selective schools, not the largest schools. Per wikipedia:
Townsend - 1100
Stuyvesant - 3000
Brooklyn tech - 5400

By contrast, these are non-selective (but still excellent) public schools in Queens, New York City. Both have FRC teams - one rookie; one established.
Francis Lewis - 4000
Cardozo - 4000

While Stuyvesant is a large school, it isn't conducive to a FRC event because you need to take an escalator or elevator to get everywhere. There aren't even rooms to have the pits and field on the same floor. By contrast, Francis Lewis is a flat school. They've been running a FTC qualifier which has gone well.

Likewise with Brooklyn Tech. The Cafeteria could easily house the pits but thats on the 7th floor while the gym is on the first floor with a single ramp avaliable to get from the gym to the [actual] first floor . Definitely not accessible by any means (especially if trying to maintain a 7 minute match turnaround).

[Sperkowsky]

Interesting thread. One thing that I didn't see a response to is:



These are the selective schools, not the largest schools. Per wikipedia:
Townsend - 1100
Stuyvesant - 3000
Brooklyn tech - 5400

By contrast, these are non-selective (but still excellent) public schools in Queens, New York City. Both have FRC teams - one rookie; one established.
Francis Lewis - 4000
Cardozo - 4000

While Stuyvesant is a large school, it isn't conducive to a FRC event because you need to take an escalator or elevator to get everywhere. There aren't even rooms to have the pits and field on the same floor. By contrast, Francis Lewis is a flat school. They've been running a FTC qualifier which has gone well.
I wasn't thinking Francis Lewis or Cardoza.. Both would work. In my head i was thinking of the big frc with the big teams

Fl and cardoza have less established teams therefore in my head less likely yo host an event but fl id huge I've been there multiple times (it was my zoned school) ive actually been to all the schools i listed and all the ones you listed so i know my way around them all. I see the issues with brooklyn tech it being so reliant on multi levels.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I wasn't thinking Francis Lewis or Cardoza.. Both would work. In my head i was thinking of the big frc with the big teams

Fl and cardoza have less established teams therefore in my head less likely yo host an event
Cardozo was my zoned school. I hardly went to the cafeteria though so I don't remember if it was on the same floor as the gym. They are a rookie team though. Francis Lewis actually didn't have a FRC team this year, so easy to overlook. They did have a bunch of FTC teams. I'm sure there are other schools of this size/shape as well.

My point still stands :). That it's not the # of students that determines suitability for an event. Part of that is layout. Part of it is that these schools were never designed for so many students so the facilities aren't the size one expect. Or rather, someone from outside the area might expect.

My worry is that it will be cramped and/or not enough room for teams to sit and watch. I went to a district event in NJ (just to watch.) It was beautiful. The "small" gym was about the size of the Francis Lewis gym. The "large" gym where the matches were held was huge!

[mistersands]

Interesting thread. One thing that I didn't see a response to is:



These are the selective schools, not the largest schools. Per wikipedia:
Townsend - 1100
Stuyvesant - 3000
Brooklyn tech - 5400

By contrast, these are non-selective (but still excellent) public schools in Queens, New York City. Both have FRC teams - one rookie; one established.
Francis Lewis - 4000
Cardozo - 4000


No love for John Bowne High School?

I am pretty sure I could get an event hosted here. Conveniently located for NYC and Long Island teams, even a decent amount of parking.

In fact, if I had the time and energy, I would be pushing to host an off-season here in the fall.

[pfreivald]

I love the notion that Albany is "centrally located." To most of NYC, anything outside of NYC might as well not exist...and to most of WNY, Albany is pretty much NYC in terms of getting there.

Three hours from Rochester works if you're already in Rochester, but the geography of WNY is such that you often can't "get there from here" in anything approaching a straight line.

-------------

I like the idea of districts for NY, but only if it will decrease our expenses per play, not increase them. We can afford FLR because we don't have to stay overnight.

(And before people say, "well just raise more funds," we are limited to exactly two (2) fundraisers a year by our school, and run the most successful fundraisers of any school group, pulling in about $3K a year. I don't think most people have a good appreciation for just how tiny many of the towns in WNY are--we're not terribly atypical with 650 kids K-12 in a district five times larger (geographically) than Manhattan.)

So, I like the idea. But it concerns me.

[Sperkowsky]

No love for John Bowne High School?

I am pretty sure I could get an event hosted here. Conveniently located for NYC and Long Island teams, even a decent amount of parking.

In fact, if I had the time and energy, I would be pushing to host an off-season here in the fall.
Forgot about John Bowne I've never been inside but from the outside it looks huge

[Alan Anderson]

I don't get it. A lot of what I'm seeing from people on NYC teams seems to be along the lines of "we have unique limitations" without much willingness expressed to either address the limitations or consider alternative approaches. Am I just not "hearing" it right? Is it a "New York" way of saying things that I'm not picking up on?

To most of NYC, anything outside of NYC might as well not exist...

I would think holding an event outside NYC would be a good thing for people wearing NYC-only blinders, not something to be presented a priori as a problem. (I'd call it expanding their horizons, but I've spent time in NYC, and the concept of a horizon there is often a tricky one.)

(And before people say, "well just raise more funds," we are limited to exactly two (2) fundraisers a year by our school,...)

What is keeping the team's leadership from asking the school to reassess their fundraising policy in view of the specific financial needs of a robotics team? That's even without looking into what "fundraiser" means and whether it would be possible to do an ongoing/open-ended one that satisfies the existing policy.

[Sperkowsky]

I don't get it. A lot of what I'm seeing from people on NYC teams seems to be along the lines of "we have unique limitations" without much willingness expressed to either address the limitations or consider alternative approaches. Am I just not "hearing" it right? Is it a "New York" way of saying things that I'm not picking up on?



I would think holding an event outside NYC would be a good thing for people wearing NYC-only blinders, not something to be presented a priori as a problem. (I'd call it expanding their horizons, but I've spent time in NYC, and the concept of a horizon there is often a tricky one.)



What is keeping the team's leadership from asking the school to reassess their fundraising policy in view of the specific financial needs of a robotics team? That's even without looking into what "fundraiser" means and whether it would be possible to do an ongoing/open-ended one that satisfies the existing policy.
There may be a little confusion.

Most of the big NYC teams concerns
1.money
2.transportation(parents dont have cars)

Most of the big Long island Teams concerns
1.money
2.travel time

Most of the upstate teams issues
1.travel distance to nyc
2. I don't know what they are doing up there but i haven't heard anyone from upstate say they didn't have enough money to travel

Some of what you are hearing about nyc problems in this thread are broader issues.

Any championships should be where the highest concentration of teams are, not the "central location" of the state.

Side note

Traveling to long island for nyc teams is also very easy with a hop on the subway to the LIRR. Having a dcmp in long island would work too but also give another 45- 1 hour of travel time to upstate people.

[Kevin Leonard]

There may be a little confusion.

Most of the big NYC teams concerns
1.money
2.transportation(parents dont have cars)

Most of the big Long island Teams concerns
1.money
2.travel time

Most of the upstate teams issues
1.travel distance to nyc
2. I don't know what they are doing up there but i haven't heard anyone from upstate say they didn't have enough money to travel

Some of what you are hearing about nyc problems in this thread are broader issues.

Any championships should be where the highest concentration of teams are, not the "central location" of the state.

Side note

Traveling to long island for nyc teams is also very easy with a hop on the subway to the LIRR. Having a dcmp in long island would work too but also give another 45- 1 hour of travel time to upstate people.

There are most certainly teams upstate with similar problems relating to money and travel time.

A championship in NYC would be 6 hours away from teams in Buffalo and Potsdam, while an Albany championship is 5 hours away from the tip of Long Island.

I won't say which is better, but either one is hurting quite a few teams.

And remember, only the top 60 teams or so would travel to the district championship, and they additionally have the choice to decline.

Additionally, public transit connects Rochester to Albany, as well as NYC to Albany in a straight line, whereas going via public transit from Rochester to NYC takes seven hours.

Regardless of the DCMP location, a discussion about this subject in a formal setting needs to occur ASAP.

[Lil' Lavery]

The fact that a portion of team will end up spending more money on travel when they compete in three events than they do currently competing in one event shouldn't be as controversial as it is.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

The fact that a portion of team will end up spending more money on travel when they compete in three events than they do currently competing in one event shouldn't be as controversial as it is.

A lot of people seem to forget (or ignore?) that your district events are going to be at either the same places as the regionals currently are or closer than. Yeah, one might be further away, but the other won't be.

And regarding NY DCMP, if FiM can get 102 teams to work in Grand Rapids (NOT Metro-Detroit), surely 40-60 teams in anywhere is doable. (That said, NYC is expensive!)

[pfreivald]

I would think holding an event outside NYC would be a good thing for people wearing NYC-only blinders, not something to be presented a priori as a problem. (I'd call it expanding their horizons, but I've spent time in NYC, and the concept of a horizon there is often a tricky one.)

I was merely pointing it out, not necessarily as a problem that cannot in some way be surmounted.

What is keeping the team's leadership from asking the school to reassess their fundraising policy in view of the specific financial needs of a robotics team? That's even without looking into what "fundraiser" means and whether it would be possible to do an ongoing/open-ended one that satisfies the existing policy.

It would be a mistake to assume that the policy was not put into place for a good and understandable reason; a further mistake to assume that these conversations have not happened for the past decade and will not continue to happen; it would equally be a mistake to assume that just because the team faces a larger fundraising gap this policy is at all likely to change.

[mistersands]

As someone who grew up in Rochester, lives on Long Island and mentored a Long Island team, and now teaches in NYC and coach a NYC team, I can say that the logistics of each are so vastly different. But not overwhelming.

NYC is very hard to travel out of. Virtually none of my students have parents who have cars. Most of the parents don't speak English. In fact, on my team of 20+ students, I've only met the parents of 2. Many would not LET their child travel outside of NYC even on a school trip. A trip to Long Island would be fine, but upstate I might lose a third of my team to parents not wanting their children to travel. If it was overnight, I would lose over half. And NYC teachers are forbidden from transporting students in their own vehicles. I think some of the selected or prestigious schools like Stuyvesant and Townsend Harris have a bit more leeway with things though, as far as money/resources for travel. Schools like John Bowne often can feel a bit of a 'sour grapes' attitude towards those schools, justified or not.

If the competition migrates out of NYC, it would hurt the less established teams a lot more and be a barrier to new teams. I admit, I don't know the logistics of Districts compared to regionals.

Long Islanders are used to traveling. Almost all parents have cars, and in fact many students have cars. There are a few exceptions, Central Islip CI-borgs come to mind. These are the de facto segregated minority districts on Long Island.

Growing up in Rochester, we are used to overnight trips. I went to East High School in the city of Rochester. But we would sell candy, car washes, whatever we had to. We would raise money and go on overnight trips to NYC or DC. And my friends who went to suburban schools went on even more trips.

As for centrally located, what about Binghamton? It's actually somewhat easier to get to than Albany for a lot of places

[Chris is me]

While Albany has a nice regional it is a little cramped as it is at RPI. Possibly having district champs in Syracuse at the dome? I'm not to fully sure about the venue but it could be big enough. Or on long island you could use Nassau Coliseum possibly since I know there is an underground tunnel connecting to the Marriott and possibly another center.

Also i just noticed on the map either were not represented,misrepresented or I don't know where Utica is on the map. But it does show just how spread out upper New York is and something that can be fixed in the future.

I think people are proposing having DCMP in the Albany metro area, but not at the RPI venue. Tech Valley would become a district event in this hypothetical scenario. Perhaps the Championship would be in the Times Union Center.

---

Personally, I just wish we could get rid of district borders entirely and teams would go to DCMP events located geographically closest to them. Make most regionals into "district" events. Get your points at any event you want. Advance to one of a dozen or so Super-Regionals geographically located around the country.

This would take some work, of course, but I'm tired of trying to draw perfect lines on a map that make everyone happy but wall off areas from outsiders completely. If teams traveling to "easy" districts really is an issue, then require one of the two events to be one of the five events closest to their team location. Can't we just play wherever is best for each individual team's needs...

[dougwilliams]

...

As for centrally located, what about Binghamton? It's actually somewhat easier to get to than Albany for a lot of places

Binghamton? We're still here ;) Binghamton University put in a decently sized events center a few years ago that might be suitable, and I imagine the University cuts deals with non-profit entities; Odyessey of the Mind State Championships are also at Binghamton, and I can't imagine they have any sort of cash outlay.

There's only one team here though - everyone else is at least an hour away. I assume most other teams will have a district event where they don't have to travel and stay overnight: (Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, NYC, LI); I assume we will travel and do overnights at all district events.

...
Most of the upstate teams issues
1.travel distance to nyc
2. I don't know what they are doing up there but i haven't heard anyone from upstate say they didn't have enough money to travel


Politely, that's a broad statement on funding. We struggle to get sponsors and fund-raise in this area. We had one of our most successful years, but could only afford one regional this year; having two regional events would have let us iron out everything in the first and do better in the second.

From my understanding of the differences between regionals and districts, the shorter events keep travel costs down, and we could probably afford two district events at about the same burden of a single regional. That still leaves paying for the championship event outstanding. (And paying for Worlds! Or pseudo half-worlds as the case may be...).

With all that said, I'm not at all sold on districts being the right thing. As noted above, I think people in more team-dense areas will make out better in saving money and getting more game-play. More importantly, from what I've seen (which is a few regionals and never a district in person - but some video), I'm highly underwhelmed with what I've seen and read about districts, I don't think it's as engaging/inspiring an atmosphere for the students. The story that you can still attend a extra-regional events by choice doesn't hold water when FIRST has forced us to spend all of our budget on attending the district events we would belong in.

Not that anyone would ask me or that it isn't inevitable anyway, but I adamantly don't want districts in NY.

[cmrnpizzo14]

I would like to try to clear some things up about NY here as many people I see aren't from NY and seem to have some things messed up. (Personally I feel that NYC and Long Island would be able to make their own state quite successfully)

1.) Rochester and NYC are in no way close.

Whatever Google maps says, add a significant amount of time to get in and out of the city. I know several people that park outside of the city and then take the train in because they feel that it is faster than simply trying to drive in.

2.)Albany, geographically, is in the middle (roughly).

Albany is geographically as close as it comes to the center of NY while still being in a city. Also would like to point out that Albany is the capital of NY, not NYC as some new college friends seem to have thought. This is a 4 hour drive away from teams in Rochester. Add an hour for Buffalo area, subtract one for Syracuse. 1 highway the entire way, easy drive. Easy to do with parents/bus.

