Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I just wanted to address this point specifically - sorry it took so long, but with everyone suffering from "event hangover", tracking down details takes a while. No one on the RPC (myself included) issued any instructions to take down the flyers. It seems that the facilities people at the U of MN took them down as they weren't "event relevant". All those other flyers you mention they did see as event relevant - from what I saw at the event, they were all safety posters and posters related to the SWEet Eats event on Friday. Personally, I never even saw the flyers - one was never handed to me, I never saw any posted anywhere at North Star, the facilities people must have gotten to them beforehand.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I do remember hearing an announcement in the pits about it once. Just once. I may have missed any others because it was so loud in there, but they did announce it at least one time. I don't know if they announced it in the arena or not.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Brendan,
MN is mostly rural. Minneapolis/St/ Paul is the largest with Rochester, Bloomington (actually a Cities suburb) and Duluth being the largest cities.
Minnesota is actually larger than Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine combined. To give you an idea, one team that attended Duluth is three hours north near the Canadian border. Another is in International Falls and two near Bemidji. All are about three hours drive on two lane roads. Much longer when weather is bad. My neice took about 5 hours to travel that distance to attend Duluth in snow.
There have been attempts to get a regional in Rochester or nearby.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Strange, I spoke to one of your pit members for about 3-4 minutes and handed her a flyer while you were in the pit.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Yes, I heard you talking with her, but I was a bit busy and didn't actually see the flyer. I know after you left she mentioned that she wasn't really terribly interested in districts, but I didn't have time to stick around for any further discussion.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Anybody who thinks districts are bad either doesn't understand them, doesn't want to put in the effort for a better system, or in some way gets unfair personal gain from the regional system that they don't want to give up. Anybody in this thread arguing against Knufire is no exception to this.

If you feel you don't fit this bill, then show me your progress on the effort you've put forth into transitioning your area to the district system. Everybody knows it's a multi-year process, but you can't claim it's a challenge better saved for a later date if you haven't even started working towards it yet.

The best time to start considerations on how to transition your area into a district system is yesterday. The second best time is today.

I've been told that 80 of the teams in MN are from the cities and the surrounding suburbs. That leaves the majority of the teams from anywhere from international falls to Albert Lea. There will be travel involved for most teams. But likely one event would be close to their geographic area... So they'd be traveling to one event (which is what they do now).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

A quick geographic study of team locations and placing "events" in various areas could tell you pretty quickly the impact of districts to team travel. We did this for California a few years ago.

*EDIT* Here is a simple breakdown of 2014 CA Teams by county.

-Mike

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Speaking of this-- where did the "distance from me" option go on the FIRST website team search?

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I don't know how up-to-date this is, but here are team locations for MN and the surrounding area.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/vi...s.kXz5_NH-_LbQ

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

It has rookie teams on the map. Looks up-to-date to me.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

It is somewhat misleading however-- multiple teams from the same city are only shown as a single flag. For example, I know there are 12-ish teams in Minneapolis, 2 in Eagan, 2 in Apple Valley. After I finish my school project I'll get to coming up with something more accurate.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I'd be super interested in learning why a current student wouldn't be interested in districts!

Back when I was a student, and the district model was being introduced in Michigan and discussed within MAR, I was also pretty naive and thought it was literally the worst thing to happen to FRC because I liked the flashy large regionals and didn't think through the entire impact of the model.

I'm really glad I gave it a chance within MAR and learned to love districts, and now the students I have worked with love them as well! :)

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Well, she's well informed in how the team works and our budget each year. The team very much enjoys traveling for an event, so having two local events to go to isn't a big draw. We already do two events events each year, so getting two for the district registration isn't that big of a deal. With the team's goals, we would want to make it to the District Champs each year, which would keep our registration costs the same they are now. Fewer teams means less time between matches, and she enjoys spending that time actually working on the robot. Sure, more matches is great, but there are benefits to regionals for some teams/individuals as well.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

After seeing all the MN moving to districts talk, I can get that it would be a massive undertaking to get to districts. My question comes from the other side of the argument. What happens if we don't move to districts? Here are some fun facts.

Northern Lights - 60 teams
Lake Superior - 63 teams
10000 Lakes - 63 teams
North Star - 60 teams
Iowa - 21 Minnesota teams
Amount of regionals with more teams than 63 - 5 (64, 64, 66, 66, 66)
Percent of teams at the 4 MN regionals from Minnesota - 89%

I think that most people that have been following the threads realize that there would be quite a bit of work and money needed to move to districts. But what happens when MN First keeps growing... even if we maxed out at 66 teams and no other teams went to 2 regionals; right now with every thing the way it is we could add 18 teams...