New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

FRC DISTRICT MODEL IN NEW ENGLAND

Greetings FRC mentors and coaches,

FIRST has approached several key members of the region to implement a “district model” in New England. A Planning Committee consisting of representatives from throughout New England and from various roles (mentors, event committees, and staff) have been hard at work at evaluating current districts and planning on how to best implement it for New England's unique needs.

The Planning Committee will be holding Town Hall Meetings throughout New England to discuss the District Model with FRC teams. Up to two mentors from each New England team can go to any Town Hall sessions, planned as follows:

- June 16th: Newport, Rhode Island
- June 23rd: Portland, Maine
- Mid-summer: Worcester, MA
- Late summer / early Fall: CT, VT/NH, and Boston, MA

To sign up for these events, click on the link below:

RI: nefirst-ri.eventbrite.com
ME: nefirst-me.eventbrite.com

(If this doesn't come through as a link, copy and paste it into your browser less the RI: and ME:.)

Or, if you cannot come, we still want to hear from you. To contribute ideas about the District Model in New England, and for more information about the NE District Model in general, please visit the NE FIRST website at (nefirst.org).

Thank you for ALL you do and let's make this the BEST District model in FIRST!

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Hmm sucks for teams in the MAR region who go up north for regionals like Boston and CT.

Good luck to you folks, the district model has been a big plus for MAR teams so far. Hope you like it as much as many of us do.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Great to see this finally happening. I'm assuming that implementation is targeted for the 2014 season?

Interesting point about MAR teams that travel. Is there any chance that this could be the first district region to allow cross registration between other regions that have already made the transition?

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

I believe one of the steps that the NE model will look at right from the get go is cross pollination between districts, so don't kiss us goodbye just yet.

-Brando

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Several NY teams travel to NE as well so I hope exceptions are made in some cases for teams who can more readily attend WPI/Boston/CT.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Yeah, we are quickly running out of regionals outside of NYC and Long Island that we can attend.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

I am looking forward to this meeting, as well as the prospects of moving forward to the district model here in NE. It has taken far to long to get to this point, after FiM, I fully expected that NE would have been next.

A side note: Negative comments, worded differently would be far more constructive.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Hope that wasn't directed at me. I was just pointing out that there's teams who I hope get considered during the decision process, not saying something negative about this so I hope that's not the tone of my post. Although I would love to take a team up to a NE regional some year, I actually love the district system here.

On a similar note: would mentors from teams who frequent the NE regionals be allowed to attend these meetings? For example, 694? Will the NE district organizers meet with FiM and MAR folks to discuss do's and don'ts?

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Dana, is "NE FIRST" the official name of our district system? I think NERD (New England Robotics District), as well as FINE (FIRST in New England) would be better names. ;)

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Looks like we found a meeting topic already!

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

I'm not trying to be negative in any way, if that was directed at me. I love the district system, I wish all of FIRST was districts right now. I just want NY to be in one too and boy would we miss all the friends we have made out in New England. Having said that, if NY can't be involved there is no doubt in my mind that the NE district should happen because it is fantastic for all teams involved, specifically those with low budgets.

Probably would have been better to know the answer to that question before I txted one of our head mentors who is a doctor out in Boston that he should "definitely go to this thing."

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

I'd really like to be on the district as well (Metro DC) but right now I'm more interested in how this impacts those teams that tend to come down our way for a "non local" event.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Well, at the NJ Regional we always got teams from NYC, Brazil, and occasionally Canada. To simply put it, they sadly could not be with us this season. I believe the 2 Brazilian teams that usually came to NJ (1382 and 1860?) ended up going to the NYC Regional. Teams like that will (sadly for them) just have to go to other regionals.

I for one am excited for the future NE districts, due to how close it is to MAR, and 'interleague play' now seems more doable/negotiable than with just FiM and MAR.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

NE FIRST is the name. Though, I did hear NERD is making a comeback in another way....

We'll also have gotomeeting info for some events and record them for those who are out of NE who want to attend. All the info will be made available on nefirst.org. All of these venues are donated and I don't want to over-invite and wear out our welcome!

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

I am extremely excited to see neFIRST move forward as well as the prospects of outsiders!

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

This is exciting. In my mind, the sooner I can play more than twice as many matches for one registration fee with an unbag window at home, the better.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

We are very open to gathering best practices and lessons learned from both FiM and MAR, and we have already had a number of converstations with FiM and MAR stakeholders. We are planning to continue these converstations. Additionally, members of our planning committee visited FiM and MAR events.

We are also encouraging folks to visit the Q&A section of our website (nefirst.org) to share your ideas and concerns... The website Q&A and Town Hall meetings are to ways we can listen and learn from the teams.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

I have many questions about how district events are run so I looked quickly for info. I thought I would find it in the FRC game manual but I did not. Where can I find info on how FiM and MAR are run?

Thanks

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

The FiM website, www.firstinmichigan.org, may be able to answer some of your questions. Do you have any specific questions? The pros and cons of district models have been discussed many times on CD.

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

For things like District by-laws, you can find all of them on the individual district's websites (I'm pretty sure they are virtually the same for MAR and FiM):

http://www.firstinmichigan.org/

http://mar.us.com/

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Just what I was looking for.

Thanks

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Hmmm. I think NYC/LI would make a fine district, you need around 80-100 teams (MAR has 99). By my (unscientific) count, you have that in LI and NYC (84 teams). Joe, want to start something?

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

I talked with Jess Boucher shortly at BC, about this. How can teams from NY's capital region get involved? All 4 of the NE regionals (Boston, WPI, CT, and BAE) are within a 3 hour or so driving window, while only one NY regional falls in that window.

I know that I can speak for ourselves and Team 20 in saying that we would very much prefer to compete in New England. Neither team has competed more than once outside of New England in recent history (us at FLR in 2009 and 20 at FLR in 2008.) Also our relative isolation from other NY teams means it makes sense for us to be included in NE. (Look at Andrew Schreiber's wondermap here.)

Re: New England District Town Hall Meetings
 

Having worked with two other capital region teams (that I believe are still active) in 1493 and 1665 I am fairly certain that they would also prefer New England to either NYC/LI or FLR.