I don't know what the NYC mindset is about sending their children to the upstate farmland but as it has been shown before it would be less than $150 to send 1 student up to Albany just based off of transportation and hotel. I don't know why a team would consider commuting from the city up to Albany and back in a day, hotels are the way to go. This cost is more than anyone wants but definitely doable. There are enough businesses in NYC that would be willing to sponsor teams if you ask.

3.)It is much harder for upstate teams to go to the city than for the city teams to go upstate.

Yes, upstate teams have more parent support in terms of transportation as well as high budgets (cannot confirm, never actually worked with a NYC team. Just going off what people have said). A trip to Albany though is significantly cheaper than a trip down to the city. 8-9 hour bus ride, city hotels, transportation once your there, and general cost of being in the city all adds up. Relying on parents for driving also adds the cost of parking. I live in Boston now, I imagine that NYC parking costs are similar. I can say that parking on campus here can get up to $45/day. Albany or Troy would be much cheaper.

I understand that parents in NYC don't have cars but honestly for moving an entire team a bus is honestly easier anyways. Not sure about the cost but between thruway tolls in NY, and gas money, I don't think that a bus would even cost that much more per person.

TL;DR, I think NY should be one district, championships should be in/around Albany, upstate teams have problems too.

[KosmicKhaos]

From this thread what I'm seeing is that it's going to be very hard to include NYC with the rest of NY in a district. There's just to many issues for it to happen. Someone mentioned this earlier and i feel it is a very valid idea to incorporate districts in NY as well as surrounding states.

Because of such a dense population of teams in NYC i would propose NYC being their own district, or maybe even combine with New Jersey. This solves many issues for the NYC Long Island teams like travel cost, distance etc. For venues though I'm not quite sure how well that would work out but I'm sure it could be figured out.

As for upstate teams, why not have them join with a smaller state/state with less teams to create a district. For example i don't believe upstate alone has enough teams to be a district and neither do many of the surrounding team. If upstate combined with Pennsylvania, Ohio, or west Virginia that would be enough for a district.
I would agree with this or even as stated above. Anther possibility would be if upstate joins with Pennsylvania, Ohio, or WV and to completely leave NYC out of the district model for now. As i said above i think it's just too difficult at the time for NYC to be in a district with upstate. Also by leaving them out of the district model and keeping the NYC regional international teams still have an easily accessible regional.

[MikLast]

Referencing the PNW district, the Seattle area has about 3 district events, Maybe NYC can have a couple, then have some in the upstate area for the other teams, then have the DCMP in a central area (Albany?) or have it switch every year, from NYC to Albany (and i think PNW is doing that, Portland to Cheney, or is that just random?)

[mistersands]

There are enough businesses in NYC that would be willing to sponsor teams if you ask.


This is surprisingly untrue in my experience. I, and my students, have been desperately contacting businesses, big and small, and nobody is biting. What you usually hear is 'We don't give to after school clubs, only charities' or 'We can only support programs in schools that are attended by our employees' children'. And that's great for the well known schools where the engineers send their kids (Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science) but not so much for our school. We're still working on it though.

We also are based in Flushing, Queens. So the businesses in our area tend to be very different than Manhattan or Brooklyn. And the businesses in Manhattan and Brooklyn seem to only sponsor teams in their Burroughs.

Yes, upstate teams have more parent support in terms of transportation as well as high budgets (cannot confirm, never actually worked with a NYC team. Just going off what people have said).

For reference, our budget this year was approximately $8000. That was from two big sponsors last year, Pershing Square Foundation and Port Authority of the NY and NJ. We had NASA last year to cover our entry fee and banked most of the other sponsor money for this year. We also had some fundraisers, but they don't go very well.

So after NYC Regional fee, we had about $3000 to work with. Pershing Square sponsored us again this year, so we can bank that for next year's regional.

TL;DR, I think NY should be one district, championships should be in/around Albany, upstate teams have problems too.

I don't necessarily disagree. I might argue for Binghamton instead of Albany. And as long as there are enough district events that we can attend downstate (Maybe one in the Bronx, one on Long Island, one in Queens)

But the NYC regional has a lot of international teams and it would be a shame to lose them.

[Sperkowsky]

Just figured i would add going to Pennsylvania and new Jersey is easier for a nyc team to do then going upstate sometimes.

[EricH]

Just figured i would add going to Pennsylvania and new Jersey is easier for a nyc team to do then going upstate sometimes.

Just a thought, going along with Chris's sentiment earlier:

If NY State was in districts, NE was in districts, and MAR was in districts, (and oh why not, the Ohio Valley was also in districts) and (the important part) nobody cared which two district events any given team went to as long as they went to two, where would NYC, Upstate, and Albany area teams tend to go, given current team distribution and current/theoretically proposed event locations?

Now, just to add more factors: Assume that each District system had its own championship, no combining. Where do you put the DCMP? Conversely, assume that NY State, NE, and MAR combined for one DCMP (or whatever you want to call it). Where do you put that one?

Just a fun, semirandom thought experiment.

[Sperkowsky]

Just a thought, going along with Chris's sentiment earlier:

If NY State was in districts, NE was in districts, and MAR was in districts, (and oh why not, the Ohio Valley was also in districts) and (the important part) nobody cared which two district events any given team went to as long as they went to two, where would NYC, Upstate, and Albany area teams tend to go, given current team distribution and current/theoretically proposed event locations?

Now, just to add more factors: Assume that each District system had its own championship, no combining. Where do you put the DCMP? Conversely, assume that NY State, NE, and MAR combined for one DCMP (or whatever you want to call it). Where do you put that one?

Just a fun, semirandom thought experiment.
That would work. A lot of Rochester and Ontario teams. Would probably go to Ohio valley. Albany teams would either go to Mar or ny and nyc would go to ny

[MikLast]

Now, just to add more factors: Assume that each District system had its own championship, no combining. Where do you put the DCMP? Conversely, assume that NY State, NE, and MAR combined for one DCMP (or whatever you want to call it). Where do you put that one?


Logically, in the center.

Not saying its possible though, i don't know the east coast.

[EricH]

Logically, in the center.


Which center, might I ask? The geographic center, or the center of the team distribution? Or are they the same?

See, just another minor wrinkle in "how to set up a district system"...

[1493kd]

[QUOTE=Chris is me;1473160]

Personally, I just wish we could get rid of district borders entirely and teams would go to DCMP events located geographically closest to them. Make most regionals into "district" events. Get your points at any event you want. Advance to one of a dozen or so Super-Regionals geographically located around the country.
/QUOTE]

I agree 1000% with this....

[MikLast]

Which center, might I ask? The geographic center, or the center of the team distribution? Or are they the same?

You would hope they were the same, but theyre not.

Ideally, you would try to find an area that is around the same drive time for all teams, or most at least. The geographic center would be a good place to start, then find the best area.

[Conor Ryan]

There has been no movement towards a NY State championship in the off season.

So why not just split upstate and NYC+LI, into 2 separate districts? If upstate breaks away into districts they win, southern state teams already are too far to travel, it will step up pressure for them to find a way.

[Mr V]

The whole idea behind the District system is to have more events closer to where the teams are. In the PNW district we had 4 events in the greater Seattle area so that teams in that area could attend two w/o the need for overnight accommodations. There were 2 events in the greater Portland area that has lower team density so again places for many teams from that area to play their two events without the need to stay in a Hotel.

Now for the other areas it is not as easy that is for certain. We had one event in Central Wa, Eastern Wa, and Central Western Or. That means that the bulk of the other teams have 1 event that they can go to w/o the need to stay in a hotel, but many of those teams would have been staying 2 or 3 nights in a hotel when we were in the Regional system

However both of those situations do not account for all the teams in the district there are those that have significant travel just to get to their closest event. Again those teams would have been traveling under the Regional system but now have to travel twice to attend both events. The can however get away with typically staying only 1 or 2 nights for each event.

So yes the affects are not uniform and those in low density areas do not get the benefits that those teams in the high density areas do.

I see no reason to believe that there would not be enough suitable venues in the NYC area so that teams in that area would not have to travel to their district events. For those teams outside of NYC or Long Island it is likely that they will have at least one event that is as close or closer than the Regionals they have gone to in the past. The teams in the outlying areas of the PNW district have benefited from having one of their events closer to home and the other not any further than the long standing events in our area.

Having been through our second season in the district system I have spent a lot of time talking to students and mentors getting their thoughts on the transition.

For the students the response has overwhelming been that they prefer the District system. Some said they feared that playing in a HS or college gym would not be as special as playing in an arena but after experiencing it said that they liked the more intimate setting where they were closer to the action and got to know a higher percentage of the teams at each event. They also overwhelmingly preferred more playing time. Not only more matches but not having the 1 hour between matches. Teams that had typically only attended a single regional were particularly happy about attending a second event where they could apply what they learned at their first event either by fixing/improving their robot or their strategy.

For the mentors the response was more varied. Many appreciated the greater value it brought to the students. In the past many mentors have told me that they wished they could go to a second event so that the students could apply the knowledge they gained at the first event and they now saw their students grow significantly because of the second event. On the other hand there were a few who two events more burdensome even though they were shorter and didn't express satisfaction with seeing the students apply the knowledge gained at the first event.

As far as the location of the DCMP we have moved ours around and hope to continue to do so in the future so that the same teams are not stuck making a long trip to DCMP every year.


As far as those low resource teams that earn as spot at DCMP goes, yes some do have to decline and some of the students just can't make it which is unfortunate. On the other hand when a team does earn that spot there are many cases where the school and community rally around the team's success and step up to the challenge. In one case there was a rookie team that was caught off guard by their invitation to DCMP and like many did not learn that they had qualified until 4 days before they had to be at the DCMP. They went into fundraising overdrive, supported by their school and superintendent. They did fall short of raising the funds but the school who was impressed by their progress agreed to loan the team funds from the ASB account with the agreement that they would continue to raise funds after the event to cover the shortfall. I know another rookie team that was in a similar situation and again found a way to go to DCMP, though I do not know as much about their fundraising efforts. I do know that I told them after their first event that they had a good shot at DCMP and that it would be a good idea to start looking for funding sooner rather than later.

TL;DR the benefits of the District System far outweigh the negatives. It is the way that first is going and in my opinion it is better to join now and work on overcoming the problems than to sit on the sidelines and say it will never work. Like anything in life if you say it won't work then you will almost certainly be right. If you say this is going to be hard but we can do it you will likely to be able to do it.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

[QUOTE=mistersands;1472545]No love for John Bowne High School?
[QUOTE]
I limited my examples to schools I’ve physically been in. Nothing against Bowne (or any number of schools I’ve omitted)

[Kevin Ray]

The possible solution has been touched upon by several posters above and it seems that it is not unrealistic- except potentially, the DCMP (what ever they'll call it). LI contains enough teams locally to easily have a local district event, so too does NYC. If you made them just a bit smaller there could be one in Suffolk County (East end for you out of staters), one in Nassau County (Middle of LI) and one in the city (Manhattan, again for you out of staters).
That would enable teams to select two districts that were within a daily commuting distance for all of the Island and NYC teams. The up state teams could have one to replace the Tech Valley and another for the Finger Lakes region and a third elsewhere in the state.
This gives most teams a choice of 2 out of three events to choose from within commuting distance. This eliminates hotels and other associated costs. Having the DCMP in Albany would be somewhat equidistant for all teams.

Those parents in NYC who forbade their children to go would also forbid them to go to St. Louis, I presume. There will have to be compromises no matter how you look at it.
At the SBPLI regional for the past two years we have been in dire straights financially. FIRST had to directly bail us out last year and who knows how we're paying for it this year. The district model IS cheaper and we have to be realistic about moving towards it--at least on LI. The School to Business Partnership of Long Island (SBPLI) was one of, if not the only outside entity to completely pay for it's own regional for all the years that we had one on LI and it was thought for a while that that was the model that most if not all regionals would move to. --Until the district model emerged. I know that the discussions in this thread have all been had by the "powers that be" and I'm sure that we'll start hearing about those conversations soon. Another problem is that this isn't just a "Let's do it next year" kind of thing. From speaking to several who have helped run districts, it takes years to organize. If that is the direction that we're going to go in, then we'll need to know soon.

But for now...Let's have fun in St. Louis!!!!!!

[Dominick Ferone]

At the SBPLI regional for the past two years we have been in dire straights financially. FIRST had to directly bail us out last year and who knows how we're paying for it this year.


For SBPLI what happened was 2011 or 2012 was the last year they got NYS grants for 150k and so 353 and 3624 were teams helping fund raise as much as possible and they need like 125 thousand a year for all the FLL and FRC events and even more now with FTC tournaments on the island.

[Koko Ed]

There has been no movement towards a NY State championship in the off season.

So why not just split upstate and NYC+LI, into 2 separate districts? If upstate breaks away into districts they win, southern state teams already are too far to travel, it will step up pressure for them to find a way.

Ana Martinez had talked to me briefly years ago of doing the New York State championships at the fair in the Hall of Progress (I doubt it would be there. That area looks like it generates alot of revenue for the fair. yeah it's just a big infomercial dump where a FIRST event would show what real progress looks like but it won't make the fair any money so it would probably end up in a tent somewhere if it happened) but it never really went anywhere. Someone with alot of ambition and experience would probably have to take the bull by the horns to get it off the ground, The best bet would be Ruckus committee members and none of us are jumping out of our seats to take the hill. The Ruckus takes up enough of out time as it is.

[Alan Anderson]

Which center, might I ask? The geographic center, or the center of the team distribution? Or are they the same?

And even if they are the same today, how is growth expected to change the team distribution in the future?

See, just another minor wrinkle in "how to set up a district system"...

I suggest using travel time as an appropriate measure of location fitness.

[AGPapa]

I suggest using travel time as an appropriate measure of location fitness.

I disagree, I think approximating the cost for each team is a better measure. By this I mean that any trip longer than about an hour and a half will send teams to hotels, which costs significantly more than travel. In effect, the cost difference between one hour and two is much greater than the cost difference between six hours and seven.

My this metric, NYC would be much better than Albany (for a NY DCMP) because fewer teams would need hotels. NYC would also probably be the best spot for Eric's entire Northeast district (which, I might add, is a colossally horrible idea).

