Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

I still stand by my point. First needs to put that into place. It would be such such a blessing

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

Second this. The hardest places (that I've encountered) to start teams are the schools who had defunct FRC teams.

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

There are also several veteran teams that are barely floating and can't improve due to a lack of organization and effort. It's not fair to just say rookies can't enter FIRST without a plan. There are several rookie teams that enter every year that do better than many veteran teams. If a team can only spend $1000 on their robot after paying registration, they don't have a sustainable model. Yet whenever I suggest that some of these teams should scale back or even do Vex or FTC instead, I'm met with negative responses and glaring looks...

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

One of the things I've appreciated most about Frank Merrick is his openness and transparency. Although I am not staff of FIRST Robotics Canada, I am sometimes involved in discussions relating to this topic, and am willing to do my best "Frank Merrick impression" to provide Frank-like transparency.

Canada has been a pretty successful place for FRC as far as growth is concerned.

In 2013, the province of Ontario was subject to a teacher action, which should have dramatically reduced the number of FRC teams in Canada. Most teachers were unable to supervise any extracurricular activities that year. Amazingly, despite losing several teams (including 188 - the first ever Canadian team), the number of FRC teams in Canada essentially stayed the same thanks to strong growth.

In 2014, something equally amazing happened. Nearly every team we lost due to the teacher action returned. In addition to this, ~60 rookie teams were added this past season.

FRC in Canada is growing... fast. And last year was exceptionally fast!

Now, the last thing we would want to do is "limit" the growth of FRC in Canada, however we also need to ensure we adequately support each and every team in the program. Those two goals aren't mutually exclusive of course, but there are very real concerns to do them both successfully.

One major item is ensuring we have enough plays for all our teams. Despite adding two new regional events, and increasing the size of GTRE we barely had enough plays to support our Canadian teams in 2013. GTRW was downsized, due to the move away from the Hershey Centre, but thankfully we were able to find another venue at the last minute and still had a large net gain in the number of available plays last year. Truthfully, had GTRW not occurred, we would have been hard pressed to find a spot at a regional for all our teams...

Which is a very real problem.

...imagine being a rookie team, and being told there were no spots left at any local competitions. You're probably scraping by financially just to get your team off the ground, and now you have to book buses, hotels, etc just to be able to compete? That would not be pretty. In fact, maybe ugly enough to walk away from the program.

Now the good news is that we've done the math for next year. There's very many ways to look at it, but the short answer is we'll have enough plays for everyone if we grow as expected. This is based on Canada adding one more event and up-sizing GTRW to a larger venue next year - both of which are in the works.

Things begin to get interesting if we have another explosion of teams like we did last year. If that happens, a significant number of teams would need to travel outside of Canada to compete. However, based on the numbers, I don't think that will happen. Last year should have been a rare occurrence, and next year's growth should be closer to the "norm" that we've seen in the past.

Of course, if a growth explosion DOES happen and we don't have enough local plays, there are some contingencies ready to help our Canadian teams find places to play elsewhere.

Regardless of all this, I firmly agree that asking our Rookie teams to submit an application is a good practice. FIRST Robotics Canada offers a robust Rookie Grant program, and has a well-established Rookie / Veteran team mentoring program. Those programs are probably big reasons why Canada has grown at the rate it has, and why we retain an excellent number of our teams every year. The grants draw from a limit pool of money, and could run out if there is higher than expected growth. Veteran teams with the bandwidth to properly mentor rookies are also finite. Both programs are better delivered when we have the information from this application in hand. It's not asking too much, and I think it serves the goal of improving the FRC experience for everyone: rookie and veterans alike.

The moral of the story is:

Yes, let's grow FIRST and make sure we properly support all our teams at the same time.

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

Just out of curiosity, is there a particular reason for the absence of Canadian teams from British Columbia or the Maritimes?

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

IIRC Andrew you are a former senior mentor so you have definitely seen this more than I have, but one of the biggest challenges in Virginia (besides all the other fun ones not relevant to this) is the task of going back into schools that had teams fold long before I ever entered the program. 422 recently met with a director and department lead for another governor's school in our area (the one that specializes in technology education) that had its team fold nearly a decade ago because there was not enough proper support provided. It's super difficult to go back and re-start a team in what looks like an otherwise ideal circumstance as this, I don't look forward to going back and trying to recover the 20 or so others in the area with bigger challenges than just having a team that folded.

