Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

Here is what in my opinion is the PNW district should be:



There are 170 teams in this section of the world. I included Turkey in this regional since most of the Turkish teams attend the Seattle Regional and I did not want to exclude them.

I was thinking the district motto may be 'Yep most of us can see Russia from here'

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

It makes it easier for the "best" teams to consistently go to Championships, but I suspect that it makes it a lot harder for teams like mine (which has never been to Championships before, and is going this year by virtue of winning a EI award) to ever go.

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

We weren't snooping. We were scouting. We had a great time in Michigan. You have intense teams and incredible volunteers!!

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

It would be nice to have a district type system here in Texas, but i believe for that to happen in a few years. Texas could probably be divided into 3 different regions like all the teams in the north, here in south central Texas, and the south texas and coast region teams, i dont know how they would do it, but it would be nice to have a district system here, but would they also keep the regionals to, or would they do away with them?

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

I figured as much, I just thought it was funny considering what everyone else was saying in this thread.

And I'm glad you enjoyed your time here, we don't get many outside visitors anymore :D

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

This is my FIRST year back in FIRST since high school and I'm still trying to figure out this whole district stuff. But I like this idea a lot because a few of us engineering mentors on my team have been talking about doing the team 69 model where they compete in a local regional and then go somewhere far away. Our team has mentors who are from CT, Pittsburgh, Rochester, & Philly so we'd obviously like to take our team out there (our philosophy is since the championship seems impossible to get into why not just travel somewhere further away to compete against different teams). I just hope they leave enough opportunities to travel if teams choose to.

I saw a few posts about Texas too --I hope they hold off a little bit on switching to districts. I think there are a lot of resource/mentor constrained teams here in DFW and I won't be surprised if we see a lot of teams merge in the next few seasons . I think we might see a reverse new england/midwest model where a lot of veteran teams started with 2/3/4 high schools and as individual schools got more involved they split off. Just my $0.02.

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

Something I remember from way back long ago, as I was going to a preship back in 1999 (the second year I was hanging around, but my first competition). What I remember was that I was told that FIRST higherups wanted to go to more and smaller events. 10 years before the district system started. 10. YEARS. That's a long time, and it takes planning.

I think what'll probably happen in 2013 is that no new areas go district (maybe MN and WI). But in 2014, there will be an explosion of areas going district--New England and California being the most likely, with the Pacific Northwest being right behind.



For all you including all of Montana in a PNW district system: Make sure you also include Wyoming and Colorado. Otherwise the eastern Montana teams won't have a close competition to go to. Western Montana is a stretch as it is unless competitions are added to Idaho. The same goes for western South Dakota in a Minnesota district system--Denver's closer at this point in time than the Twin Cities.

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

Eventually as districts grow, we will have teams that are stuck between two districts. A lot of the international teams will have a similar problem. We should give these teams the option to chose a district they want to be part of. To draw an example from high school athletics; there are two nevada high schools that compete in California leagues because they are closer.

This may not be convenient at all for international teams. In cross country, track field and most distant running races have all-comer meets. these events have people of all ages compete. Often there will be professionals looking for training or make a qualifing time for a professional event.

If most of FIRST goes district, we could have a week 6 lull where all-comer events could take place. These open events enabling the regional spirit to continue. Teams could continue the tradition of traveling far to a new event. It would enable some teams to bypass district qualifing adding some redundancy in qualifying for champs. Hopefully by being week 6, these all-comer events would be a lot of fun since most teams have should have fixed all their bugs.

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

I think the PNW is closer to the District System than 2014. My bet in talking to our leadership it's probably next year, some people have been thinking about it for a year or so now.


You may have missed my post earlier that put three districts around Boise, one of them could be in Butte, Helena, or Great Falls.

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

I could easily see a point a few years out where the hard lines between districts fizzle out.

As much as I dislike the idea of walling off enclaves, the borders are necessary to get the district style events up and running, to get the volunteers and support infrastructure in place. But...

