Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

[Sorry this post is so long, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave out any details.]

This past weekend I attended the 10,000 Lakes/North Star Regionals as a spectator. Based on some conversations with my friends in the state it seemed that many teams in the state were simply not aware that the district system even existed. I had previously mentioned in other threads that I would be willing to go to Minnesota to attend the Summer Robotics Series and give a seminar there about what districts are, but as we all know the teams that aren’t connected with the community and don’t know about FIRST outside of their local area often don’t attend off-season educational events like SRS. To combat this issue, my girlfriend I made the following flyer to distribute at the one place that every team consistently attends; the local regional events. As you can see, the intent of this flyer was to be mostly educational. We did get the flyer approved by a member of the MN FIRST RPC prior to the event.

Over Thursday and Friday, I went to as many teams as I could find and asked them if they have heard of the district system. I’d explain some of the differences and advantages between districts and regionals, and present the flyer to the team. I’d end with some of the issues facing Minnesota transitioning to districts; such as the jump from 4 to 14+ events, the need for more volunteers, and the fact that a transition would probably require several years of preparation before being implemented. To make sure that there weren’t several independent efforts towards the cause, I told teams that were interested that the best thing they could do was express their interest in the district system to the RPC.

The large majority of teams that I talked to had not heard of the system, and reacted very positively upon the system being explained to them. The few teams that had prior knowledge of the system were often some of the higher performing teams who more regularly compete outside of Minnesota. Some of these even mentioned that they had previously brought up the topic of districts over the past several years to the RPC. Granted, a small number of teams did express valid concerns about the system. One mentor even handed the flyer back to me and told me that the RPC was going to do whatever they wanted and not listen to little old him. However, the overall response was overwhelmingly positive.

After speaking with as many teams as I could find at both events, I decided to post the remaining flyers I had around the regional, similar to the mounds of safety flyers you see at events. On Friday afternoon, I was approached by a different member of the RPC and politely asked for a copy of the flyer. After briefly looking the flyer over, I was told that “mentors in Minnesota are not asking for districts*.”I responded with my experiences from talking to teams, how a lot didn’t know about the system and how the responses were largely positive. The RPC member then asked who I was, wrote down my name, and promptly walked away.

When I returned on Saturday morning to the event, I had noticed that all the flyers I had posted about districts had been taken down. No other flyers, which had been taped up in a nearly identical fashion, had been removed. Thinking that there might have been simply a misunderstanding, I put up the remaining flyers I had during alliance selection. By the end of the lunchtime break, most of these had been removed as well. All other flyers that teams had posted were still hanging. No member of the RPC that I had spoken with, neither before nor during the event, had expressed to me that anything about the flyer was wrong or that I was breaking any venue or event rules by putting up the flyers.

Another small thing I noticed; one of the teams I had spoken with on Thursday tweeted that they would be happy to host a district event at their school if Minnesota made the transition. Screenshots exist to prove that this tweet existed (and was retweeted at the MN FIRST account by a second team). Since then, this tweet has been deleted.

All my efforts during this regional have been to simply raise awareness about the regional system and educate Minnesota teams on what the system is. Now this is just conjecture, but based on my experiences and what I’ve heard from several other people in the state, it is pretty evident that the current MN leadership is not in favor of the district system. Given all of this, the perception that the RPC is trying to censor or silence information is not one that could be easily contested. This closed door policy isn’t representative of how anybody wants FIRST to be run. One of the biggest successes in recent years is the increased communication to the public from HQ since Frank took over, and I think that regional organizations can follow the example. After all, the priority is to give teams and students in the program the most inspiring experience possible.


*(Side note: she specifically cited a mentor roundtable that had taken place on Thursday. I later spoke to a mentor who had attended this roundtable over Facebook who said only about 15 mentors were present and the group was rather split on districts. If anyone else was present at this to give a first hand account of what happened, please reply.)

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

The Minnesota Regional Planning Committee and the key volunteers in Minnesota want the best for the teams in the state. They wouldn't volunteer so much if they didn't. This thread has some serious potential to get put of hand. Please let's keep the conversation productive and positive. Remember, we are all working towards the same goals.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

The mentors and alumni in Minnesota want the best for the teams in the state. They wouldn't volunteer so much if they didn't. This thread has some serious potential to get out of hand. Please let's keep the conversation productive and positive. Remember, we are all working towards the same goals.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I'd like to thank Rahul for posting one of the most professional threads about this topic and would love to see this conversation continue further.