[Koko Ed]

I disagree, I think approximating the cost for each team is a better measure. By this I mean that any trip longer than about an hour and a half will send teams to hotels, which costs significantly more than travel. In effect, the cost difference between one hour and two is much greater than the cost difference between six hours and seven.

My this metric, NYC would be much better than Albany because fewer teams would need hotels.

So basically it comes down to NYC matters more than the rest of New York which is not right.

[AGPapa]

So basically it comes down to NYC matters more than the rest of New York which is not right.

Would you rather make the ~50 teams in upstate New York gets hotels for their DCMP or the ~100 in NYC and LI? Also remember that with more district events throughout the state many teams that currently need hotels for Finger Lakes or Tech Valley will not for their first two events.

[1493kd]

What about the cost of getting a hotel in NYC... That is almost 2-3 times the cost of anywhere else in the state

[smistthegreat]

Would you rather make the ~50 teams in upstate New York gets hotels for their DCMP or the ~100 in NYC and LI? Also remember that with more district events throughout the state many teams that currently need hotels for Finger Lakes or Tech Valley will not for their first two events.

It's definitely not that simple, for a few reasons. First, not everybody will make DCMP, and there's no guarantee the same fraction of upstate and downstate teams qualify. Second, if the criteria is total cost, you have to take into account NYC hotel prices, food prices, and the cost of keeping a bus In NYC, which are all higher than they would be upstate.

What I'm hearing a lot of in this thread is that a NYC DCMP would be extremely difficult for upstate teams, and an upstate DCMP would be extremely difficult for NYC teams, almost impossible for most. I'm not sure how to resolve this.

Also for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that at least some of the New York RDs are meeting with FRC staff in St Louis to discuss the plan for New York districts.

[Kevin Leonard]

Would you rather make the ~50 teams in upstate New York gets hotels for their DCMP or the ~100 in NYC and LI? Also remember that with more district events throughout the state many teams that currently need hotels for Finger Lakes or Tech Valley will not for their first two events.

Except that that isn't quite accurate either. The 100 teams from NYC/LI and the 50 teams from upstate wouldn't need to get hotels for DCMP- only about 50-60 of those teams would need hotels for DCMP if they choose to attend.

Personally I still think the geographic center is the best option (Albany/Binghamton) for a DCMP, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

Binghamton does seem to be more centrally located than Albany for many teams:

Buffalo to Binghamton: 3.5 hours
Montauk to Binghamton: 5 hours
NYC to Binghamton: 3 hours
Clarkson to Binghamton: 3.5 hours
Albany to Binghamton: 2.5 hours

Buffalo to Albany: 4.5 hours
Rochester to Albany: 3.5 hours
Montauk to Albany: 4.5 hours
NYC to Albany: 3 hours
Clarkson to Albany: 3.5 hours

Buffalo to NYC: 6 hours
Rochester to NYC: 5 hours
Albany to NYC: 3 hours
Clarkson to NYC: 6 hours
Montauk to NYC: 3 hours

These numbers are all based on driving distances, rather than public transit, which may make them unrepresentative for some teams who rely on public transit to attend events.

[AGPapa]

What about the cost of getting a hotel in NYC... That is almost 2-3 times the cost of anywhere else in the state


Second, if the criteria is total cost, you have to take into account NYC hotel prices, food prices, and the cost of keeping a bus In NYC, which are all higher than they would be upstate.


Excellent points to consider.
My main point was that 'cost' is a better indicator of where to place the DCMP than 'travel time'. This includes how many teams would need hotels and how much those hotels would cost.


First, not everybody will make DCMP, and there's no guarantee the same fraction of upstate and downstate teams qualify.

It's definitely more fair to assume an even distribution of qualifying teams than to assume a skewed one.



Personally I still think the geographic center is the best option (Albany/Binghamton) for a DCMP, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.


The map doesn't show too many teams in the Albany or Binghamton areas, but maybe some of them are overlapping. How many teams are within an hour and a half drive of Albany? How many within an hour and a half of Binghamton?


Buffalo to Binghamton: 3.5 hours
Montauk to Binghamton: 5 hours
NYC to Binghamton: 3 hours
Clarkson to Binghamton: 3.5 hours
Albany to Binghamton: 2.5 hours


Those numbers look pretty reasonable.

[Kevin Leonard]

It's definitely not that simple, for a few reasons. First, not everybody will make DCMP, and there's no guarantee the same fraction of upstate and downstate teams qualify.

Here's the thing: Since district points are based on event performance, and for the most part, upstate teams and downstate teams won't attend the same events- there's a good chance a similar percentage of upstate teams and downstate teams will qualify for DCMP. However, based on the location of DCMP, I think a number of teams will decline to attend the event based on cost.


Excellent points to consider.
My main point was that 'cost' is a better indicator of where to place the DCMP than 'travel time'. This includes how many teams would need hotels and how much those hotels would cost.


It's definitely more fair to assume an even distribution of qualifying teams than to assume a skewed one.




The map doesn't show too many teams in the Albany or Binghamton areas, but maybe some of them are overlapping. How many teams are within an hour and a half drive of Albany? How many within an hour and a half of Binghamton?

I want to say there are about 15 current FRC teams within 1.5 hours of Albany or Binghamton.

And I agree about the cost/travel time point for the most part. I guess I didn't understand what you meant at first.

Meaning we'd need to consider how many teams would need hotels, how much each hotel would cost, how will those teams get there (for some teams that means "is there public transit that connects that DCMP location"), and a number of other factors.

[Sperkowsky]

This thread is becoming a repeated argument but whatever.

It Comes down to does everyone suffer or do 1/3 of the teams suffer.

I admit upstate teams get screwed but they are only 1/3 of the teams and as a minority that's someone that has to be done.

If dcmp was in the geographic center Albany (binghamton is a 4 and a half hour drive from li i don't care what Google maps says)

Only about 5 teams would actually benefit from it being in Albany. So the rest of the 150ish would have to all travel. Yea it's a little cheaper for upstate teams but that doesn't account for saved money by not having to have cars or buses accessible.. In a place like Albany you need a bus or a car to go to eat back to the hotel and to and from the venue. In nyc everything is so close that you can usually walk through all those if not taking the the subway which is affordable.

With that in mind it will most likely cost the same for upstate teams to come down to the city regardless of the added hotel costs.

[MrJohnston]

I was concerned when the PNW went to the district model two years ago... I had all the same questions and concerns that NY teams have been raising in this thread.... Two years later, it is confirmed: the district model isn't perfect. However, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives.

Positives:
* Lower income teams that tended not to qualify for advancement, now have two events and more than double the number of matches - for $4K instead if $5K.
* Smaller events make it easier for lesser known teams to get noticed - and helped if needed.
* Nearly every team has at least one event close enough to home that hotels are not necessary. Most teams (those in more densely populated areas) have two- though some choose to do an overnight trip anyhow.
* A higher percentage of teams are able to play in an "advanced" event with a higher level of play. (Previously, it was only Champsionships after a regional.) This event has the same ambiance as a regional and costs the same amount as a regional. Moreover, a good handful of teams don't need to travel to attend.
* There is a lot of opportunity to "fix," "upgrade," and repair a robot before the next event. Allowing for an increase in student learning and robot performance.
* Overall, a stronger cross section of robots from the geographic area attend champs.

Negatives:
* Let's face it, high school gyms do not have the same "pop" as the locations used for regionals. Teams that do not make the district champs miss out on this completely.
* Teams that qualify for champs, do have additional entry fees to pay if they are to to attend over the teams that typically play in one regional, then attend champs. However, for teams that would play in two regionals anyhow, it's a wash.
* The additional one or two weekends of competition (not to mention days between!) can be taxing on mentors....and students' grades.
* Some teams believe that it lowers their chances of getting to Champs... This is true for some: Weaker robots that rely on being that last pick of the #1 alliance in a regional event will struggle to accumulate enough district points to advance past district champs. However, I don't think this is a bad thing.


Overall, I do think it has been a very good move for the PNW - and I was a skeptic at first. I would encourage all NY teams to take a good, fair, look at it. Yes, each geographic area is different, but there are many ways to account for theses regional differences in the institution of a district model for FRC.

[Kevin Leonard]

This thread is becoming a repeated argument but whatever.

It Comes down to does everyone suffer or do 1/3 of the teams suffer.
I see no suffering- in fact NY going to districts means reduced travel times and more competition for everyone in the state.
This is only discussing DCMP, and only the teams that qualify for DCMP have to worry about these travel times and costs.

I admit upstate teams get screwed but they are only 1/3 of the teams and as a minority that's someone that has to be done.

If dcmp was in the geographic center Albany (binghamton is a 4 and a half hour drive from li i don't care what Google maps says)
We'd like to prevent any team being "screwed", regardless of where they're from in the state.

Only about 5 teams would actually benefit from it being in Albany.
False- every team in the capital region, every team in the Rochester region, as well as the Clarkson teams and the assorted Central NY teams would benefit from the DCMP being in Albany or Binghamton vs. NYC. Cheaper travel costs, cheaper hotel costs, and no one has to drive into NYC this way.

So the rest of the 150ish would have to all travel.
Again, only about 50-60 teams would attend DCMP, so it doesn't affect every team in the state.
Yea it's a little cheaper for upstate teams but that doesn't account for saved money by not having to have cars or buses accessible.. In a place like Albany you need a bus or a car to go to eat back to the hotel and to and from the venue. In nyc everything is so close that you can usually walk through all those if not taking the the subway which is affordable.
False again- there are hotels within ten minutes walking distance of the Times Union Center, as well as at least a dozen within 30 minutes of the TUC via public transportation.


With that in mind it will most likely cost the same for upstate teams to come down to the city regardless of the added hotel costs.
Again, false. Transportation into the city is a bit of a nightmare, as well as hotels in the city being substantially more expensive than in Albany.
With a quick google search, I found the cheapest hotel I could find was $135/night, while the cheapest hotels in Albany are about $45/night.
That's a substantial difference.

I understand that NY as one district has some difficulties, especially in locating a suitable place for a district championship, but I'd ask you consider the effects on every team that would qualify, and understand that there are teams with monetary and logistical problems everywhere in the state.

I was concerned when the PNW went to the district model two years ago... I had all the same questions and concerns that NY teams have been raising in this thread.... Two years later, it is confirmed: the district model isn't perfect. However, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives.

Positives:
* Lower income teams that tended not to qualify for advancement, now have two events and more than double the number of matches - for $4K instead if $5K.
* Smaller events make it easier for lesser known teams to get noticed - and helped if needed.
* Nearly every team has at least one event close enough to home that hotels are not necessary. Most teams (those in more densely populated areas) have two- though some choose to do an overnight trip anyhow.
* A higher percentage of teams are able to play in an "advanced" event with a higher level of play. (Previously, it was only Champsionships after a regional.) This event has the same ambiance as a regional and costs the same amount as a regional. Moreover, a good handful of teams don't need to travel to attend.
* There is a lot of opportunity to "fix," "upgrade," and repair a robot before the next event. Allowing for an increase in student learning and robot performance.
* Overall, a stronger cross section of robots from the geographic area attend champs.

Negatives:
* Let's face it, high school gyms do not have the same "pop" as the locations used for regionals. Teams that do not make the district champs miss out on this completely.
* Teams that qualify for champs, do have additional entry fees to pay if they are to to attend over the teams that typically play in one regional, then attend champs. However, for teams that would play in two regionals anyhow, it's a wash.
* The additional one or two weekends of competition (not to mention days between!) can be taxing on mentors....and students' grades.
* Some teams believe that it lowers their chances of getting to Champs... This is true for some: Weaker robots that rely on being that last pick of the #1 alliance in a regional event will struggle to accumulate enough district points to advance past district champs. However, I don't think this is a bad thing.


Overall, I do think it has been a very good move for the PNW - and I was a skeptic at first. I would encourage all NY teams to take a good, fair, look at it. Yes, each geographic area is different, but there are many ways to account for theses regional differences in the institution of a district model for FRC.

Amen.

[smistthegreat]

In my opinion, the only neat way to resolve the DCMP difference is to split New York into two districts. It solves almost every issue with very limited downside.

- Each region is big enough to have its own district
- Downstate can have a NYC DCMP, upstate can have one in Rochester (or another upstate city)
- Even if we made one big district, the downstate teams would play downstate districts, and vice versa for upstate, essentially splitting the region already

[Jimmy Nichols]

...for $4K instead if $5K.

How does this work? I know that the districts receive money for every team that registers from the district with FIRST, but from everything I know they still need to pay $5K* for their initial registration. According to FIRST's site (http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/frc-payment-terms), this is the case.

*$6K for Rookies.

[Dominick Ferone]

If dcmp was in the geographic center Albany (binghamton is a 4 and a half hour drive from li i don't care what Google maps says)


I am going to have to disagree with this. Being from around your area me and my roommate get back to school in about 4 hours and we pass Albany on the way.(We are an hour east of Syracuse and and hour west of Albany).
When driving up what takes the longest is getting through the city and the LIE, when on the thruway it's not bad. To avoid problems in the city you just need to leave during non rush hour times.

[MrJohnston]

How does this work? I know that the districts receive money for every team that registers from the district with FIRST, but from everything I know they still need to pay $5K* for their initial registration. According to FIRST's site (http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/frc-payment-terms), this is the case.

*$6K for Rookies.


I cannot speak for the inner workings of FIRST. I can tell you that when we were in regionals, we spent $5K to get going and it covered the KoP and our first regional. This year, I paid $4K to start and it covered the KoP and two district competitions... It could be that rookie teams still pay the extra $1,000 - so $5K for both events.

I believe that the main reason for this is that renting a venue large enough for a regional competition is quite expensive, but HS gymnasiums are relatively cheap - sometimes free if the event is "hosted" by that high school's FRC team... That savings is passed on to the teams.

[1493kd]

I know it changes year to year but how many of these teams in the top 60 are from downstate and how many are in areas other then downstate??

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136403&highlight=New+York+rankings

[Chris is me]

In my opinion, the only neat way to resolve the DCMP difference is to split New York into two districts. It solves almost every issue with very limited downside.

- Each region is big enough to have its own district
- Downstate can have a NYC DCMP, upstate can have one in Rochester (or another upstate city)
- Even if we made one big district, the downstate teams would play downstate districts, and vice versa for upstate, essentially splitting the region already

I want to specifically emphasize the last point here. A point earned in Long Island and a point earned in Rochester would not really even mean the same thing. I don't think it's unfair to say Finger Lakes is typically a more competitive event than Long Island. In other districts, teams can travel / be reassigned to help even things out, but due to the geographic constraints here, few teams will travel from one to the other (and the teams that would are already good enough to qualify for DCMP).

