The Everywhere Else District
 

This idea has probably already been presented elsewhere on CD-- if this was your idea first, you are welcome to claim priority below. Understand, however, that you have altogether missed the opportunity to give the idea a cool name. In fact, this proposal is almost the same as the proposals for a super regional system fleetingly seen in previous years, just rephrased into the terminology of the district model.

Proposal
The Everywhere Else District is a district system for every FRC team which is not already a part of the already-established district systems.

The Everywhere Else District is awkward to imagine, because it lumps together disconnected and distant areas like western PA, Israel, and Hawaii into one territory. These are places that can sustain one or two regional events but can't (for whatever reason) establish a district. The territory claimed by the Everywhere Else District is the entire world, minus the territories of the other established district systems.

Key features of the Everywhere Else District:

• Upon implementation in 2017, ALL former "regional" events like Western Canada and Las Vegas become "district" events within the Everywhere Else District.
• High performance in the Everywhere Else District qualifies a subset of teams for a "DCMP" in Houston. Team performance is measured by the standard points ranking system used by all 8 other district systems [EDIT] with one key modification: single-event teams would receive double the points at that event.
• High performance at the "DCMP" in Houston qualifies a further subset of teams for the "CMP" in Detroit.

New district systems would be free to emerge even after the implementation of the Everywhere Else District. The territory claimed by the newly-forming district system would simply be carved out of the Everywhere Else District.

The Everywhere Else District would to turn ALL remaining regionals into district events by 2017, well ahead of previous growth projections. It would create a system where all teams (regardless of their geography) would have the opportunity to participate in 3 distinct tiers of play. The change would also immediately allow the possibility of unlimited interdistrict play.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Those are some super high quality drawings you got there bud ;)

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

My concern with grouping vast areas into districts is how to compete effectively in such a model. Since in our case every other regional is separated by several thousand miles of ocean.

I believe the idea behind districts is to give more competitions for the same registration fees. Hence reducing the per match cost significantly while increasing engagement and competitiveness.

Any travel at all would be the opposite of saving money in our case. Which I am sure is the case for many off mainland and international teams

As it is many Hawaii teams have to fly and air freight their robot just to compete our local regional..

There is just no easy solution to this... Guess they need to move Champs here... :)

Aloha!

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

The idea of creating an everywhere else district just seems... Bad. I'm one of the biggest supporters of districts. There is only one issue with this idea... with this. Ignoring the whole volunteer factor, You need to reach a certain FRC team density before going to districts. Why? You want to make districts where at least 2 events are within a 2 hour drive max for every team. Why? You want to make it where any team can go to their two district events without staying at hotels. Why? It saves huge amounts of money. I suggest the minimum team to square mileage ratio is around 50 teams for every 40,000 miles squared. That is about where IN districts are and Indiana is at the Minimum range a district should be when you focus on the 2 hour drive guideline. If you make certain areas like South Dakota apart of the everywhere district, they'd be forced to go to 2 events instead of choosing to go to 1. Of course, it would cut down on the registration costs but that isn't the point of districts. We payed the same for registration in 2015 for districts as we did in 2014 for regionals. The whole point of districts is to cut down on hotel costs and create more FRC teams in an area. Making an everywhere else district would just make it more expensive for almost every FRC team who is currently in the regional area. They'd have to travel and pay hotel expenses for 2-3 times the amount of regionals. In order for an area to go to districts, they need to reach a certain team density so the district won't fail to start out with. Hopefully, This makes sense. :)

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

It is always said that moving to districts makes it cheaper for teams to compete. This is not true, it makes it cheaper per match, but not cheaper in total.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

I would totally disagree with you. IN is one of the least populated districts. We went to 4 events for $10,000 (3 qualifying events and the DCMPS). The same cost as two regionals. Those cancel out. Regionals require you to stay at hotels for each regional and charter a bus for each regional unless you live in an area like MN where finding 2 regionals within driving distance isn't as hard. That right there saves you 4 nights of hotels and 4 days of chartering a bus. That saves you so much money.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

You're looking at it from the perspective of a team that would attend many events. A majority of teams in the regional model attend only 1 event. The minimum cost for a regional team to compete at the Championship is $9000 for registration. The minimum registration cost for a district team is $14,000.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

I edited the original post to describe a modification of the standard points system for the Everywhere Else District. Single-event teams would be eligible for a 2x multiplier and would therefore recieve double the points they earn at their event.