Minnesota RPC please take notes.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I am not going to weigh in on this thread but to provide a little insight:

The 'District Discussion' flyers were posted throughout the events - this is true. However, there were other infographic flyers that were placed that were VERY misleading (i.e. 'Woodie Flowers Meet and Greet') and did not have anything to do with the MPLS Regionals. The only flyers that were left up were ones that were placed by teams competing and were in the spirit of 'safety' (and there were not many flyers of this nature).

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

What could motivate the RPC to reject the district model besides the lack of volunteers and extra work?

Coming from an international team means that we've never really understood the disadvantages of the district model besides simply not being able to participate in the region (happened to us with FiM in 2009), but from what I've been reading on the forums, districts has a huge potential for everybody involved.

For example, when people and mentors talk about FIRST Districts in California, it's scary to consider the possibility of being unable to continue participating in the Los Angeles regional, but the benefits that the district model would bring for such a dense region as California (whether it be SoCal or not) seem to be huge. The cost per qual match presented here also seem to be quite convincing for all the extra effort I assume must go into a district system.

I was at the mentor roundtable and knowing what you and Jessica were doing with the flyers, I was surprised not to see you there. I can give a first hand account of the meeting but it would have been much more productive if you guys had attended. I agree that an education, for everyone, and every team is needed. I have no problem with the flyer or the fact that you distributed it. But I spent an hour and half talking with Mark Lawrence (half hour one on one, about this topic and these threads specifically). There are some SERIOUS challenges ahead for MN if/when we transition to a district model. No one that I spoke to was against it, but the amount of volunteers is still the sticking point. 5-6 times the number of volunteers are required for a district model. Not to mention key volunteers that we currently "have no bench" of. Think if yoshi was one of the volunteers that got sick this weekend (apparently 4 had to cancel because they got the flu). We would have been scrambling to find someone who can emcee! Not an easy roll to fill in.
So, contact the volunteer coordinator, have your mentors contact her and sign up to shadow someone at MSHSL State. Volunteer for next year's regionals, even if you get a task like cuing or field reset, work your way up through the ranks to be a key volunteer. That's what I'm going to do.


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Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I agree that the only way to make this happen for Minnesota is for those of us who want this system to volunteer so we have the people to make it happen. I, as a graduating senior, will volunteer to help make this happen in the year's to come because I think it is in the best interest of Minnesota and its wonderful FRC teams.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

There are a lot of behind the scene changes as well when an area moves to the district system. They operate much more autonomously from HQ than when running regional events. It's definitely several times more work for an area to run districts rather than regionals, but the benefits come in the extra playtime for teams and the decreased cost to run the event.

I actually didn't know the mentor roundtable was taking place, as I was just attending the event as a spectator and wasn't receiving the emails that other mentors were prior to the event. Jess was in class on Thursday so she couldn't attend either.

Part of what I was telling teams when I went pit-to-pit was that this is going to be a several year process for Minnesota. I definitely didn't want to give a false impression to teams that this was something that could happen overnight. Manpower was one of the biggest issues I highlighted, both in terms of volunteers and event management. I figured that the RPC was the best group to judge how teams could help contribute to the effort, which is why I didn't want to plant seeds of a separate effort towards districts from what the RPC is already attempting.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Sorry if this was made clear somewhere and I missed it.

Do you mentor a team in Minnesota?

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Not full time as I live in Indiana. I help 2705 remotely, who's lead mentor is my S/O. I've also previously presented at some Minnesota offseason educational events.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I'll elaborate on some of the behind the scenes changes, for the benefit of those who don't know (and are part of today's lucky ten thousand!).

The basic plan goes something like this...

