Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

About 60% are mentors the others are leadership students with demonstrated expertise in a particular area. For example the Chairman's award session is generally given by the Chairman's department students from area teams.

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

Wow. California doesn't even have one field....

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

Perks to a district system.

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

I don't know if there is significant interest for another off-season event on that scale just for Oregon. The teams that would be competing from Oregon would likely be some of the same teams that compete in 1540's BunnyBot event each year, and BunnyBot provides an excellent opportunity to try new things for teams (ie, 2471's swerve ect). Girls Generation gives a GREAT opportunity to girls on a robotics team to become more involved by demonstrating their skill sets that they may not be able to show otherwise. Rookie Rumble gives Rookies a chance to become more proficient at working in a FIRST environment. My point is that each of these events presents a very clear benefit for the time and money that a team puts into it. Hosting a vanilla off-season event that is between Oregon and (potential) Washington teams, which would have some benefits, doesn't seem very useful to me. I would argue that 1540's events already cover the benefits of hosting an Aerial Assist off-season event by providing a clear framework of rules to help develop teams and their members.

Another important piece of FIRST is Money. Many teams in Oregon lack the funding to attend many of these off-season events. Some even lacked the funding to attend the DCMP after qualifying through districts.

Personally, I'm not convinced we need another off-season event in Oregon because I think the current events hosted by 1540 are great substitutes for the Vanilla FRC game.

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

Due to the lack of off-season events in PNW many teams are choosing to go out of state for events. I know of at least 4 teams from PNW that are planning on traveling to either Chezy Champs or IRI in search of competition this summer. The fact that these teams are willing to invest $10,000's in traveling across the country makes me think that there is enough money out there for hosting off season events in PNW. In the past it has been expensive to ship fields across the country for a single event which is why Washington and Oregon Girls Generation competitions are back to back weeks, now that FIRSTWA has everything necessary to run events many of the price barriers have either been greatly reduced or eliminated entirely.Girls Gen is great but I feel we are missing out on a large part of the FIRST experience in the rest of the country.

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

TL;DR of Spencer's post - We can't grow if we don't try.

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

Don't get me wrong, I would love an actual off-season event that everyone can take part in and would gladly help plan it. I just want to make sure that teams won't run into the red because they think they need to attend an off-season event. I know this point sounds improbable, but it's happened twice while I've been in the PNW.

If we want to start planning this type of off-season event, perhaps we should first get a gauge of how many PNW teams would be interested in attending. Because without demand, why host the event

Edit: My posts so far were just referring to the bloc of teams that currently attend 1540 off-season events, which would likely need to be expanded to effectively host an off-season event. I was assuming that the teams would come from Oregon, where funding is VERY tight for many teams. I also wasn't including greater Washington because of the travel time from Spokane or Seattle-Tacoma. If Greater Washington teams were interested in making the drive, or Oregon teams to wherever I would have no argument at all.

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

Most offseason events cost $200 out here. That's literally less than one full day standing outside a grocery store asking for a few bucks and displaying your robot.

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

Add travel, food and other expenses and it isn't just the registration fee. See my above edit

Re: Any Off Season Events in Oregon
 

The trick is to put the offseason in a place where those are as reduced as possible.

-Food is actually one of the ways for an interested team to reduce the cost or make money from the event (AKA fundraise)--have a snack bar at the event and have team members pay for their food. If the prices are reasonable, then people will clean the snack stand out. (Trust me. I've seen that a couple of times.)

-Travel can be reduced by a number of methods. For example, strategic placement near the "day trip" center of as many teams as possible eliminates any chance of hotel expenses for the local teams [HINT for any organizers]. Carpooling with other teams can help; having everybody in a car share the cost of fuel, and I'm sure there are a few other tricks.

-Not sure what "other expenses" you refer to. Repairing the robot comes to mind; often there are spare parts and scrap materials left from the season, so you've already paid for those.

Most offseasons cost between $100 and $300 for registration; I find it hard to imagine one that would cost more than $500/team total including everything (travel, etc.) if within a day-trip range. As pointed out earlier, you can easily raise the funds for that. Going out of the day-trip range, you'd need to account for 1-2 hotel nights, still not too terrible depending on where you stay. (Say around $25/person/night assuming 4 in a room, maybe less, maybe with breakfast included.)