I really think that two districts, or one district and one region merged into the other, is the way to go here. I would even be fine if NYC / LI teams could opt to get real district points from events in the surrounding 3 districts.

[smistthegreat]

I know it changes year to year but how many of these teams in the top 60 are from downstate and how many are in areas other then downstate??

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136403&highlight=New+York+rankings

That data is very flawed in this context for a number of reasons. A better indicator of what you're trying to find would be max opr or average opr.

[Jimmy Nichols]

I cannot speak for the inner workings of FIRST. I can tell you that when we were in regionals, we spent $5K to get going and it covered the KoP and our first regional. This year, I paid $4K to start and it covered the KoP and two district competitions... It could be that rookie teams still pay the extra $1,000 - so $5K for both events.

I believe that the main reason for this is that renting a venue large enough for a regional competition is quite expensive, but HS gymnasiums are relatively cheap - sometimes free if the event is "hosted" by that high school's FRC team... That savings is passed on to the teams.

Each district receives $1000 as a re-grant from FIRST for every team that registers. I assume PNW must tell FIRST to apply that $1000 towards the teams registration fees vs. sending it to the District. That would be a choice that the district makes given that they have the funds to support their annual expenses. Otherwise all teams pay $5K per FIRST's website. I don't have any contacts in PNW to confirm this, but since I'm involved in both Regional planning and District conversations with FIRST, this is my educated assumption.

Just trying to prevent mis-information about the fees from getting out there.

[Alan Anderson]

NYC is very hard to travel out of. Virtually none of my students have parents who have cars.

My experience is that it's hard to travel into NYC. Once you're there, it's easy enough to get around, but unless you're taking the train you've got some serious logistical issues trying to find a place to put a team bus, and it'll be expensive no matter how you do it.

Staying overnight in NYC is a heck of a lot more expensive than any of the other suggested locations. That puts it on the harder end of the scale when you consider fundraising.

I don't see why the number of parents with cars is relevant. They're not going to be the ones asked to provide transportation, are they?

Most of the parents don't speak English. In fact, on my team of 20+ students, I've only met the parents of 2.

Again, I don't understand the relevance. Unless you're trying to imply that the parents do not comprehend what the team does, in which case it shouldn't be hard to tell them. One would expect that the students can talk to their parents.

Many would not LET their child travel outside of NYC even on a school trip. A trip to Long Island would be fine, but upstate I might lose a third of my team to parents not wanting their children to travel.

Can this be true? I have a hard time imagining that high school students would not be permitted to go on the equivalent of a school field trip. It's not like the world outside NYC is some crowded, dirty, crime-ridden environment. (Okay, that's not fair of me to obliquely accuse NYC of being such an environment itself. I'm just trying to understand the reasoning.)

If it was overnight, I would lose over half. And NYC teachers are forbidden from transporting students in their own vehicles.

I'm getting the impression that you're focusing on trying to travel using privately-formed carpools. What's wrong with a school bus? And I thought the reason Albany was suggested was because there's rail transportation available from NYC.

Long Islanders are used to traveling. Almost all parents have cars, and in fact many students have cars.

Whether or not someone is accustomed to traveling shouldn't have any bearing on someone else's planning a trip for them.

[plnyyanks]

We'd like to prevent any team being "screwed", regardless of where they're from in the state.

In other districts, teams can travel / be reassigned to help even things out, but due to the geographic constraints here, few teams will travel from one to the other (and the teams that would are already good enough to qualify for DCMP).

And these are the main reasons that two smaller district regions is emerging as the best option in my mind.

This year, Indiana proved that the district system could be successful with 50 teams. So we split NYC+LI into one district, and everything north of Westchester-ish into another. Each would require maybe 4 events + DCMP, and having them stay "local" would really minimize travel costs.

Plus, if inter-district play gets sorted out, then teams could still intermingle if they want, NYC+LI teams can compete in MAR, and upstate teams can go to New England events. That seems like the "everybody wins" scenario, even though it bring a new host of problems surrounding inter-district play.

[Kevin Leonard]

And these are the main reasons that two smaller district regions is emerging as the best option in my mind.

This year, Indiana proved that the district system could be successful with 50 teams. So we split NYC+LI into one district, and everything north of Westchester-ish into another. Each would require maybe 4 events + DCMP, and having them stay "local" would really minimize travel costs.

Plus, if inter-district play gets sorted out, then teams could still intermingle if they want, NYC+LI teams can compete in MAR, and upstate teams can go to New England events. That seems like the "everybody wins" scenario, even though it bring a new host of problems surrounding inter-district play.

For all non-selfish reasons, I have to agree that this becomes the better option for most teams in NY.
The other similar option that benefits the international teams is to have upstate NY become a district and leave NY as is. Maybe even add another regional event to NYC or LI.

[Dominick Ferone]

I know it changes year to year but how many of these teams in the top 60 are from downstate and how many are in areas other then downstate??

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136403&highlight=New+York+rankings

If you based it off of this Which you shouldn't, 3 of the top 5 are upstate teams and I believe 26 out of top 60 teams are Also from up north.(could be wrong just going based on numbers I remember being from the upstate area.)

Also if you were to look at all New York regionals they had high scores and $@#$@#$@# the weeks went on they got higher when people gained more skills. (Going from tech valley to flr in one week 6 teams had a final score of over 100 rather than the previous 3.) Also the averages were overall much higher scores than Long Island which was the same week.

[Koko Ed]

For all non-selfish reasons, I have to agree that this becomes the better option for most teams in NY.
The other similar option that benefits the international teams is to have upstate NY become a district and leave NY as is. Maybe even add another regional event to NYC or LI.
Upstate New York/Western Pennsylvania seems to make alot of sense.

[BrendanB]

In my opinion, the only neat way to resolve the DCMP difference is to split New York into two districts. It solves almost every issue with very limited downside.

- Each region is big enough to have its own district
- Downstate can have a NYC DCMP, upstate can have one in Rochester (or another upstate city)
- Even if we made one big district, the downstate teams would play downstate districts, and vice versa for upstate, essentially splitting the region already

How is this different compared to what teams in Districts already experience?

I know New York is split geographically a little more compared to most regions but minus a few teams who travel for the sake of traveling teams in districts for the most part attend events closest to them. We rarely play with teams from Rhode Island or Connecticut until we go to the District Championship which is a 4+ hour drive for some teams to attend. I know many teams in Michigan and Washington/Oregon who drive further to get to their District Championship.

Teams will intermingle if the schedule works better, availability for a third or fourth play, or some teams really like to travel like we have up here.

[smistthegreat]

How is this different compared to what teams in Districts already experience?

I know New York is split geographically a little more compared to most regions but minus a few teams who travel for the sake of traveling teams in districts for the most part attend events closest to them. We rarely play with teams from Rhode Island or Connecticut until we go to the District Championship which is a 4+ hour drive for some teams to attend. I know many teams in Michigan and Washington/Oregon who drive further to get to their District Championship.

Teams will intermingle if the schedule works better, availability for a third or fourth play, or some teams really like to travel like we have up here.

I guess I was going off of the assumption the most other regions distribution is a little more continuous than New York. So teams from New Hampshire night not play with teams from Rhode Island, but teams from New Hampshire might play with some teams from Massachusetts, who play with some teams from Connecticut, who play with some teams from Rhode Island. There's no clear line, and the distribution is a little more continuous.

For New York, there is an extremely clear line, and it would probably become even more clear for districts.

[Mr V]

I cannot speak for the inner workings of FIRST. I can tell you that when we were in regionals, we spent $5K to get going and it covered the KoP and our first regional. This year, I paid $4K to start and it covered the KoP and two district competitions... It could be that rookie teams still pay the extra $1,000 - so $5K for both events.

I believe that the main reason for this is that renting a venue large enough for a regional competition is quite expensive, but HS gymnasiums are relatively cheap - sometimes free if the event is "hosted" by that high school's FRC team... That savings is passed on to the teams.

The fee is $5000 for a veteran team in the PNW. Well actually it is $8000 for veteran teams but at least $3000 of that is offset by PNW FIRST grants. You must have received one of the other grants if the net on your initial registration bill was $4000.

In the traditional regional system the $5000 doesn't cover the venue. The RD is charged with raising the funds to cover those costs. FIRST does cover the transportation of the field to and from the event location and the cost of the fields ect.

Now PNW FIRST, and all districts, gets to keep $1000 (or in other districts gets $1000 per team from FIRST) of the initial registration fee to offset some of the costs of running the district.

Yes the district events cost less, but there are more of them. There is usually not a rental fee for the venue but there are other venue costs that are passed along to PNW FIRST. For example there is usually a janitorial fee to cover the school staff that unlocks and secures the building and for them to take care of the garbage (they may empty a given can 4 or 5 times per day) and to hopefully insure that the bathrooms are stocked with paper products.

Note the PNW district is unique in its billing system where PNW FIRST bills the teams for the total cost of participating including registration, rather than US FIRST billing for initial registration. PNW FIRST then provides a team grant to bring that cost to teams back down to the $5000 level (or $6000 for rookie teams). This is done because many donors are happy to donate to teams but aren't interested in paying the janitorial fee, forklift rental trucking ect.

[Andrew Schreiber]

I cannot speak for the inner workings of FIRST. I can tell you that when we were in regionals, we spent $5K to get going and it covered the KoP and our first regional. This year, I paid $4K to start and it covered the KoP and two district competitions... It could be that rookie teams still pay the extra $1,000 - so $5K for both events.

I believe that the main reason for this is that renting a venue large enough for a regional competition is quite expensive, but HS gymnasiums are relatively cheap - sometimes free if the event is "hosted" by that high school's FRC team... That savings is passed on to the teams.

The cost of the venue doesn't factor into your registration fees.

[Jimmy Nichols]

The fee is $5000 for a veteran team in the PNW. Well actually it is $8000 for veteran teams but at least $3000 of that is offset by PNW FIRST grants. You must have received one of the other grants if the net on your initial registration bill was $4000.

In the traditional regional system the $5000 doesn't cover the venue. The RD is charged with raising the funds to cover those costs. FIRST does cover the transportation of the field to and from the event location and the cost of the fields ect.

Now PNW FIRST, and all districts, gets to keep $1000 (or in other districts gets $1000 per team from FIRST) of the initial registration fee to offset some of the costs of running the district.

Yes the district events cost less, but there are more of them. There is usually not a rental fee for the venue but there are other venue costs that are passed along to PNW FIRST. For example there is usually a janitorial fee to cover the school staff that unlocks and secures the building and for them to take care of the garbage (they may empty a given can 4 or 5 times per day) and to hopefully insure that the bathrooms are stocked with paper products.

Note the PNW district is unique in its billing system where PNW FIRST bills the teams for the total cost of participating including registration, rather than US FIRST billing for initial registration. PNW FIRST then provides a team grant to bring that cost to teams back down to the $5000 level (or $6000 for rookie teams). This is done because many donors are happy to donate to teams but aren't interested in paying the janitorial fee, forklift rental trucking ect.


Very interesting.

Along with RD's the local planning committees are tasked with raising the funds for the Regional's. Currently none of the registration fees go towards the cost of the event. Regional's are tasked with raising the funds for the entirety of their event.

[BrendanB]

I guess I was going off of the assumption the most other regions distribution is a little more continuous than New York. So teams from New Hampshire night not play with teams from Rhode Island, but teams from New Hampshire might play with some teams from Massachusetts, who play with some teams from Connecticut, who play with some teams from Rhode Island. There's no clear line, and the distribution is a little more continuous.

For New York, there is an extremely clear line, and it would probably become even more clear for districts.

That is all true I guess you could call it "Trickle Down Coopertition"? ;)

New England teams are pretty good at intermingling together but there is a reality that we just don't see certain teams minus 1-2 who decide to travel. At our past four district events we've only seen 3 teams from Rhode Island/Connecticut (events 2x MA, and 2x NH).

[Mr V]

I want to specifically emphasize the last point here. A point earned in Long Island and a point earned in Rochester would not really even mean the same thing. I don't think it's unfair to say Finger Lakes is typically a more competitive event than Long Island. In other districts, teams can travel / be reassigned to help even things out, but due to the geographic constraints here, few teams will travel from one to the other (and the teams that would are already good enough to qualify for DCMP).

I really think that two districts, or one district and one region merged into the other, is the way to go here. I would even be fine if NYC / LI teams could opt to get real district points from events in the surrounding 3 districts.

A point is a point no matter where it was earned. Either way the distribution of points is pretty much equivalent to the relative performance of the teams at a given event. Yes some events are more competitive than others but it does average out a bit because teams attend two events and there is a different mix of teams. Yes because of geography you will find a number of teams that attend the same two district events but there are also unique teams at those two events. For some teams different weeks work out better and for others they do want to travel and provide that experience to the students that may not get it otherwise. All told the points system does a good job of sending the best teams to the DCMP. Having a larger district does a better job of this.

If you want to talk about the distances being restrictive see the PNW district and my post near the beginning of this thread showing how much greater of an area we cover out here. I know that many parents in NYC may not have cars but how do other teams travel to their state championships? Does a football/basketball/baseball ect team decline their invitation to their respective state championships because parents do not have cars or does the team take a school bus?

For the fun of it I looked up the NYSPHSAA's championships.

For basketball it was located in Glen Falls this year. According to Google maps it is a 3:30 drive from NYC or a 4:30 by public transportation. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/New+York,+NY/43.308168,-73.641852/@42.7710995,-76.6947325,7z/data=!4m8!4m7!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c24fa5d33f083b:0xc80b8 f06e177fe62!2m2!1d-74.0059413!2d40.7127837!1m0?hl=en Yes I know that there are problems with google maps and their times but for someone outside of the area they are the best available info.

For Football it was in Syracuse https://www.google.com/maps/dir/New+York,+NY/Carrier+Dome,+Irving+Avenue,+Syracuse,+NY/@41.9322187,-77.3246382,7z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c24fa5d33f08 3b:0xc80b8f06e177fe62!2m2!1d-74.0059413!2d40.7127837!1m5!1m1!1s0x89d9f39936b9c2 43:0xfa3aa516dcff8766!2m2!1d-76.136265!2d43.036187?hl=en even further away in both distance and time from NYC yet still with a public transportation option, though it seems to me a school bus would be how a football team would get there.