No. You're correct that these "reasons" are ways districts have been marketed to the FRC community. However, the overarching reason for implementing a 3-tier competition structure is because the 2-tier former structure was unsustainable.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Correct. But many FRC teams I know went to two regionals. But still, you save $5,000 on events but you still have to pay for 2 more nights of hotels and 2 more days of chartering a bus unless you leave near a regional site. So in the long run, you aren't really saving that much money, you have an even smaller chance for improvement throughout the season (less hours to work on robot between first event and World CMPS), you have less practice, and you have an even smaller chance of making it to World CMPS.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Would these new Everywhere Else events look like today's regionals (larger numbers of teams, lower number of matches per team) or districts?

If the events suddenly become like the current district events, how are you going to create enough events so everyone can attend them?

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

As well, there is the perspective of the "isolated" teams. HI fits in here (there aren't enough teams on any one island to have a full regional, I believe, and so they have to fly to compete, WITH their robot). So do the Dakotas, Alaska*, Chile, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.

Very simply, an "isolated" team has to travel overnight to get to ANY event. Two events won't save them any money, if they were previously a 1-event team, because the $4000 saved in registration will simply go towards travel to the second event (along with whatever else they can fundraise).


*Alaska's one team will be an interesting test case in PNW this year--putting it mildly.



Back to the original topic...

This is an interesting option as far as it goes. In team-dense regions, I can see it working. In team-sparse regions, or long-travel regions, it's going to go over about like concrete blocks in a swimming pool.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

This would be up to the individual event planning committees. I would expect very little changes in the first year of implementation.

Aside from the name, the 2017 Everywhere Else District Mexico City Event would look very much like the 2016 Mexico City Regional.

Meanwhile, the 2017 Everywhere Else District Alamo Event planning committee might choose to replace their historically-regional-style event with some number of (perhaps 2 or 3) historically-district-style events for a similar total cost.
I don't see a need to create a very large number of new events with the implementation of this structure.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

I like the concept of the Everwhere Else District since its intent is to allow for more play at a cheaper cost.
I'm sure with a task force in place, this could work!
Wont be easy though....

Glenn

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Quick question. Does anyone else notice that many teams in the everywhere else district would have to fly at least twice. So many teams live out of range of Houston and Detroit. Even teams in very heavily populated area like New York and California would have to fly twice. That seems like a bad idea too

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

I'm intrigued by the idea, for sure. I think this would be better described as a split between district teams and regional teams - as others have said, calling it a 'district' is a little misleading given the previously stated goals for districts.

I think it could get a lot harder for regional teams to go to worlds, though, depending on how the numbers work out - ½ the teams at PNW DCMP this year qualified for worlds, so if you wanted a similar portion of teams in Houston to qualify for Real CMP, you'd have to have 500-600 teams or more.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Only for the EEDCMP and the CMP--many teams won't need to deal with the CMP even if they make the EEDCMP. (This does depend on relative size of the two events, mind you.) And many, many teams probably won't make the EEDCMP (unfortunately).


Something like "suddenly needing to travel again to attend the World Championship" can be dealt with. It won't necessarily be pretty. But it is doable.


And, not to put too fine a point on it, but the LAST time the NY teams didn't need to fly to a Championship was in the early 90s when Nationals was in Manchester, NH. The CA teams have never had a Championship within driving distance--and would love to see some of the Midwest and East Coast teams have to fly out here for once.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

The Alaska test case will definitely be very interesting. I hope that at some point at the end of the year, the Nerds of the North will post something on this forum about their experiences in the PNW this year.

About the Everywhere Else District: The point made in the quote above about many teams in isolated areas having to travel overnight is important. By adding a required DCMP, it saves them no money (probably makes them spend more) and does little to guarantee of making it to Champs.

What might instead be a better alternate solution is for teams to "Opt into" a district region with sufficient notice (something a reasonably large amount of time, so that the planning committee for the district can accommodate them) or to simply allocate extra CMP spots to isolated regionals.

