Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

That's it. We are just going to have to cut Texas into quarters. :p

Its great to see our neighbors adopt the districts. Good luck and we will miss coming up there.

Would have been sweet if we could come back and win one more time.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

Congrats Georgia and good luck!

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

So some interesting facts

77 teams were listed in GA for 2015 season and only 60 teams competed in 2015. Why did 22.5% (17) not compete last year.

Why hold District Championships (State) in Athens, GA which will require 99% of the teams to travel and bear the brunt of hotel and meals?

I hear "cost per play" mentioned as the reason that district model is better than regional. Well add the expense of travelling into the equation and you will see it will cost teams more per play than prior.

About 60% of the teams in GA are located in the Metro Atlanta area, would it not make more sense to hold the championship in the areas that holds most of the teams? This would require fewer teams travelling expenses.

Minimum cost to go to worlds will now be approximately $9k to go to state and another $4k for world costing $13K under the district model. This assumption is if no travelling is required to district events.

Minimum cost to go to worlds under regional model $9k ( one regional at $5k and worlds at $4k).

I just do not see the benefit when analyzed with all cost per play calculated not just registration fees of FIRST.

I see every teams annual budget increasing by about $10k to cover getting to State to qualify for World Championships in whatever city you get assigned to play in. Now add another $20k to cover worlds and see what cost per play is!

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

I won't comment on Georgia travel costs from Pennsylvania, but last year 495 of the 609* teams registered for Worlds went to at least 2 events beforehand. This includes all of the Georgia teams in attendance. Districts increase the hypothetical minimum registration cost for Worlds, but that doesn't apply across the vast majority of reality, particularly when discounting places that are not candidates for districts (e.g. international/low event density).

It's also true that the vast majority of teams do not go to Worlds, and District events themselves are a huge boon to the cost-per-play of all but the most remote teams in district-ready areas. (I'm working under the assumption that Georgia's team distribution is district-ready and their district event placement will reflect that.) That said, we in MAR know what it's like to have a District Championship decidedly not at the population center of teams, and this does take its toll. It doesn't doom the system though, and events can move over time.

*Team count fluctuated a little up to the event; this is using 1114's database. Edit: see Sunny's post. Sorry, I must have missed someone.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

Don, that's a good post of concerns. Primarily because we can take quite a few of those concerns, and analyze them with numbers.

So, I did some quick analysis on this on a number of different scenarios.

Now, please understand that there are quite a few variables at play, and I'm sure that there is a particular combination of team size, matches, performance, travel budget, etc. that'll disagree with what I have here.

Using the figures in OP's attached document, and assuming some basic information, here is the CPP breakdown.

Hotel Room: $100
Rooms: 10/night (28 students and 6 mentors)
Food: $10/meal
Travel: $500
Misc: $500

Team attends GSCR (No Travel, No Eliminations): $547
Team attends P'Tree and GSCR (1 Travel, No Eliminations): $792
Team attends P'Tree and GSCR (1 Travel, All Eliminations): $485

Team attends 2 Districts (2 Travel, No Eliminations): $485
Team attends 2 Districts (2 Travel, All Eliminations): $363
Team attends 2 Districts and State (3 Travel, No Elims at State): $395
Team attends 2 Districts and State (3 Travel, All Elims): $383

The bolded ones above represent the dynamic that your team (a large, successful team) is likely to fall into. As you can see, this move represents a 20% drop in cost per match. For a team that can only afford the registration fee and must travel to both events, there is still a significant improvement in CPM.

However, the number of matches does mask the reality that teams must dedicate more money. Including travel, 1261 would have to bring almost $5,000 more to the table in districts. A 1-regional team would have to bring $5,000 more to the table (assuming that they travel to both events).

The CPM numbers favor districts. The total cost numbers favor regionals.

So, this point is valid. Your minimum cost in order to get to worlds is higher in the district model.

However, I can't help but feel like this is an obvious point. Like, of course, you're paying for two more events, why wouldn't you pay more? But let's take a look at how many teams this actually effects.

There were 11 teams at worlds from GA. Of those 11, 3 went to one regional. Of those 3, 2 were on the waitlist. That means that hypothetically speaking, 1 team would have faced this cost barrier.

I don't think the numbers diminish what you're saying; they just put your point in perspective

Just looking at the facts,
- Sunny G.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

So North Texas (DFW), Central Texas (Austin/San Antonio), South Texas (Houston), and Everyone Else (People on 600 miles of open road). One of these covers vastly more land.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

I don't know. Do you have any insight into the disparate numbers? (17/77 is only 22.1%, isn't it?)

Your exaggerated numbers don't make me want to take you very seriously. In order to have 99% of teams travel, you'd need 100 teams at the state championship with only one not traveling. With fewer than 80 teams in total, that isn't very likely.

From a brief look at the map, it seems to me that there are at least four FRC teams in Georgia that wouldn't need to do an overnight trip to Athens. Even if every team in the state made the championship, that's less than 95% who would need to travel. Your point would have been just as strong had you said "more than 90%" instead of the hyperbolic "99%".