Each district receives $1000 as a re-grant from FIRST for every team that registers. I assume PNW must tell FIRST to apply that $1000 towards the teams registration fees vs. sending it to the District. That would be a choice that the district makes given that they have the funds to support their annual expenses. Otherwise all teams pay $5K per FIRST's website. I don't have any contacts in PNW to confirm this, but since I'm involved in both Regional planning and District conversations with FIRST, this is my educated assumption.

Just trying to prevent mis-information about the fees from getting out there.

See above for how the billing works in PNW FIRST it is unique among the current Districts though the net is the same in that the initial registration fee for veteran teams is still $5000 and for rookie teams it is still $6000.

And these are the main reasons that two smaller district regions is emerging as the best option in my mind.

This year, Indiana proved that the district system could be successful with 50 teams. So we split NYC+LI into one district, and everything north of Westchester-ish into another. Each would require maybe 4 events + DCMP, and having them stay "local" would really minimize travel costs.

Plus, if inter-district play gets sorted out, then teams could still intermingle if they want, NYC+LI teams can compete in MAR, and upstate teams can go to New England events. That seems like the "everybody wins" scenario, even though it bring a new host of problems surrounding inter-district play.

I don't know that the dust has settled enough to say that the IN district was successful in all aspects of the reasons for the move to the District system.

As far as the running of the events and the fact that many teams got to play more matches and travel less then yes by all indications it certainly was a success.

The other reason for the switch to the District system is financial, running Regionals is very expensive and unsustainable as growth continues. So the question is was the IN district able to lower the total cost of the events vs what it was for the Regional it replaced. How does in-kind donations from AndyMark play into the total costs. For example I know that in the past AndyMark has stored and shipped fields for off-season events. So is AndyMark providing the receiving, storage and shipping functions for the IN district? Will a NYC district be able to find a company willing to do the same for them? Will they need to rent a warehouse like PNW does or use a company like Pods to handle the storage like MAR does. Do not get me wrong I'm not knocking anything that AndyMark may have done to make the IN district happen, just questioning if another mini-district could be financially successful without a company like AndyMark stepping up. There are economies of scale.

I know that the unified district points system was designed to allow the portability of district points for the long term. I suspect that in a few years teams will be able to travel to another district and bring the points earned there back home with them, assuming that it is not the 3rd play chronologically.

[PVCpirate]

The possible solution has been touched upon by several posters above and it seems that it is not unrealistic- except potentially, the DCMP (what ever they'll call it). LI contains enough teams locally to easily have a local district event, so too does NYC. If you made them just a bit smaller there could be one in Suffolk County (East end for you out of staters), one in Nassau County (Middle of LI) and one in the city (Manhattan, again for you out of staters).
That would enable teams to select two districts that were within a daily commuting distance for all of the Island and NYC teams. The up state teams could have one to replace the Tech Valley and another for the Finger Lakes region and a third elsewhere in the state.
This gives most teams a choice of 2 out of three events to choose from within commuting distance. This eliminates hotels and other associated costs. Having the DCMP in Albany would be somewhat equidistant for all teams.

I just wanted to clear up a bit of a misconception here, it seems you have a total of 6 district events in this scenario. Assuming a typical district size of 40 teams, this would limit New York to 120 teams. A quick search tells me that 171 teams competed from New York this season, which would require nine 40 team events to give everyone two plays. My guess would be two of those go in the NYC/LI area and the other goes upstate somewhere.

[Andrew Schreiber]

A point is a point no matter where it was earned.

Technically correct. I'd argue that it SHOULDN'T be correct but certain policies based on political correctness force it to be correct.

A point earned at a crappy event shouldn't equal a point earned at an event where you're competing with 67/254 caliber teams. By having heavily modal distribution of teams attending events (read as very little intermingling of the teams) you are actually hurting teams in the more competitive grouping. Simple example:

I'm going to assign each team a triple, it consists of number, points earned, overall skill relative to district. (blah blah, teams are just who I pulled as teams from the region at a quick glance, numbers are random)

Group A (call it upstate NY):
(20 146 1)
(2971 110 3)
(1507 109 2)
(340 109 9)
(1126 98 7)

Group B (downstate):
(263 130 4)
(334 120 6)
(694 108 5)


So, if I take my top 5 (mostly because I got tired of coming up with teams, this expands to top 24/40/60/N) by points I get:

20, 263, 334, 2971, 1507

But if I were to take them based on actual skill (how they SHOULD rank approximately)
20, 1507, 2971, 263, 694

Notice that there's very different teams? That's because the two groups scores aren't linked in any way. This is what happens when you have low intermingling, because a top group actually hurts itself by competing against themselves.

Basically, a point is a point but it shouldn't be that way.

Button for red dots is in the top corner.

[plnyyanks]

I don't know that the dust has settled enough to say that the IN district was successful in all aspects of the reasons for the move to the District system.

As far as the running of the events and the fact that many teams got to play more matches and travel less then yes by all indications it certainly was a success.


Yeah, that's what I was going by. I'm not knowledgeable enough with their specifics to comment any more deeply on the situation.

[Dominick Ferone]

Technically correct. I'd argue that it SHOULDN'T be correct but certain policies based on political correctness force it to be correct.

A point earned at a crappy event shouldn't equal a point earned at an event where you're competing with 67/254 caliber teams. By having heavily modal distribution of teams attending events (read as very little intermingling of the teams) you are actually hurting teams in the more competitive grouping. Simple example:

I'm going to assign each team a triple, it consists of number, points earned, overall skill relative to district. (blah blah, teams are just who I pulled as teams from the region at a quick glance, numbers are random)

Group A (call it upstate NY):
(20 146 1)
(2971 110 3)
(1507 109 2)
(340 109 9)
(1126 98 7)

Group B (downstate):
(263 130 4)
(334 120 6)
(694 108 5)


So, if I take my top 5 (mostly because I got tired of coming up with teams, this expands to top 24/40/60/N) by points I get:

20, 263, 334, 2971, 1507

But if I were to take them based on actual skill (how they SHOULD rank approximately)
20, 1507, 2971, 263, 694

Notice that there's very different teams? That's because the two groups scores aren't linked in any way. This is what happens when you have low intermingling, because a top group actually hurts itself by competing against themselves.

Basically, a point is a point but it shouldn't be that way.

Button for red dots is in the top corner.

To build on this maybe after an event do a multiplier to the district points they earn based on the overall opr divided by the number of teams or something like that. Some regionals when the top 2 teams banned together, the winner is already know at this point. Where other regionals have the upsets come from a lower alliance like FLR had the 7th seed win.

[Mr V]

Technically correct. I'd argue that it SHOULDN'T be correct but certain policies based on political correctness force it to be correct.

A point earned at a crappy event shouldn't equal a point earned at an event where you're competing with 67/254 caliber teams. By having heavily modal distribution of teams attending events (read as very little intermingling of the teams) you are actually hurting teams in the more competitive grouping. Simple example:

I'm going to assign each team a triple, it consists of number, points earned, overall skill relative to district. (blah blah, teams are just who I pulled as teams from the region at a quick glance, numbers are random)

Group A (call it upstate NY):
(20 146 1)
(2971 110 3)
(1507 109 2)
(340 109 9)
(1126 98 7)

Group B (downstate):
(263 130 4)
(334 120 6)
(694 108 5)


So, if I take my top 5 (mostly because I got tired of coming up with teams, this expands to top 24/40/60/N) by points I get:

20, 263, 334, 2971, 1507

But if I were to take them based on actual skill (how they SHOULD rank approximately)
20, 1507, 2971, 263, 694

Notice that there's very different teams? That's because the two groups scores aren't linked in any way. This is what happens when you have low intermingling, because a top group actually hurts itself by competing against themselves.

Basically, a point is a point but it shouldn't be that way.

Button for red dots is in the top corner.

It seems to me that they are not very different teams. In the two lists I see 4 of the same teams on both lists and 1 unique team per list.

With the way the district points system is set up the points earned at DCMP are multiplied by 3 to determine who moves on to CMP. That means that the effects of the relative competitiveness of the district events are lessened to a degree.

I believe a greater number of smaller district events should lessen the difference in competitiveness between the district events. It certainly won't eliminate it though.

Combined with the way DCMP points work it should still result in the top teams moving on, but not eliminate the variability caused near the cutoff points line for the mid range teams.

No it certainly isn't a perfect system but I believe that it is pretty good based on my experiences in the PNW district. In our district we have one highly dense area, two minor areas and the rest of the teams spread pretty wide.

For reference here is a map of the distribution of teams. http://batchgeo.com/map/70d940e318d9a1a2f0b583b66cde4d5c

[Andrew Schreiber]

It seems to me that they are not very different teams. In the two lists I see 4 of the same teams on both lists and 1 unique team per list.

With the way the district points system is set up the points earned at DCMP are multiplied by 3 to determine who moves on to CMP. That means that the effects of the relative competitiveness of the district events are lessened to a degree.


So, seeing 20% difference between lists is fine? So, in NE that'd be 12 teams that probably deserve to be at DCMP that wouldn't make it because other teams competed at weaker events and earned more points.

[PVCpirate]

So, seeing 20% difference between lists is fine? So, in NE that'd be 12 teams that probably deserve to be at DCMP that wouldn't make it because other teams competed at weaker events and earned more points.

So Andrew, I see your point that having two isolated groups within a district has an effect on whether the best teams make it to the DCMP. My question is, if you were in charge of a New York District involving the whole state, how would you propose accounting for this?

[Andrew Schreiber]

So Andrew, I see your point that having two isolated groups within a district has an effect on whether the best teams make it to the DCMP. My question is, if you were in charge of a New York District involving the whole state, how would you propose accounting for this?

Hadn't thought of how to fix it. NE is less of an issue, there seems to be a fair bit of intermingling and I know FIM has similar intermingling. Fairly certain MAR is decent too. PNW/IN I haven't looked at in enough detail.

The obvious would be apply a correction fact to points earned at a district. How to compute that? Idk, I've been poking around with the Simple Rating System that's fairly popular in the NFL. That might be a solution. The other option would be give an incentive to attend events with more diversity. However, both of these are nonstarters for various reasons. (SRS is more difficult than a numeric sort, and incentivizing other events is nonstarter for political reasons)

[smistthegreat]

So Andrew, I see your point that having two isolated groups within a district has an effect on whether the best teams make it to the DCMP. \snip

For those of you wondering if New York's two isolated groups have an appreciable performance gap, I did some rudimentary calculations. All OPR values were the maximum OPR values for this year, taken from Ed Law's spreadsheet.

Upstate Mean Max OPR: 25.1
Downstate Mean Max OPR: 15.9

Attached is a plot of the OPR distributions for each region. The distributions are shaped similarly, but upstate appears to have a +10 OPR advantage vs downstate.

Edit: Sorry for the huge photo. Here's a link to the image itself: http://i.imgur.com/jka78Nv.png

http://i.imgur.com/jka78Nv.png

[Sperkowsky]

I just wanted to clear up a bit of a misconception here, it seems you have a total of 6 district events in this scenario. Assuming a typical district size of 40 teams, this would limit New York to 120 teams. A quick search tells me that 171 teams competed from New York this season, which would require nine 40 team events to give everyone two plays. My guess would be two of those go in the NYC/LI area and the other goes upstate somewhere.
Being 120ish of the 170ish are in rhe nyc li area there has to be 6 local events and 3 upstate.

Queens
Suffolk county
Nassau county
Brooklyn
Manhattan
Bronx
Chapequa (no one has mentioned all the lower state teams that are closer to nyc then upstate)



So one Albany one Rochester and one Syracuse?

[Dominick Ferone]

Being 120ish of the 170ish are in rhe nyc li area there has to be 6 local events and 3 upstate.

Queens
Suffolk county
Nassau county
Brooklyn
Manhattan
Bronx
Chapequa (no one has mentioned all the lower state teams that are closer to nyc then upstate)



So one Albany one Rochester and one Syracuse?

They are only 147 new york teams base on this http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136403&highlight=5030.
With about 50 of them being from upstate at least. If you look at all the teams attending just one regional, yes a lot are from NYC or Long Island because this year became harder to attend second regionals with the influx of out of state teams. So holding districts would help lots of teams but we can not just ignore that up past the city has a lot of teams that do pretty well each year.
Also basing upon upstate has stronger teams but that may be since most compete at 2 regionals so they have time to improve. We don't need to argue which area is better but agree upon that the district model would help out a lot of teams, if not all to show off how much they can do. As well as provide a team with well deserved awards.

My question now is how big of a gym is needed for an average sized district? Does anyone know how much seating and floor space is recommended?

[plnyyanks]

My question now is how big of a gym is needed for an average sized district? Does anyone know how much seating and floor space is recommended?

According to the FRC District Planning Guide (http://www.usfirst.org/sites/default/files/uploadedFiles/Robotics_Programs/FRC/Game_and_Season__Info/2014/District_Planning_Guide_FINAL.pdf), page 21...


SITE SELECTION
GENERAL GUIDELINES
The District Planning Committee is responsible for selecting and contracting the event venues. By August 1st, the District must provide FIRST with a list of proposed dates and locations for events to be held in the District during the following year (subject to approval by FIRST). Listed below are general guidelines for district competition site requirements.
• Competition area: The designated playing area must be at least 80’ x 100’ with a ceiling height of 25’ minimum and un-obstructed viewing for an average of 50 spectators per team
• Pit area: A space of approximately 100 sq. ft. per team is needed in the pit area, preferably in the form of a 10’ x 10’ square
o Additional space is needed for aisles and pit administration/robot inspection facilities
o Each team pit will require 110 VAC drop and a 72”x30” table
o Access between the pit area and the playing field should be short, level, at least 6’ wide and preferably is not also utilized by spectators
o The pit area should have direct street loading access
• Judges’ meeting room: The judges meeting room should encompass 500-750
sq. ft. and be within easy walking distance of the field
• Chairman’s Award interview area: approx. 300 sq.ft. for interviews. This area should be quiet and free from distractions
• Dean’s List interview area: approx.. 300 sq. ft. for interviews. This area should be quiet and free from distractions
• Volunteer dining area: The volunteer dining area should provide seating
for 50 and space for food buffet service
• First aid area: The first aid area should be within convenient walking distance of the pit and competition field
• Machine shop: The inclusion of a machine shop is optional
• Parking: The site should have access to as much free parking as possible and plans should be made for overflow parking
• VIP lounge: If the District Leadership Entity decides to actively engage VIPs at district events, a VIP lounge with an unobstructed view of the field i
s recommended
• Media/Press Room: Optional

[AdamStockton]

If all of New York were to move to the district model (rather than 2 separate districts), the location of the district championship should alternate locations each year between the 3 major clusters of teams. This would allow the majority of teams to have the DCMP in their hometown area once every 3 years, and only having to make the long travel (6-8 hours) one of those 3 years. This might be a solution to the issue of some teams potentially having to travel 6-8+ hours each year to compete at the DCMP.