On top of that there are a lot of inadequacies in a lot of areas when it comes to supporting your 4+ year veteran teams. 422 survived through a lot of down years out of spite and stubbornness at the hands of a few brave personalities other teams don't have to survive.

Ontario has been successful at not becoming victims of their own success (if that makes any sense). Hopefully other areas can do the same.

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

I'd have to agree with both of these. I strongly dislike how FIRST wants to spam rookie teams. They support these teams for a year or two through grants targeted at first or second year teams, and then just throw them in the deep end. Honestly I feel as if I weren't around or had never gotten involved my team would have folded after its second or third season when we lost the NASA grant. FIRST makes it so easy for new teams to form, and then gives them so many crutches, and then just pull them out from under them and FIRST doesn't help them transition or learn how to survive without said crutches.

This may be an issue for another thread, however.

2¢

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

Most likely, the lack of a nearby event for them to go to.

For some years, 1346 came to the Toronto regional from BC. I believe they eventually shut down, but when new regionals were created in Washington and Oregon, they stopped coming to Toronto.

Prior to 2012, there was only one team from Alberta: 1482.

In 2012, 4334 was created, and was instrumental in the creation of the Western Canada regional in 2013, which lead to the now 30-odd teams there.

A similar thing happened in Quebec. At first, there was 296, then as the years wore on, a few more Quebec teams popped up, until the Montreal regional was created, and a large influx of Quebec rookies with it.

Everything about FRC is expensive. Even more so if you have to travel more than an hour or two's drive to the nearest regional. Most of Canada's economy is tied up in the major cities, especially Toronto area. The maritimes don't really have a major city with a huge economy (Halifax is the largest, and its about the same size as Oshawa, Ontario, just one of Toronto's many suburbs). Consequently, raising money there would be hard, AND you'd have to spend more than most teams just to GET to your event.

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

Actually, I was never an FSM. But I've spent the better part of the last several years investigating team growth and sustainability.

Ontario is certainly one of the regions to watch for team growth. It's long been the region I've pointed that we need to emulate for growth as they are sustainable and building, apparently, competitive teams. The core issue is, I have no freaking clue what they are doing up there that's different.

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

If I had to guess? I'd say that the huge competitiveness and dominance of 1114 and 2056, has caused the second tier to step up their game so much that Ontario now has a really big base of teams strong enough to win with consistency anywhere else. That means that the rookies have a lot of resources to draw from.

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

Another big factor is that in Ontario most graduates will go to university in Ontario. This keeps alumni in the same system allowing them to help out teams and volunteer at events they know.

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

Southern Ontario is also one of the biggest industrial and financial centers in North America. There's more opportunity to find professional mentors, sponsors and suppliers here than there is in other regions (like, say, Northern Ontario where I grew up). It is crazy expensive to run an FRC team (and travel to distant regionals)!

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

I've settled for assuming it's actually being propped up by the Russian mafia to train for a robot-based proxy war with America.

Re: Limiting Rookies in Canada next year?
 

I think a big factor related to this is the FRC alumni that this "really big base of teams" is now producing.

I have seen more young alumni become FRC mentors than I ever have in the past. There are so many familiar former-student-turned-mentor faces at competition.

My dream is to be able to put an alumni mentor on every rookie team.

The difference in having just ONE mentor who has been through FRC before is a huge difference-maker.

I've made a post on this topic in the past here as to why I believe Canada is seeing a lot of success lately:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...5&postcount=45

And I can say that this trend is increasing year after year, as more and more teams produce amazing young alumni mentors.

One thing I've tried to encourage with my young graduates is to NOT come back to your old high-school FRC team right away. Go to a different team, or even better, a young or rookie team. Share your knowledge and experience, and take some ownership of the new team.

It's an extremely rewarding experience, and there are many team success stories up here thanks to alumni who've done exactly this.

And so begin the Robotic Socialist Republic of Canuckistan rumours... the cat is out of the bag. ::rtm::