Once enough areas move into district formats (especially when there are neighboring districts), there doesn't have to be hard boundaries between districts to prevent cross-pollination of teams. Both areas have the events and support infrastructure in place, and both allocated enough open spots at their districts for all teams.

Assuming the teams who want to "travel" is roughly equal between the districts, there's no reason to prevent non home-district teams from attending those events. If ten teams want to compete elsewhere in Week 2, there are now ten slots available to all teams. Registration could also work with the first two districts being guaranteed to local (home district) teams, while third district registration is first come, first served for everyone.

At that point, the only real need for borders is to determine which district championship your award/performance points accrue toward.

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

You're right, I did. But that still doesn't solve the problem of the mountains and the long drive over them to an event.


My point is this: When you're drawing the region boundaries for districts, look at where the teams are going currently. 9 times out of 10, teams will go to their closest event or closest 2 events. If you have a team that is going to Utah and Colorado but not Spokane, then you should probably ask them if they're interested in being in a district that includes events in Great Falls, Helena, or Butte.

To take the South Dakota example, which I'm a bit more familiar with: Most of the (now non-existent) teams would have gone to Kansas City--this was before Colorado existed, let alone Minnesota or Utah (the regionals, not the states!), and I have that from one of the mentors at that time. But, with the current regional setup, teams in eastern SD would tend to go to Minneapolis for either 10K Lakes or North Star--it's only a few hours away. For the teams in the western half of the state, that's a full day's drive and possibly then some (5 hours to Sioux Falls, not counting the time change, then the few-hour drive). For those teams, Denver makes more sense, as it's only most of a day driving (or a short flight for a team who had a few frequent-flyer miles lying around)--if Utah was considered, it would be a second option along with Minnesota. So if MN decides unilaterally that the Dakotas are part of their district, the western half of the state will be in the same boat that Michigan's UP is in currently--their closest event is not in the district system. (Note that this whole example is currently a moot point--SD has no FRC teams.)

See where I'm going? I know you can't please everybody, but at least making the attempt is better than just saying "You are in our area". That's what MAR did by only including certain parts of Pennsylvania this year.

And, as a corollary: When forming a district, asking teams that go to only events in that area, regardless of where they are physically located, if they would like to stay in the district or not would be a really good idea. (Ask the Chilean team--one year at Great Lakes and then MSC formed, so they've been at Los Angeles ever since.)

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

I find some of the objections to district events a little strange given what MAR has done this season. Particularly states/regions claiming they need more regionals before they move to a district system. MAR only has 99 teams and the area only encompassed two existing regionals (Philadelphia and New Jersey). Granted, both events are very old and the volunteers and teams in the region have had a long time to get acclimated from FIRST. But the region certainly doesn't have the team or volunteer population of many of the other areas, and relied heavily on volunteer crossover between events and drawing volunteers from other nearby regionals (New York, Chesapeake, DC, etc.).

Dawgma missed a grand total of two days of school to attend three MAR events this season. Each district is only two days long, and some of them are Saturday/Sunday. We lucked out by having day 1 of Hatboro fall over an in-service (no school) day, so we didn't miss any school until Thursday and Friday of this week for MAR Championship.

I don't see how those are mutually exclusive.

It would be semi-ironic to have Dean Guceri's "new" university (WPI) host the New England region championship when his departure from Drexel was one of the big impetus for the creation of MAR (due to the additional cost of the Philadelphia regional once Drexel was no longer an option).

Only the New Jersey events were Saturday-Sunday. Hatboro-Horsham and Chestnut Hill were Friday-Saturday.

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

I think that as soon as the PNW goes to a district model, most (if not all) of the Turkish teams will go to the Midwest regional, where if I remember correctly one of the four Turkish teams goes already.

Re: New District Events for 2013?
 

Related to teams caught between districts:

We're in Iowa (only 4 teams in our state), and I'd love to see a district system near us, as long as we get an opportunity to join it. I don't see how being forced to travel would be a strike against districts, because we already travel a decent distance to any event we attend. I'd be thrilled with a district system for the simple reason that we'd get an extra event for the same registration cost.