Re: The District System
 

Michigan switched when it was around 120 teams with 3 regionals. The regionals had 36 (detroit) 45-54 (West Michigan) and 60 GLR. Typical regionals are actually proabably on average 50 teams. As registration typically covers first event, and most teams would only go to 1 event if they had to pay for a second event, in reality witht he current size of Michigan, we would only have about 5 total events in the state maybe 6 (see CA which is nearly identical number of teams). If you assume 6 events with an average of 50 teams, this is 300 slots. for 200 teams, the 300 slots would be 2 slots for 100 teams, and 1 slot for 100 teams. Thus 200 slots would come from initial registration, and 100 slots would be the $4K second event dollars. These 100 slots would now need to be contrasted to the current 64 slots that MSC has, thus in reality, FIRST is loosing 36 slots worth of registrations or about $4Kx36=$144K. While $144K is nothing to sneaze at, I think it is a more realistic value of FIRST's "loss" relative to FiM.

Re: The District System
 

During a meeting last night to discuss NEFIRST something that was brought up was the timeline for qualifying for St. Louis. This past year our team qualified in week 6 and experienced a massive scramble to organize travel for 42 people to travel from New Hampshire to St. Louis. This wasn't easy. Chasing down plane tickets and group travel (not necessarily for the rate but to have everyone together) was extremely hard to do 2 weeks out with Southwest nearly telling us to forget it.

As the district model expands with NE going into it this upcoming season, how will travel plans to St. Louis change? In 3-5 years down the road we could nearly 50%+ of teams attending St. Louis finding out a week and a half in advance they are moving on to CMP.

For regions that are closer like FIM and MAR its a solid days drive. For places like New England and further out west, hopping on a bus isn't so easy (or cheap for that matter). How will smaller teams who may have just drained their budget and their community resources just making it to the district championship afford registration + travel after potentially traveling to two district events plus the district championship? NE has several teams who for unfortunate remote reasons will have to travel to 1-2 districts plus the district championship and due to their location, there isn't much around.

Following along, how will items like flight and hotel change? Maybe we see places like NEFIRST approaching airlines and bus companies to have buses and planes ready to go for teams who qualify. We could potentially have 25 teams plus the legacy/HOF teams in New England (30). Similarly, will regions begin reserving hotels so their is a place to stay for said teams.

These were just one of the many things we discussed but as the district model expands these issues will become bigger for the areas further away. Our team barely scrapped by organizing travel this year and we aren't excited about doing it with a week to do so!

A question for the current teams in districts: Do you have a good idea of who is already going BEFORE the district championship starts?

Re: The District System
 

This is always a struggle for us. We qualified by winning from 16th draft pick in both years of MAR, so we literally had no clue if we'd be going until the final, final score came up. Other teams might have an idea bit earlier, like those a the top of the points ranking going into Region Champs, but I don't know if they make plans around it. Other than that, qualifiers don't know until they get their award or the final points come out. (HOF, Einstein 2012, waitlist, regional qualifiers, etc excluded.)

I believe Steele does reserve hotels for Week 7 teams, though I know they're not the most beloved contractor in the FIRST repertoire. Even at such a late date though, most of our families make their own arrangements (with unaccompanied kids joining different ones), and most of them got hotels in reasonable walking distance. I myself got one much cheaper than Steele only a few minutes out, but large groups are harder if you have to travel that way.

For flights, most of the MAR people I know fly, not the least because it's one less day off school/work. Our team's about half and half, but again those that fly (and drive, for that matter) make their own arrangements in small groups/families. It'd be really cool to get a sponsorship X Airline that reserves N seats on Wednesday morning (?) flights. Maybe free, but more realistically they offer them at, say, what the lowest Expedia price was in January. First dibs to qualifying teams, and then open to other FIRSTers (maybe to the district RASs? ;)) who'd like to go.

Re: The District System
 

There we go. I knew someone had more info than I did.

If you consider that every area will likely end up in some type of district format, it's clearer to me why they insisted we pay for State Champs, and why I expect other areas will do the same.

Re: The District System
 

This is the worst part of the district model, at least for regions that are 10+ hours from CMP in a car. Flying our "travel" team (~30-35 students and a couple of mentors) costs less than taking a bus and booking another night in a hotel.

We gambled a bit this year - we booked flights after our 2nd district event (week 3). At that point we were ranked 2nd in MAR, and there were only two more district events, so we had a good idea of where most teams would be sitting point-wise before MAR CMP. We modeled a couple worst-case scenarios and felt confident enough to book flights before it became impossible or prohibitively expensive.

As for forecasting the qualifiers - it's probably easier in Michigan since they have more point based slots (in absolute terms, and also as a percentage of all slots). MAR chooses to dedicate a larger percentage of slots to "culture" awards (CA, EI, RAS). That makes it hard to get a good idea unless you're in the top 2/3 heading into Region CMP.

The best team to miss CMP this year was ranked 8th before CMP, the lowest ranked team to qualify by points was ranked 18th. The 42nd ranked team missed the cut by 8 points and the 59th ranked team missed the cut by 5 points - so there is some chaos possible. Last year the 5th and 8th ranked teams missed the cutoff, and the lowest ranked team to qualify by points was ranked 22nd.

Re: The District System
 

Has anybody here been on/know a team that was unable to attend champs because they found out too late? Also, of the teams who qualify for champs, about how many end up not attending?

Re: The District System
 

I'm not sure on finding out too late, but every year one or two teams do not attend the MSC. I assume for different reasons, varying from time out of class and money.

Re: The District System
 

For FiM, a little bit of math can give you a good idea on where the points cut of might be and it's been pretty accurate over the 4 years of district play. For this year, if you were a alliance captain or first pick in both districts events and finished in the semi's once, you were pretty safe. Anything less than those results and you were on the bubble.

Re: The District System
 

I'm sorry, I was not very clear. When I said champs, I meant world championships, not district championships.

Re: The District System
 

The time frame looks like it's going to get tighter and tighter when it comes to making travel arrangements. If the district model is the way of the future, would it make sense to have a 6 week competition season before the "Championship" season. If we condense, it would allow for teams to prep for the trips in St. Louis.

Re: The District System
 

The same would apply. My team 326, did not attend the world championship in 2009 after qualifying via points as we did not have the money.

Re: The District System
 

I was wondering this too. If some districts could potentially condense their competition season down to 5 weeks to push their Championship sooner allowing more travel prep time.

This would mean other teams have an extra week of work/iteration time than mine but if it means more of my team can afford to attend the championship with more reasonable prices I'm all for it!

Re: The District System
 

FiM is already at two a weekend for 5 weekends... Not to many more volunteers to go around.. The week 6 event at Bedford was added late as well...

Re: The District System
 

Please, please, please, please, PLEASE have a week off between the end of district play and the beginning of regional championship play. MAR was inviting teams to fill the last couple spots at the MAR championship the morning of load-in. Having a week 6 district and a week 7 championship is way too demanding on teams.

Re: The District System
 

Would you prefer to have MAR champs a week later and have one week less to prepare for the World Championship?