Overall, I think the travel problems for isolated teams make this idea a tough sell.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

This will never happen. HQ isn't going to take the revenue hit of giving everyone that's currently in the regional system two events for the price they currently pay for one.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

This has a better chance of happening than California Districts.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Heh.

Unfortunately, from what I've heard, this is a true statement--for a wide variety of reasons.



I think TDav is right, though: An "Opt-In" provision in FIRST's standard policy that would allow teams to request inclusion in an adjacent district area would probably have some very interesting results. (No "Opt-Out", though.) The Albany-area teams (NY) would probably ask to be included in New England. NYC/Long Island would be pretty evenly split between NE and MAR. I could see South Carolina and/or Florida teams making a request to adjoining district areas.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

So some of the EE would get 2 events, others would only get 1, based on what the local implementation is? And some would get 12 matches per event, others would get 6 or 8?

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

There's substance to this idea. I think it needs work, but I like the core of it.

When we reach a point where the majority of FRC is in districts by the current method of establishment, this should be considered. There will be areas that won't have enough mass to form their own districts, and don't have any neighboring districts that make sense to join. This idea allows those areas and teams to be integrated to the same qualification methods everyone else uses.

With that said, I don't think this is an idea to be implemented as early as 2017. We're going to have a hybrid system of the District Model and Regional Model for a little longer. There's just too much of FRC not in districts this point in time to make the OP's idea feasible.

So overall, great rough idea that could serve as the icing on the cake to converting all of FRC to districts. We just need to bake a couple more layers to the cake first.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Yes.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

The Everywhere Districts:

At first sign up you Pick your District Champ location, there will be appropriate number per region

Not one size fits all - in denser areas there will be larger districts sending proportionally more representatives to Champs.
This can be tricky - but some district champs may be smaller - and have fewer advance to Championships - so Hawaii may only get 4 slots into champs and NE get 24 (My numbers are hypothetical - it would be based on relative population between districts, I have not done the math)
Small remote areas will have to team up at least enough to send 1, hopefully more, representatives to Champs - the diversity of these dense and low population teams will be nice at Champs.


Next 2 event signups any district event - in the world - Collect points per the District Point System. Yes you could worry about teams gaming to get easy district points - but that also helps even out the competitive balance over time - and the district champs will sift out those who do not belong.
As now in district system a 3rd event may be registered for - but will not carry district points


For the cost concern - legitimate concern for a 1 event team.
From my experience being a 1 event team was hard to sustain full inspirational energy, it was - is that all there is?
At least in districts for same cost as 1 regional you get 2 events. And you may find that that improves your competitiveness and that that improves your fundraising -
In order to go to the next level?

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

I think this idea has a lot of merit. I have a couple of changes, mainly terminology and qualification steps.

I propose you continue to call them Regionals and then you qualify to go to the Regional Championship. Then you qualify from the Regional Championship to go to the World Championship.

The qualification process for the Regional Championship is identical to the current steps to qualify for the World Championship at a Regional event (winning, awards, or wildcard). Each regional would send 6 teams to the Regional Championship as they do today.

To qualify for the World Championship you would then earn points at the Regional Championship similar to the district points. The number of teams to qualify is identical to the way districts are calculated, % of all FRC teams that are Regional teams.

Regional Event (1+) > Regional Championship > World Championship
District Events(2) > District Championship > World Championship

The increase in registration costs to move to this system would be identical to the increase in costs when switching a region to districts. The only difference being the likely more expensive cost of traveling to Houston for the Regional Championship.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Most New York teams (and their Ontario friends to the north, and their NE friends to the east) drive to St. Louis.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

To be fair, districts that are actually in existence have already had to do the hard sell on isolated teams.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

The district model is based on a minimum team density. The EED, by definition, consists of those areas that either don't meet this density, or lack the desire to go to districts.

While I am not familiar with every district and its boundaries, it seems to me that every team that competed in a district in 2015 except 568 (Nerds of the North of Anchorage, AK) could reasonably drive POVs (personnaly owned vehicles) to their DCMP; no need to rent an intercity bus or buy airline tickets. For a Dallas DCMP in EED, this would be a very small fraction of the teams, and those who won there would then have to turn around and get another plane/bus to Detroit two weeks later.