It would make a lot of sense if you could assume two things: all teams are equally likely to attend the state championship, and the costs of the two venues are the same. The first assumption is reasonable, if perhaps a bit generous. Do you have any information on the second?

If you analyze it again with two regionals, you'll see the benefit clearly. Complaining that it's more expensive to attend twice as many events doesn't strike me as an attitude I should care a lot about.

You didn't show the numbers for a team that does not need an overnight trip for one of their events. That would make the cost per play even lower.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

If you look at the FIRST site for locating teams they show teams that have not competed for up to 3 or more years which is why there is the discrepancy. FIRST keeps them in the system in case they return and because of their rules for determining rookie status. Why that is in the publicly available team listings I'm not sure. So the reality is that only 60 teams registered for the 2015 season. Why those 17 teams dropped of over the last 3-4 years I do not know.


Why the assumption that in the District system teams will have to travel for both of their district events but attending one Regional would require no travel? Fact is that district events are typically spread geographically so that hopefully the vast majority of teams will not have to travel to one of their district events.

Also how did you determine the number matches in your calculations? One of the requirements of the District System is that there are 12 qualifying events at each event. I don't know about the events in GA but around here 9 qualifying matches was what we typically got at a Regional. You also have to factor in the fact that a team is more likely to make it to the finals in the District System. I don't know how big the GA events will be and what the Regional events were but in the PNW we typically have ~32 teams at a district event and our Regionals were up to 64 teams. So a 75% chance of playing at least 2 more matches vs the Regional where the probability can be as little as 1/2 of that.

When I ran the rough numbers when the PNW District was started I found that the number of teams that had traditionally attended 2 Regionals was almost as large as the number of teams at our DCMP. In the end those teams did make up a large percentage of those who actually attended the DCMP. When you factor that in most of the teams that made it to DCMP did not have their registration fees go up while seeing their number of matches increase about 50%. The travel costs for a lot of them did go up but since a district event is only 2 days and are typically held in areas where hotels are cheaper than where the Regionals were held their travel costs did not double.

As I've pointed out in previous discussions of the District System FIRST does sell it as lower cost but in the real world it does lower the cost for some teams, keeps it about the same for others and increases the costs for the rest of the teams. On the other hand in my experience the teams that see their costs increase are those that benefit the most from participating in the District system.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

I primarily did this to test Don's theory that travel will tip the scales in favor of regionals. Not having to travel for a district will, of course, reduce the CPM and overall costs much more.

I used the numbers in the document that OP linked to. 12 matches per district, 8 matches for the Peachtree Regional (GA) and 11 matches for GSCR (GA).

I will repeat my disclaimer that I used some basic numbers and scenarios on either end of the extremes (all travel vs. no travel, all eliminations vs. no eliminations, etc.). There are many, many factors/scenarios/events that play into the CPM analysis.

- Sunny G.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

There is currently only one team registered near Athens
The events planned are not located near the majority of the teams currently registered

We attended XBots in Albany off season and hotel rooms were 114 plus tax cMe to 126 each

Total cost was 2500 including the entry fee for one night having the kids buy one meal and that was a one night trip with no transportation expenses

Food at 10 per meal is low in my opinion

Sorry just do not see the benefit when First talks of the world experience of international interaction , now they limit to only state interaction unless you make it to worlds

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

1) Sometimes, when you build it they will come. Palmetto moved to Myrtle Beach for 2013, and Horry County has added at least a good six or eight teams.

2) Between 2008 (when Palmetto moved to Clemson) and 2011 (when we started hosting SCRIW), there was no hotel-free event for us at all. Our home regional is three hours each way and two hotel nights. Nobody said FIRST was fair.

3) Get some parents who are travel fiends helping you out. When we went to Orlando last year--one night in Jacksonville on the way down, two in Orlando--the bill for each room (not per-person, the whole room) was $227.57. Would've been less, but our plans got changed within two weeks of the tournament.

4) Let's be real, how many Georgia teams were going outside the Southeast for events (other than Championship)? I bet you can count them on one hand. How many Peachtree teams were coming from real distance? I see one out of 66 last year (4707, Dominican Republic), while literally every other team was from Georgia or a neighboring state. Georgia Southern Classic? One from Ohio, two from Louisiana. That's a total of four teams out of 107 regional slots that didn't come from Georgia or a neighboring state. You want to meet teams from all over the world? Gas up the bus, they weren't coming to you.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

I'm pretty happy it's in Athens. As Billfred mentioned, teams came up after the move to Myrtle Beach, so any additions to the GeorgiaFIRST family are always welcome. Second, we have the privilege of being at one of the top institutions in Georgia & the US to host us. Don, if you want to get international interaction, there are many avenues you can pursue with your team. There are more regionals that don't clash with the Georgia district schedule that your team can attend. I also hear Skype and Facebook are still a thing. MySpace is still a question.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

Is it held in Athens because UGA offered a good deal? That would make sense because UGA is definitely trying to promote it's new engineering program.

Re: Georgia Districts confirmed for 2016!
 

I have no inside knowledge of the Georgia district system, but my experience with tournaments in FRC and other programs is that you go where the support is (financial, logistical, manpower, or any combination of them).