Aside from the speculation in this thread, has there been any official announcement or suggestion that New York will be moving to the district model soon?

[Mr V]

They are only 147 new york teams base on this http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136403&highlight=5030.
With about 50 of them being from upstate at least. If you look at all the teams attending just one regional, yes a lot are from NYC or Long Island because this year became harder to attend second regionals with the influx of out of state teams. So holding districts would help lots of teams but we can not just ignore that up past the city has a lot of teams that do pretty well each year.
Also basing upon upstate has stronger teams but that may be since most compete at 2 regionals so they have time to improve. We don't need to argue which area is better but agree upon that the district model would help out a lot of teams, if not all to show off how much they can do. As well as provide a team with well deserved awards.

My question now is how big of a gym is needed for an average sized district? Does anyone know how much seating and floor space is recommended?

Yes for the 2015 season there were 147 teams in NY, for some reason a number of the public information pages on the FIRST site include teams that either dropped out in the past or are rookies that did not complete registration.

For the PNW the guidelines are that the school has a gym with a standard sized HS basketball court which is 84 x 50 with seating for about 40 people per team.

The school also needs an auxiliary gym or a commons/lunch room that has aprox 150 sq ft per team plus space for pit admin and preferably inspection which is just a few hundred more sq ft. That 150 sq ft number is to account for isle space. Additional space may be needed based on the layout of the area, for example if there are lots of doors or other areas that can not be blocked or will be needed to store the mats, tables ect more space will be needed for the pits. In at least one instance the inspection station was in a wide area in the hall.

There also needs to be space for a practice field which is roughly another 1200 sq ft. In the PNW district we have had the practice field in the pits in a couple of instances. In others where the main gym is large enough the practice field was behind the pipe and drape that is behind the FTA desk.

Most schools do not have enough circuits in the area for the pits so there needs to be an area where a rental generator can be placed relatively closely.

For the events at HS in WA most of the schools that were used have ~1500 students but one of the events was in a school with ~900 students. In general the seating in the gym is relative to the student population.

[Dominick Ferone]

For the PNW the guidelines are that the school has a gym with a standard sized HS basketball court which is 84 x 50 with seating for about 40 people per team.

The school also needs an auxiliary gym or a commons/lunch room that has aprox 150 sq ft per team plus space for pit admin and preferably inspection which is just a few hundred more sq ft. That 150 sq ft number is to account for isle space. Additional space may be needed based on the layout of the area, for example if there are lots of doors or other areas that can not be blocked or will be needed to store the mats, tables ect more space will be needed for the pits. In at least one instance the inspection station was in a wide area in the hall.

There also needs to be space for a practice field which is roughly another 1200 sq ft. In the PNW district we have had the practice field in the pits in a couple of instances. In others where the main gym is large enough the practice field was behind the pipe and drape that is behind the FTA desk.

Most schools do not have enough circuits in the area for the pits so there needs to be an area where a rental generator can be placed relatively closely.


Thank you, we were wondering for the possibility of holding an off season or if New York went districts but I am not sure if we have enough space to run it.

[Mr V]

Thank you, we were wondering for the possibility of holding an off season or if New York went districts but I am not sure if we have enough space to run it.


For an off-season event you can usually get by with less space. Of course you'll still need the space for the field but the seating space can usually be less as can the pits since you don't really need full pit admin, inspection ect. You also do not need to have as many teams. The off-season events we have had in the PNW have been about 24 teams.

[Kevin Leonard]

So I was playing around with some numbers and ideas for a New York State District.
~150 teams with 2 events per team and 40 teams per event translates into about 8 district events for NY.
5 would need to be downstate while 3 would reasonably be upstate.

Upstate districts could be something like:
Finger Lakes District @RIT
Cornell/Ithaca District
Tech Valley District at RPI, or a local high school

Downstate I'm less knowledgeable about, but I feel like they should be spread out from the border between upstate and Downstate to further down Long Island.
Maybe something like:
White Plains District
Manhattan District
Brooklyn District
Freeport District
Hauppauge District

All of these locations are purely speculation, and I'm kind of just rambling, but I'd be excited for a New York district. I feel like districts is just the push NY needs to get back onto the main stage of FRC, like some of our teams used to be.

If there isn't a real conversation happening between upstate and Downstate regional planning committees, there definitely should be. One filled with understanding and compromise and a vision for what FIRST in New York could be.

[mistersands]

I'm actually convinced by some of the arguments in this thread.

Hold 9 district events.

3 in Rochester/Buffalo area.
1 in Capital region area.
5 in NYC / LI area (Bronx, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester)

Championships put in Binghamton. Even if a team can't make it to Championships, they have played in 2 events which is more than most get now. Most teams would be able to figure it out in the event they do get into Championships. Some NYC could travel together and split the cost of a bus.

I retract any objections I had. I think this would be a good thing for my team at least.

[AdamStockton]

Hold 9 district events.

3 in Rochester/Buffalo area.
1 in Capital region area.
5 in NYC / LI area (Bronx, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester)

Championships put in Binghamton.

This set of district/DCMP event locations looks pretty realistic to me. With these locations, the majority of teams would only need to stay overnight for a maximum of 1 event (unless they choose to travel).

For upstate teams, I could see district events located in the Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany areas. This way, each team has at least 2 districts within a reasonable distance to commute to and from each day.

I'm looking forward to seeing the district model come to New York, and with some strategic planning we should be able to make it work.

[PayneTrain]

If New York doesn't make its own move to districts by 2017 I imagine HQ will do it for them, in that a solution will come to pass that will allow them to supplement existing districts that will likely surround the state (MAR, NE, FIM, Ontario/Quebec, NCR, SE).

I know people would like there to be one district system in NY but there are existing examples of non-school sports existing in two independent systems (The Adirondack/Metro split in USA Swimming comes to mind). PA will also have two separate systems. Is there some practical hang up to this, or is it quasi-philosophical?

[Mr V]

I'm actually convinced by some of the arguments in this thread.

Hold 9 district events.

3 in Rochester/Buffalo area.
1 in Capital region area.
5 in NYC / LI area (Bronx, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester)

Championships put in Binghamton. Even if a team can't make it to Championships, they have played in 2 events which is more than most get now. Most teams would be able to figure it out in the event they do get into Championships. Some NYC could travel together and split the cost of a bus.

I retract any objections I had. I think this would be a good thing for my team at least.

More smaller events is good from my perspective, that allows more teams to travel less and opens up more venues as suitable so yes 9 events would be good for the inaugural season. Have only 1 event week 1 to work out any issues then 2 events weeks 2-5. Have the DCMP week 6 to give the teams that do make it to CMP the extra time to prepare for that. Fact is it is easier to make the preparations for an in state trip that can probably be done in a school bus than to make the preparations for an out of state trip that would include either a charter bus or a plane ride.

Based on my conversations with the teams in the PNW that had traditionally only attended one event they mostly feel that the District system has had a positive effect on their team. Most feel that the students learn more and get more satisfaction from the increased playing time even if they do not qualify for DCMP.

[MrJohnston]

For those concerned about financial implications, here is my team's accounting with FIRST - simply copied from my TIMS account. Again, I can only show you the numbers, I can't tell you why they are the way they are.

Notes: Only the PNW Champs and St. Louis were over-night stays....Sorry about rotten formatting.


Invoice
FIRST
200 Bedford Street, Manchester, NH 03101-1103
(603)666-3906 (800)871-8326 Fax:603-206-2079
http://www.usfirst.org/

Printable Page
Team 948
Mr. Matt Johnston
Newport High School
4333 Factoria Blvd SE
Bellevue, WA 98006
USA

Signup Date Description Cost Registration Status Payments Balance
09/25/2014 PNW District - Glacier Peak Event
being held on March 06 - 08, $5,000.00 registered $5,000.00 $0.00

03/29/2015 Pacific Northwest District Championship
being held on April 01 - 04, $4,000.00 registered $4,000.00 $0.00

10/09/2014 PNW District - Auburn Event
being held on March 26 - 28, $0.00 registered $0.00 $0.00

04/05/2015 FIRST Championship
being held on April 22 - 25, $5,000.00 registered $5,000.00 $0.00

Total Due: $0.00 US funds
Make check payable to: FIRST
Attn: Finance
200 Bedford Street
Manchester, NH 03101 Send Purchase Order to Finance
Fax # is 603-206-2079
FIRST is a 501(c)3 organization.
Taxpayer Identification Number 22-2990908

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Aside from the speculation in this thread, has there been any official announcement or suggestion that New York will be moving to the district model soon?
No. I think it's inevitable that it happen at some point though so it is a good discussion to have here. Even though this is whole thread is speculation, it contains a good amount of data that could be useful in an actual decision.

I believe the decision to district has to be made X years in advance. Which means it is X years away from implementation.

[Mr V]

No. I think it's inevitable that it happen at some point though so it is a good discussion to have here. Even though this is whole thread is speculation, it contains a good amount of data that could be useful in an actual decision.

I believe the decision to district has to be made X years in advance. Which means it is X years away from implementation.

Now would be the time to start the ball rolling to move to the District system for the 2017 season. It is a little too late for 2016 at this point. Next school year would be the time to scout locations so that the decision to move could be finalized early in 2016 with contracts for venues done or mostly negotiated before the end of the 2015-16 school year.

[Dr. Shocker]

5 would need to be downstate while 3 would reasonably be upstate.


I just wonder what effect this would have, or if anyone has looked at other Districts to see how much this might affect how many teams the average team is able to see in the average competition season, primarily for the upstate teams since there are both fewer of them, and fewer locations to attend in your proposed model.

[Alex2614]

I just wonder what effect this would have, or if anyone has looked at other Districts to see how much this might affect how many teams the average team is able to see in the average competition season, primarily for the upstate teams since there are both fewer of them, and fewer locations to attend in your proposed model.

I'm not going to pretend to be intimately familiar with the geography of New York, but would it make sense for upstate to join with he New England region?
This does pose the question, then, would it make sense for lower NY to join with MAR?

I'm definitely not a fan of tiny districts confined in small geographic areas, but in also not a fan of strictly going by state lines, for these reasons. Maybe we need to stop thinking about state lines and more about where the teams are. Even districts that have multiple states still seem to follow state lines for the most part.

[smistthegreat]

I'm not going to pretend to be intimately familiar with the geography of New York, but would it make sense for upstate to join with he New England region?
This does pose the question, then, would it make sense for lower NY to join with MAR?

I'm definitely not a fan of tiny districts confined in small geographic areas, but in also not a fan of strictly going by state lines, for these reasons. Maybe we need to stop thinking about state lines and more about where the teams are. Even districts that have multiple states still seem to follow state lines for the most part.

Kind of, and yes. Upstate usually refers to everything that's not the city or the island. The eastern part of upstate (capital region) would love to join new England. These are the teams that would play in new England regionals before districts started. For the Western upstate teams (Rochester region), we are far closer to Ontario, Western PA, and northeast Ohio than downstate or new England.

[dag0620]

I'm not going to pretend to be intimately familiar with the geography of New York, but would it make sense for upstate to join with he New England region?
This does pose the question, then, would it make sense for lower NY to join with MAR?

I'm definitely not a fan of tiny districts confined in small geographic areas, but in also not a fan of strictly going by state lines, for these reasons. Maybe we need to stop thinking about state lines and more about where the teams are. Even districts that have multiple states still seem to follow state lines for the most part.

There was a time when local leaders in New England wanted to take the Capital Region of New York with us into districts. Due to a variety of reasons that didn't happen. However it is still a possible solution once New York makes the switch to districts.

[Dominick Ferone]

The one problem might arise then, Eastern New York joins NE, Western joins Ohio, NYC/LI join MAR then where does that leave Central New York?

[Kevin Leonard]

The one problem might arise then, Eastern New York joins NE, Western joins Ohio, NYC/LI join MAR then where does that leave Central New York?

With either NE or Ohio I suppose.
This is one of the reasons I would prefer a unified NY district. I wish I knew who to talk to to make things happen, NY could benefit from districts so much. So many teams would get 2x the playing time they currently do, teams without practice robots would be at less of a disadvantage, every team would have better functioning robots and an easier time reaching higher levels of play.

Why is this so hard to understand for everyone?

[smistthegreat]

With either NE or Ohio I suppose.
This is one of the reasons I would prefer a unified NY district. I wish I knew who to talk to to make things happen, NY could benefit from districts so much. So many teams would get 2x the playing time they currently do, teams without practice robots would be at less of a disadvantage, every team would have better functioning robots and an easier time reaching higher levels of play.

Why is this so hard to understand for everyone?

Send an email to your RD if you have specific questions. Their contact info is on the first website. Glen, who is the FLR RD, has been very good about answering my questions over email and even visited our pit at cmp to talk in person.

[Jimmy Nichols]

With either NE or Ohio I suppose.
This is one of the reasons I would prefer a unified NY district. I wish I knew who to talk to to make things happen, NY could benefit from districts so much. So many teams would get 2x the playing time they currently do, teams without practice robots would be at less of a disadvantage, every team would have better functioning robots and an easier time reaching higher levels of play.

Why is this so hard to understand for everyone?

I don't think its hard to understand, I think its hard for the volunteer based planning committees who are already doing so much to take on even more. Switching to districts shifts a lot of the event planning responsibilities from FIRST to the local committees and now you have a lot more events to plan. Not all potential district areas are able to take that on yet. Not to mention the added burden of unifying the fund raising from multiple areas and managing the funds. Another element is having enough key volunteers (LRI,FTA, FTAA,CSA,HF,FS,etc.) in a given district to cover all of your events. Many ducks to get in a row before making the switch.

Also, I received official word to not include Western NY in our district discussions with Ohio, Western PA, and WV.

[KrazyCarl92]

Also, I received official word to not include Western NY in our district discussions with Ohio, Western PA, and WV.