I just don't see an upside that comes anywhere close to balancing the problems this would create, except for travel agents.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

So nobody has addressed this yet. So... each district is only suppose to be like 30-40 teams. So since most regionals are 60 teams, what if they had 3 times the district events. Then they go to a regional championships and you send 1/3 of the teams from the regional championship to worlds. This would strengthen the quality of worlds but it would make teams in rural areas non existent. 2 regionals, 1 regional champs, 1 worlds. That would be like 8 flights and 12 days of hotels for someone in south Dakota for instance. They would probably rather quit than go on.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

In both the model I suggested and the one Nate suggested most Regional events would be identical to the way they are now. Noone is suggesting that you require every team go to more than one regional event.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

But then, you need to qualify more than 6 teams per regional to the regional champs. Otherwise, you'd send everyone from the regional champs to world champs. It would be cool if they sent like 12 teams per regional to the regional champs. and sent half of the teams from regional champs to world champs. That would help filter out all the not so good teams that got to worlds through the regional model.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

The number of teams that qualify for the regional championship could be tweaked. I didn't look at how many would qualify for the regional championship in total and how many would qualify for the world championship.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Exactly what problem is this complex solution attempting to address and how does it address it?

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

I could be totally wrong here. But, I believe the intention of the Everywhere Else District is to solve the "problem" of two championships. The EED creates a championship-lite event for teams currently in the regional system. This would potentially allow for FIRST to focus on helping the district championships have the current level of inspiration of champs. While also maintaining the competitive atmosphere of the world championship that many on CD highly value.

To respond to the thread in general, I don't think outside of the DCMP and points that you could run the EED like a district at all. I think you would still likely have to maintain large regional events.Quite a few teams would still participate in only one of these regional style events(which is covered by doubling their points from that one event?).

Additionally I think the idea of the EED definitely has some serious positives and negatives to be considered. Some of which have been touched upon already in this thread.

On the plus side, the EED would provide teams currently in the regional system the opportunity to go to two world class events. It would create a more competitive world championship without sacrificing inspiration. And finally, the model would easily allow for regions to split off from the EED to form their own district and reap the full benefits of said split.

On the negative side, under the current cross district play rules, the EED would likely halt any teams from the current districts from playing at any of the current regional events. EED teams would have to pay more to get to the world championship(however they do also get more play time). Teams in the EED would not get the same benefits as they would in other districts. Some regional events might be considered unfair because of the differences in number of matches between events. And the DCMP and the district in general could easily turn into a logistical nightmare.

Overall I think it's a really Interesting idea. If anyone is willing I would be interested in seeing some of the calculations for how many teams you would need to send to EEDCMP and how many teams EEDCMP would have to send to champs. As well as what percentage of FRC would have to convert to districts to make the EEDCMP feasible (if any percentage at all).

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

Thanks for the question, but in this forum I'm going to decline to frame the proposal as a solution to some specific problem.

To Giantwalker's excellent summary above, I would only add these points as possible motivations for the proposal:

1. The Everywhere Else District allows local organizers to add new historically-district-style events to the competition calendar one at a time, rather than in bulk (as what is currently required when forming a new district out of whole cloth).

2. The Everywhere Else District empowers local event planners to choose the mode of competition that works best for the teams they serve. This preserves the role of the local FIRST affiliate partners in defining the look & feel of the events they produce.

3. I would suggest that while the *transition* from the current competition structure to the Everywhere Else District might be complex, the ultimate working system is more uniform and far simpler than the current structure. In the long term it eliminates the philosophical split between "regional teams" and "district teams" by universalizing the philosophies of the district model. It immediately allows all FRC teams (regardless of geography, regardless of density, regardless of local politics) to qualify for advanced competitions in approximately the same manner. Borders between districts eventually become largely irrelevant, as they only determine which DCMP teams would be assigned to.

Here are some numbers that hopefully add some depth to the proposal. This analysis is based on 2015 registration data.

Re: The Everywhere Else District
 

If you thought trying to book your travel to Championship after a week 5 regional win was tough before, just wait until nobody knows who qualified until after week 7. :rolleyes: