Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

This is fantastic. There's a good network of people in Indiana to make this work. Happy to have a much more cost-effective way for our students to be inspired.

-Nick

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

This is a game changer for FIRST. Having a model in place for a region of ~50 teams to go to districts, along with the existing models for larger regions, will make the eventual transition to all district play that much easier. A lot of the initial apprehension over districts was that it couldn't work in Region X because Region X had too few teams, or that Region X would have to combine with Region Y & Z to make sure they had enough teams, but X, Y, & Z was too large of a geographic area to be feasible. This smaller model makes districts much for feasible for both smaller and isolated regions.

Seconded on both counts here. Everything I've learned about districts points to the level of the team experience strongly correlating to the level of passion and dedication from the volunteers. Indiana has no shortage of this. (Hence why Indianapolis was such a popular choice for Champs within the community.) As for cost, the more teams that are paying $5000 for two events instead of one event, the better. Almost makes the rest of us in non district land look like suckers.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

Important to echo this statement. Give it a chance, you really won't regret it.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

Here's to hoping for Wisconsin/Illinois District in 2016 :)

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

I think anyone who understands what the model is trying to accomplish can see that it is, in theory, scalable from a region with 40-400 teams. I'm pretty sure the progenitors of the model even said as much. I think up until this point the creation of multi-state areas operating under a district model have been part necessity, part common sense, and part fear of breaking up an area or trying something far different with the same system others are using. I think there are enough WF(F)A winners and years of experience who wanted this in Indiana that FIRST was willing to let them try a smaller-sized district model in practice.

This could potentially flip a number of single-regional states. After this the only remaining things to try are giant districts in terms of team count, multiple district systems in a state, and a district system that doesn't lead to a R/S CMP.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

I agree on this. With two districts adjacent to each other for the first time, it's more imperative than before that somebody figure out an inter-district play model.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

The teams/square mile metric does not tell very much about a states ability feasibility for running districts. It doesn't matter how many teams there are, what matters is how the teams are distributed throughout the area. In pnw there are definate areas with a greater density of teams, namely the Seattle area. What matters is that the district has areas of higher density.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

Here in Michiana, we have been dreaming of interdistrict play for several years. Our neighbors to the south creating a district system of their own will bring that dream a step closer.

Indiana's success will be FIRST's success.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

I can't wait to see the details of the district events. The district model was covered during a roundtable discussion at the IN State Championship. I may be relatively new to this wonderful world of FRC, but I think this is definitely the way to go.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

Does anyone know the details of why Illinois was not included in this? Last fall, Dan Green, the Executive Director of Illinois FIRST, was confident that we would have an Illinois-Indiana district for 2015.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

This is GREAT news! Thanks to all that made this happen so fast. Looking forward to the implementation of inter district play with Michigan which was a component of the proposal from IndianaFIRST.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

Hopefully in the future! Our first year will just be Indiana, but we are all eager to open doors as soon as it would be successful.

I do know that our large cache of dedicated volunteers have a lot to do with our success as a state. Thank you to all of our Indiana FIRST volunteers! Being a transplant, it's safe to say I'm not too biased when I say that you're the greatest. It's wonderful working with all of you.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

Are you sure about this? I remember Frank putting out a blog post a while back that suggested we might be getting interdistrict play between all of the districts for 2015. That's part of the reason why they standardized the points system.


Also, congratulations Indiana! This is a huge step in the right direction for FIRST's push towards districts. The next step is to figure out the volunteer problem.

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

Suggesting it might not happen means that it might not happen.

And if the "Indiana model" is different(aside from points) FIRST might not want to have "outsiders" there. Also there might be an eventual rule of "no interdistricts in a new system"

Re: Indiana going to Districts for 2015
 

This makes sense--if you're trying something out with a "small" area, you probably don't want to artificially inflate your numbers. Such an experiment would be affected by using the "wrong" number of teams. I would guess that the experiment, if successful, would eventually open the door to "outsiders" playing.

Also a good idea here. Get the teams inside the system used to the system for 1 year, maybe two, and then they're more apt to want to go interdistrict. I could see a Hammond district attracting a bunch of SW MI teams and vice versa in a couple of years.