Thanks, this is helpful to know. This is eerily similar to the pattern we saw with NEFIRST excluding New York Capitol Region teams: talk of inclusion in their district plans (mostly hearsay on CD, but some comments from reputable sources) followed by exclusion from their planning.

I guess this means that New York should not plan on any piggy-backing with other districts.

[MikeE]

Thanks, this is helpful to know. This is eerily similar to the pattern we saw with NEFIRST excluding New York Capitol Region teams: talk of inclusion in their district plans (mostly hearsay on CD, but some comments from reputable sources) followed by exclusion from their planning.

I guess this means that New York should not plan on any piggy-backing with other districts.

There's also a push towards recognition of robotics as a High School sport with state championships. I'd think that would be logistically easier if Districts are organized around state boundaries.

[KrazyCarl92]

I've posted a white paper about research I did out of personal curiosity about implementing a district in New York. Posted here:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3168?

I'm no longer in New York, but I am hoping the New York FIRST community may be able to make some use of the information here.

[1493kd]

I've posted a white paper about research I did out of personal curiosity about implementing a district in New York. Posted here:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3168?

I'm no longer in New York, but I am hoping the New York FIRST community may be able to make some use of the information here.

Carl,

Great job on this and you made some very strong well thought out points. We need NY to go to districts ASAP. The ROI staying in regionals makes it very hard to justify doing 2 regionals (esp. when they are back to back) when you compare it to districts.

NY also needs to do something to build up the number of teams located in that area just south of Albany and North of NYC proper (Westchester, etc.) having more teams in that location would make for a great district event that Capital Area teams and many LI and NYC teams could possibly attend.

[Nathan Streeter]

I've posted a white paper about research I did out of personal curiosity about implementing a district in New York. Posted here:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3168?

I'm no longer in New York, but I am hoping the New York FIRST community may be able to make some use of the information here.

Excellent analysis!

[Mark McLeod]

...the lack of an offseason event hosted on LI (to my knowledge after extensive CD and FIRST website searches)...
The LI offseason event (running since 2005) doesn't advertise on CD.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/calendar/off-season-hhh-annual-first-robotics-invitational-2015
We had earlier 2004 and 2003 offseason events, but with homemade fields and field elements.
SBPLI is a strong veteran volunteer organization.

NYC has had more of a problem getting an offseason together with one at Francis Lewis HS for a few years, but it was hard to get the NYC teams out.
NYC has a broad volunteer group primarily due to supporting companies such as Bloomberg, but many of these are inexperienced volunteers and the area lacks veteran local volunteers for some key positions.

[KrazyCarl92]

The LI offseason event (running since 2005) doesn't advertise on CD.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/calendar/off-season-hhh-annual-first-robotics-invitational-2015
We had earlier 2004 and 2003 offseason events, but with homemade fields and field elements.
SBPLI is a strong veteran volunteer organization.

NYC has had more of a problem getting an offseason together with one at Francis Lewis HS for a few years, but it was hard to get the NYC teams out.
NYC has a broad volunteer group primarily due to supporting companies such as Bloomberg, but many of these are inexperienced volunteers and the area lacks veteran local volunteers for some key positions.

Thank you Mark, I appreciate the feedback. I will update the information in the document and upload to make sure accurate information is contained.

[Dominick Ferone]

The LI offseason event (running since 2005) doesn't advertise on CD.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/calendar/off-season-hhh-annual-first-robotics-invitational-2015
We had earlier 2004 and 2003 offseason events, but with homemade fields and field elements.
SBPLI is a strong veteran volunteer organization.

The event was usual hosted each year out in Deer Park until the team retired before the 2013 season.

[Jessi Kaestle]

NYC has a broad volunteer group primarily due to supporting companies such as Bloomberg, but many of these are inexperienced volunteers and the area lacks veteran local volunteers for some key positions.

The NYC area has many qualified volunteers for some of the key positions but due to them also being key mentors on teams competing in the NYC Regional (often the only mentor and/or the drive coach) they are not available for the NYC Regional but when we go to districts many have said they would be willing to volunteer to do an event (or three).

[PaulDavis1968]

This thread is becoming a repeated argument but whatever.

It Comes down to does everyone suffer or do 1/3 of the teams suffer.

I admit upstate teams get screwed but they are only 1/3 of the teams and as a minority that's someone that has to be done.

If dcmp was in the geographic center Albany (binghamton is a 4 and a half hour drive from li i don't care what Google maps says)

Only about 5 teams would actually benefit from it being in Albany. So the rest of the 150ish would have to all travel. Yea it's a little cheaper for upstate teams but that doesn't account for saved money by not having to have cars or buses accessible.. In a place like Albany you need a bus or a car to go to eat back to the hotel and to and from the venue. In nyc everything is so close that you can usually walk through all those if not taking the the subway which is affordable.

With that in mind it will most likely cost the same for upstate teams to come down to the city regardless of the added hotel costs.

It is indeed a 4 1/2 hour drive to LI from Binghamton. Having done it many times.

[rpaulsen]

This is something that my team has been struggling with this issue for 2 years now. We are a 3rd year team out of New Rochelle (3 miles north of the Bronx), and have been trying to expand to more events than the NYC Regional. Long Island is by far the best option for us because Hofstra is 45 minutes away, as opposed to Troy which is 3.5hr with no traffic, and is most commonly closer to 5 because downstate NY traffic is terrible always. To underscore how expensive it would be to go to Troy, which we registered and eventually dropped from last year, it is still not financially worth while to compete in the event and there is a NASA Regional challenge grant that we would most likely qualify for. Travel expense are just way to high, almost to the point of doubling the cost of registration.

Looking realistically at the geography of NYS teams, there are 3 or 4 teams in Westchester County sitting on top of the Long Island and City teams. There is then at least a 2.5 hour drive from the northern most Westchester team, to the next group of teams in the capital region. It would make no sense to build a district that tries to incorporate all NYS teams, our major population centers are just too spread out to the boarders. As previously suggested, a better idea is to forget the state boundaries and think regionally. Adding Northern New Jersey to a Long Island/NYC/Westchester district, and the Capital Region to Western Mass, would make far more sense than trying to shoe horn them together. And frankly, I can not speak to Western/Lake Region NY because in the 30 years I have lived in the state of NY I have never been west of the Catskills, and that is not an uncommon statement for those of us who live in the Metro region.

Anyway, we really need to move to the district model, or I fear teams will start dropping out of FRC based solely on economics. $9000 in registration fees to compete twice (or really $5000 to compete once) is difficult to sustain.

[Dominick Ferone]

as opposed to Troy which is 3.5hr with no traffic, and is most commonly closer to 5 because downstate NY traffic is terrible always. To underscore how expensive it would be to go to Troy, which we registered and eventually dropped from last year, it is still not financially worth while to compete in the event and there is a NASA Regional challenge grant that we would most likely qualify for. Travel expense are just way to high, almost to the point of doubling the cost of registration.


Having driven from long island to central NY, and having to pass Troy on the way, it doesn't take more then 2-3 hours to get there.

Hotel costs really depend on where you stay and how big the team is, as for travel you can do a bus, or if enough parents are going you could always carpool. For us going to Troy and Rochester the parents drove their kids and we had parents in charge of the kids who carpooled.

[Chris is me]

This is something that my team has been struggling with this issue for 2 years now. We are a 3rd year team out of New Rochelle (3 miles north of the Bronx), and have been trying to expand to more events than the NYC Regional. Long Island is by far the best option for us because Hofstra is 45 minutes away, as opposed to Troy which is 3.5hr with no traffic,

Troy is just about 2.5 hours from New Rochelle, not 3.5. It's closer to you than any of the 2nd regionals teams in the Albany region attend.

Hotel costs in the Albany region are pretty ordinary. You can easily find a cheap place to stay by the airport, roughly 15 minutes from the venue.

Really I think the best solution to all of this is to eliminate district borders altogether with a unified point system nationwide. Attend whatever districts you want. Pick a Championship to attend (or have it assigned based on location, whatever). Top X point earning teams assigned to each Championshp compete at that event, and worlds qualification arises from there. But that's not going to happen for reasons I'm not clear on, so we have to work around the existing district boundaries.

[page2067]

+1 on last post
and once NY goes districts - 1, 2 or 3(with or without OH PA WV etc)
The flexible district model, outlined by Chris, could be initiated with districts up and down the east coast.

Personally I would see NYC metro/ LI district, some move to NE, and Western with others - but teams on edges able to choose within constraints.

[Jessi Kaestle]

From what I understand, learning from MAR, I don't think it is a good idea to "cut" states when creating District borders. If the District does not encompass the whole state it makes getting state and board of education funding next to impossible.

In all serious, instead of arguing on here as to where the best location for the District Champs should be, please contact your local RD and let them know that not only does your team want to move to Districts but that you are willing to help with the initial planning stages. Moving to districts is a lot more complicated from the behind the scenes side of things than this thread has made it out to be.

[rpaulsen]

I've driven 87 a lot, and whether it is 2.5 or 3.5 hrs, it realistically doesn't make a difference in terms of the feasibility of participation. The issue isn't the drive, it is the overnights. Unless our budget changes in a dramatic way, I just can't see the rationale of spending so much money on hotels. My greater point is that it wouldn't make sense to deny the realities of the concentration of teams in the NY Metro area and try to force them into events way upstate. Looking down the list of events, there are close to 5 events closer to Troy than the city, that are part of either the NE District or Western NY, and 4 District events in Northern Jersey and Connecticut that are closer to NYC than Albany. Make a Tri-State District that includes New Jersey from New Brunswick and north and east of Parsippany, Long Island, NYC, Westcherster/ Rockland/Putnam, and CT south of Danbury and west of New Haven.

[dag0620]

Moving to districts is a lot more complicated from the behind the scenes side of things than this thread has made it out to be.

Emphasis on this. It takes a lot of work, but at the same time anyone with FIRST experience can be a part of making it happen.

[Kevin Leonard]

I've driven 87 a lot, and whether it is 2.5 or 3.5 hrs, it realistically doesn't make a difference in terms of the feasibility of participation. The issue isn't the drive, it is the overnights. Unless our budget changes in a dramatic way, I just can't see the rationale of spending so much money on hotels. My greater point is that it wouldn't make sense to deny the realities of the concentration of teams in the NY Metro area and try to force them into events way upstate. Looking down the list of events, there are close to 5 events closer to Troy than the city, that are part of either the NE District or Western NY, and 4 District events in Northern Jersey and Connecticut that are closer to NYC than Albany. Make a Tri-State District that includes New Jersey from New Brunswick and north and east of Parsippany, Long Island, NYC, Westcherster/ Rockland/Putnam, and CT south of Danbury and west of New Haven.

The proposal being discussed doesn't have downstate teams coming upstate unless they really want to for some reason.

A NY district would have a whole bunch of district events on Long Island and only 3-4 events upstate.

[Lil' Lavery]

The proposal being discussed doesn't have downstate teams coming upstate unless they really want to for some reason.

A NY district would have a whole bunch of district events on Long Island and only 3-4 events upstate.

Much of the contention in the thread has been in regards to the location of the DCMP (and whether its viable to have a DCMP outside of the NYC area or not).

[kindrisana]

I have a question which is related to the NY Tech Valley Regional event and not the conversation about districts. NASA for 2016 is offering the Regional Challenge Grant for that Regional competition. I was looking into the grant requirements and found two conflicting pieces of information. I emailed the NASA grant contact last week, and the regional director of FRC asking for clarification on the matter and have not heard back from either. With the deadline quickly approaching, I thought I'd reach out to the community to find out if anyone else had any additional information or advice. Here's what I observed:

When following the link to the NASA Grants from the FRC Blast sent out to FRC Teams on Sept 11th, 2015, the following is read:



---------------------------
http://frc-grants.arc.nasa.gov/rcs/directions.php
Definitions:
[...]
Veteran - A Veteran Team is any team registered with FIRST that had their rookie year during the 2014 FRC competition season (the 2014 competition season refers to the season that began in January 2014) or earlier OR was a Rookie Team in 2015 and not funded by NASA.
[...]
For the competition season, Regional Challenge Grants will be available to veteran teams for the following events:

NY Tech Valley Regional (Troy, NY) up to 10 veteran grants
[...]
-------------------------------

Our team has created a NASA login (to see the page I think you need to also) and began looking at the grant application, and the grant application reads the following:

-------------------------------
https://frc-grants.arc.nasa.gov/rcs/app/application.php
Types Of Sponsorship:
[...]
Regional Challenge Grants:
Regional Challenge Grants will be available to Rookie Teams and Second-Year Teams for the following events: up to 10 veteran grants
NY Tech Valley Regional (Troy, NY)
[...]
--------------------------------


These pieces of information are not clear to me. Who may apply for a Regional Challenge Grant? A Rookie Team, a Second-Year Team, or a Veteran team?

Thanks,
Elizabeth

[Dominick Ferone]

I have a question which is related to the NY Tech Valley Regional event and not the conversation about districts. NASA for 2016 is offering the Regional Challenge Grant for that Regional competition. I was looking into the grant requirements and found two conflicting pieces of information. I emailed the NASA grant contact last week, and the regional director of FRC asking for clarification on the matter and have not heard back from either. With the deadline quickly approaching, I thought I'd reach out to the community to find out if anyone else had any additional information or advice. Here's what I observed:

When following the link to the NASA Grants from the FRC Blast sent out to FRC Teams on Sept 11th, 2015, the following is read:



---------------------------
http://frc-grants.arc.nasa.gov/rcs/directions.php
Definitions:
[...]
Veteran - A Veteran Team is any team registered with FIRST that had their rookie year during the 2014 FRC competition season (the 2014 competition season refers to the season that began in January 2014) or earlier OR was a Rookie Team in 2015 and not funded by NASA.
[...]
For the competition season, Regional Challenge Grants will be available to veteran teams for the following events:

NY Tech Valley Regional (Troy, NY) up to 10 veteran grants
[...]
-------------------------------

Our team has created a NASA login (to see the page I think you need to also) and began looking at the grant application, and the grant application reads the following:

-------------------------------
https://frc-grants.arc.nasa.gov/rcs/app/application.php
Types Of Sponsorship:
[...]
Regional Challenge Grants:
Regional Challenge Grants will be available to Rookie Teams and Second-Year Teams for the following events: up to 10 veteran grants
NY Tech Valley Regional (Troy, NY)
[...]
--------------------------------


These pieces of information are not clear to me. Who may apply for a Regional Challenge Grant? A Rookie Team, a Second-Year Team, or a Veteran team?

Thanks,
Elizabeth

It is saying that Veteran teams aka any team who has competed for this year and doesn't receive the Nasa Rookie Grant (which is a two year grant) can apply.
If you are a rookie you can apply for a separate Nasa grant that is intended for rookies and helps them out for two years.

[Kevin Leonard]

So the idea of New York Districts was once again brought up, and if I recall when I left this thread last, it was a jumbled heap of people arguing over petty things that don't particularly matter when it comes to making NY transition to districts.

There are so many teams that would benefit enormously from the transition to district events. Some great Capital Region teams I can think of that can only afford one event are 5236 and 4203, who are both awesome year-on-year, but only ever attend one regional. These teams would benefit enormously from districts.

Additionally, the majority of the teams that attend the New York City Regional only get to attend one event. With districts, those teams would now get two events, and be more likely to qualify for higher levels of play.

Almost every team in New York would be positively affected, except for perhaps 229 and 2053, who would likely still have to travel quite a bit for both of their events, and they often go out-of-state as it is right now to attend events.

I'm willing to hear counterarguments either in this thread or even in person this weekend at the Finger Lakes Regional, but I really can't see any good reason not to make the switch as soon as possible.

[Sperkowsky]

We need to make this switch and there's no reason it can not happen for next year. Let's start being proactive maybe make a petition and reach out to the local governing body's. Down here we have SBPLI, and NYCFirst not too familiar with who runs the 2 Regionals upstate. Either way this needs to happen.

[Alex2614]

So the idea of New York Districts was once again brought up, and if I recall when I left this thread last, it was a jumbled heap of people arguing over petty things that don't particularly matter when it comes to making NY transition to districts.

There are so many teams that would benefit enormously from the transition to district events. Some great Capital Region teams I can think of that can only afford one event are 5236 and 4203, who are both awesome year-on-year, but only ever attend one regional. These teams would benefit enormously from districts.

Additionally, the majority of the teams that attend the New York City Regional only get to attend one event. With districts, those teams would now get two events, and be more likely to qualify for higher levels of play.

Almost every team in New York would be positively affected, except for perhaps 229 and 2053, who would likely still have to travel quite a bit for both of their events, and they often go out-of-state as it is right now to attend events.

I'm willing to hear counterarguments either in this thread or even in person this weekend at the Finger Lakes Regional, but I really can't see any good reason not to make the switch as soon as possible.

Spot on post! I think NY is going to run into a similar challenge that we here in West Virginia and teams in South Carolina is dealing with. You will soon be surrounded on all sides by districts, and your regional play options get further and further away. When Ontario and PA/OH/WV go into districts, where is your closest out of state regional? You are pushed pretty far away.

[FlamingSpork]

I have made a map of the locations of the teams that attended/will be attending New York's two "upstate" regionals, FLR and Tech Valley.
https://batchgeo.com/map/821f21483e181ac821d991dcdc725113

The map appears to show that most of the teams attending are located in the Albany and Rochester areas, suggesting that Syracuse would actually be a central location for DCMP if Upstate were its own district.

Of course, I know nothing about the challenges of regional/district organization. I merely wanted to lend some data to the discussion.

[Sperkowsky]

I have made a map of the locations of the teams that attended/will be attending New York's two "upstate" regionals, FLR and Tech Valley.
https://batchgeo.com/map/821f21483e181ac821d991dcdc725113

The map appears to show that most of the teams attending are located in the Albany and Rochester areas, suggesting that Syracuse would actually be a central location for DCMP if Upstate were its own district.

Of course, I know nothing about the challenges of regional/district organization. I merely wanted to lend some data to the discussion.
Let's try to stay off the dcmp topic that pretty much was the reason this thread derailed. Bottom line who knows who let's get this ball rolling.

[plnyyanks]

Bottom line who knows who let's get this ball rolling.

This is one of those things that needs to start from the top. Start by emailing your RD and see if they're receptive/what they're doing on the issue.

[smistthegreat]

There is a good deal of relevant information posted by FIRST. For those of us who are willing to work towards a solution, I'd start by reading through the District Planning Guide posted here (http://www.firstinspires.org/resource-library/frc/regional-and-district-planning-guides).

[Lil' Lavery]

Stop talking on Chief Delphi, and start working with your planning committees to figure out what challenges remain.

[Hallry]

Stop talking on Chief Delphi, and start working with your planning committees to figure out what challenges remain.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1562147#post1562147

[smistthegreat]

For those of you who don't know, contact information for Regional Directors and Senior Mentors can be found on this page (http://www.firstinspires.org/find-local-support).

[Jay O'Donnell]

Almost every team in New York would be positively affected, except for perhaps 229 and 2053, who would likely still have to travel quite a bit for both of their events, and they often go out-of-state as it is right now to attend events.


229 wants districts as much as anybody. We have to travel no matter what and being guaranteed two events in state would be amazing.

[Sperkowsky]

Alright, so let's email some RD's. Just to not double email let's choose which ones each of us want to contact.

I have no problem emailing Mrs.Winter who is the RD for Long Island as long as no more experienced people want to do it.

There's also Mr.Pearson for FLR, Mrs.Daly for NYC and, Mrs.Martinez for TVR.

[anishde]

Alright, so let's email some RD's. Just to not double email let's choose which ones each of us want to contact.

I have no problem emailing Mrs.Winter who is the RD for Long Island as long as no more experienced people want to do it.

There's also Mr.Pearson for FLR, Mrs.Daly for NYC and, Mrs.Martinez for TVR.

Ana Martinez is part of the driving force behind the proposed district system, so you may find your best shot with her. However, the options are still limitless for districts in New York. For example (and to include others from pages previous):
-Lake Ontario District for Ontario/Western NY, and create Hudson Valley District for Capital Region and NYC/Long Island
-Lake Ontario District for Ontario/Western NY/Capital Region, and fold rest of New York into MAR
-New York District with the DCMP wherever the hell it goes
-New York folded into MAR to form a superdistrict

But it's seriously becoming a problem when you realize as a New York team that the next southerly tournament you can compete in is Palmetto. As far as I've heard, districts are due for NY in 2019, in whatever shape or form it may come in.

[pmangels17]

Not to derail again, but I think it would be awesome for LI/NYC teams to get to play more MAR teams, either as two adjacent districts with possibility for interplay (where the earned points count for your team regardless of which district runs the event you attend), or as one super-district. This would bring back together a lot of teams that traditionally competed together at NYC, NJ, and SBPLI regionals, especially since these regions still often compete directly in the off-season together.

[bdaroz]

Disclaimer: Rookie Mentor / Rookie Team

One of the things I did really enjoy at the Tech Valley Regional was that we were able to have teams such as 48 (How many safety vests do you guys own?!) from Ohio, 4481 (is it a requirement that all team members be 6' 4" or taller?) from the Netherlands, 359 (Mahalo) from Hawaii, not to mention several others from outside our area.

From what I read it looks like when you go to a district format the only teams eligible to play in that district are from within the geographical area of the district.

Don't get me wrong, I think the ability to have 2 events without an egregious amount of travel (or cost) is a great thing, but being able to expand the teams we play does add a "flair" to the event. (If you were at NYTVR you'd know just how.. uh... "quiet" 4481 was. :) )

[Brian Maher]

Disclaimer: Rookie Mentor / Rookie Team

One of the things I did really enjoy at the Tech Valley Regional was that we were able to have teams such as 48 (How many safety vests do you guys own?!) from Ohio, 4481 (is it a requirement that all team members be 6' 4" or taller?) from the Netherlands, 359 (Mahalo) from Hawaii, not to mention several others from outside our area.

From what I read it looks like when you go to a district format the only teams eligible to play in that district are from within the geographical area of the district.

Don't get me wrong, I think the ability to have 2 events without an egregious amount of travel (or cost) is a great thing, but being able to expand the teams we play does add a "flair" to the event. (If you were at NYTVR you'd know just how.. uh... "quiet" 4481 was. :) )

The Tech Valley Regional was the first regional I've ever attended. I had a great time, and it was really cool to be able to compete with the likes of 359, 48, 4481, etc.

That being said, I was a student for four years in the MAR district. My team here (2791) is paying $5000 for TVR and $4000 for FLR. My high school team is paying $5000 for TWO district events and $4000 for District Championship (if they qualify). Not only are they GUARANTEED two events, they get them for the same price as 2791's first. Additionally, the quality of play and competition at a District Championship is only rivaled by CMP and the most competitive of regionals.

Having a second event gives chances to iterate on design and strategy, allowing students to better experience the engineering process. Districts events are almost always smaller than regionals (30-40 teams vs 40-60), allowing each team more qualification matches (12 in districts vs 8-12 in regionals) and giving a greater percentage of teams a chance to compete in playoffs and win awards.

The district point system does a better job of qualifying consistently strong teams for CMP, even if those teams don't necessarily win an event. Rather than qualifying the best, second best, and 24th best team (and culture awards), it qualifies the District Championship winners (and culture awards), and the top however many teams in the district.

While the lack of travel teams is a drawback of districts, this has been improved by allowing inter-district play. It's only really an issue as long as FIRST lets it be an issue.

I enjoyed the Tech Valley Regional, but I really do believe the benefits of districts for teams are overwhelming compare to the regional model.

[waialua359]

The Tech Valley Regional was the first regional I've ever attended. I had a great time, and it was really cool to be able to compete with the likes of 359, 48, 4481, etc.

That being said, I was a student for four years in the MAR district. My team here (2791) is paying $5000 for TVR and $4000 for FLR. My high school team is paying $5000 for TWO district events and $4000 for District Championship (if they qualify). Not only are they GUARANTEED two events, they get them for the same price as 2791's first. Additionally, the quality of play and competition at a District Championship is only rivaled by CMP and the most competitive of regionals.

Having a second event gives chances to iterate on design and strategy, allowing students to better experience the engineering process. Districts events are almost always smaller than regionals (30-40 teams vs 40-60), allowing each team more qualification matches (12 in districts vs 8-12 in regionals) and giving a greater percentage of teams a chance to compete in playoffs and win awards.

The district point system does a better job of qualifying consistently strong teams for CMP, even if those teams don't necessarily win an event. Rather than qualifying the best, second best, and 24th best team (and culture awards), it qualifies the District Championship winners (and culture awards), and the top however many teams in the district.

While the lack of travel teams is a drawback of districts, this has been improved by allowing inter-district play. It's only really an issue as long as FIRST lets it be an issue.

I enjoyed the Tech Valley Regional, but I really do believe the benefits of districts for teams are overwhelming compare to the regional model.
You've made some great points, most of which I agree with.
We came to this event for 3 main reasons: 1. Scheduling 2. NASA originally offered up to 10 veteran grants of which they gave none.:confused: 3. Because we may never ever be able to compete here again.

We have had the privilege to compete in many places around the US in the past, that we are no longer privy to. At some point, we'll have none other than the Hawaii event. When that eventually happens, based on the current rules, it would be time to retire our program and find something else. I cant see Hawaii ever following a District model because all of the teams are not on the same island. Having to fly to your own State's event presents the same challenges/expenses as if we were traveling to the U.S. mainland.
Team 1056 is an example of a Hilo team that is currently competiting in the Sacramento regional, and not even doing their own home event on another island.

[SpaceBiz]

You've made some great points, most of which I agree with.
We came to this event for 3 main reasons: 1. Scheduling 2. NASA originally offered up to 10 veteran grants of which they gave none.:confused: 3. Because we may never ever be able to compete here again.

We have had the privilege to compete in many places around the US in the past, that we are no longer privy to. At some point, we'll have none other than the Hawaii event. When that eventually happens, based on the current rules, it would be time to retire our program and find something else. I cant see Hawaii ever following a District model because all of the teams are not on the same island. Having to fly to your own State's event presents the same challenges/expenses as if we were traveling to the U.S. mainland.
Team 1056 is an example of a Hilo team that is currently competiting in the Sacramento regional, and not even doing their own home event on another island.
Not to derail the conversation, but hopefully there will always be a decent quantity of regionals so that teams can form in other countries, and like Australia, can eventually have their own regional. I think FIRST will have to make a way so that if a team can fly, they can compete nearby. (or drive, but it doesn't rhyme) You might be allowed to compete at district events outside of your district. (as a district team, I am not sure this if this is currently allowed for regional teams, but as regionals expand, I am sure it will be allowed)

[FlamingSpork]

Let's try to stay off the dcmp topic that pretty much was the reason this thread derailed. Bottom line who knows who let's get this ball rolling.

Sorry. I really just wanted an excuse to make a map.

[Collin Fultz]

Stop talking on Chief Delphi, and start working with your planning committees to figure out what challenges remain.

Sean's point is key. You can't make this transition without the full support of the current leadership in the region. They have what the state needs to be successful in this endeavor: experience, volunteers, sponsors, etc.

Work along side them, not against them.

Good luck!

[kbrowncny]

Start looking at Central NY - Utica area. I know SUNY IT is there and they are heavily involved with FTC. I would be surprised if some passionate individual couldn't get a FRC team going there. There are also plenty of potential corporate sponsors: Indium, Special Metals, SUNY IT NANO Tech facility etc. I grew up in this area and its disappointing to see that no FRC teams have popped up since.

In this area hotels are very cheap, it is also a good central location 3 hrs from Rochester, 4 hrs from NYC, 4 hrs to northern NY. 5 hrs from Buffalo.

[Dominick Ferone]

Start looking at Central NY - Utica area. I know SUNY IT is there and they are heavily involved with FTC. I would be surprised if some passionate individual couldn't get a FRC team going there. There are also plenty of potential corporate sponsors: Indium, Special Metals, SUNY IT NANO Tech facility etc. I grew up in this area and its disappointing to see that no FRC teams have popped up since.

In this area hotels are very cheap, it is also a good central location 3 hrs from Rochester, 4 hrs from NYC, 4 hrs to northern NY. 5 hrs from Buffalo.

We have a team at SUNY.It's a regional one.

[pfreivald]

If you want this to happen, then volunteer. Go to your RPC--contact Glen Pearson and Ana Martinez, respectively--and don't tell them that you want districts, ask them, "what can I do to help make districts a reality in New York next year?"

And then do those things, and recruit others to do those things.

My impression for several years now has been that lots of people say they want districts in New York, but very few of them are putting in any time or effort to make it happen.

Want it? Go get it.