1. Start a company (most likely a 501(3)(c)) to run your district. This can either be a continuation of an existing FIRST in <wherever>, or some new entity. For example, Virginia FIRST took on responsibility for the the Chesapeake District, while New England started their own entity.
2. Find people to work at said company to do all the things on this list.
3. Sign a Memorandum of Understanding with FIRST HQ so your company can operate FRC events on their behalf.
4. Start planning events... Let's say 12 district events, which nicely works out to 2 events/week for 6 weeks (whatever the number ends up being, there needs to be enough spots for each team to be guaranteed two events each). Plus a district championship, so 13 events total. So, x13...
   • You need a venue
   • You need to get the field to/from the venue
   • You need a full crew of volunteers and to feed them for a weekend.
   • You need an A/V setup
   • You'll probably need a generator, since most high schools can't meet the power requirements for the pits
   • All the media the goes along with an event (webcast, website, social accounts, etc.)
   • You'll need people to plan/run the event. With regionals, FIRST works with an event management company to do a lot of the legwork. In districts, you'll have to do it on your own.
   • Read the District Planning Guide and do all the things it says.
   • Find money/sponsorship to pay for all of the above
5. 13 events means you'll need two fields. So you'll have to purchase two fields at about $25,000 each, plus two sets of road cases to keep the fields in. You'll also need a place to store them when not in use.

I'm sure I'm missing stuff, but as you can see, it's a pretty substantial undertaking. This post/thread is a great resource as well.

I assume this was directed at OP... Who I've never actually met but I know his S/O well, and she's a splendid person, and an asset to FIRST, her team and the robotics community.

However, I realized I didn't take credit for my role, so in case anyone is wondering who I am (and is not the mobile app, like me and not getting bio info):

Ian Goodson
Lead Mentor
Team #2502
Talon Robotics
Eden Prairie, MN
Ian.goodson@team2502.com

I am not affiliated with the RPC (yet) and I am a 9 year mentor of 2502.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

This is an interesting thing to think about when switching from Regionals to Districts.

Yes, in theory, there is a decreased cost to running individual district events. But when switching from four Regionals (in three venues) to 12-14 district events, I have to think that the cost actually would increase for an area.

And it's important to note that in the Regional system, FIRST HQ takes on the financial risk of the events, but in the District system, the local non-profit organization takes on the financial risk.

While it's easy to say that you get more plays for your money in the distric system, and events are cheaper, it's minimizing the issue at hand.

If one district event costs $15,000 (and that's on the waaaayyyyy cheap side) and you have 12 events, you're looking at minimum of $180,000. And like I said, that's on the WAY cheap side. Most district events are going to be closer to the $20,000-$30,000 range. That's a huge financial risk for one local area to take upon themselves.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Should be on the top of the list I think.

Others have said this repeatedly.

Carolyn, I count the Minneapolis events as basically the same venue as both are on the U of M campus across the street from each other. When I work those events I spend equal time on both sides of the street as do many of the volunteers and the RPC.

Form 501c3, quit job, raise $500,000 for the first year and ~$300,000 for each following year... Seems doable... Pretty sure my wife would veto one of those steps.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

You're forgetting:

Train 5x more (probably under-estimating this number) the amount of volunteers there currently are.

IndianaFIRST has approximately 250-300 unique volunteers (including judges) for four events. And we have not quite achieved our 2018 goal of Key Volunteers only having to work two events per official competition season.

As I said in an earlier post... We are well aware of the volunteer need. That is the main stumbling block at the moment. I've talked to many mentors and teams who are willing to step up and volunteer, myself included.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

It's worth noting that you can in fact have different people working on and worrying about different things. It's not unreasonable to bring in new people to work on new issues that need to be resolved in a future transition to districts.

I'm really happy that Jess and Rahul talked to so many teams at the event, because the first step in transitioning to districts is convincing people that it needs to happen. If it's just some vocal minority yapping on Chief Delphi, of course nothing is going to happen.

Once we have enough teams and people who believe that districts is the correct path forward, I think it will be much easier to find all the resources and people necessary to make the transition. Part of getting to that point is education, part of that point is developing and communicating a plan. I commend Jess and Rahul on getting started on the education part, but without the cooperation of the RPC it will be very, very difficult to make meaningful progress on the plan part.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Do the $5000 registration fees that teams pay go towards that figure? Or would the non-profit running the district have to shoulder that cost by themselves?

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

The initial $5,000 registration fee still goes to FIRST, not the district (but some portion of that does come back to the district, not sure on the exact amount). However, third (and more) play fees as well as DCMP fees (I'm pretty sure) do go to the district.

From the District Planning Guide, page 10:

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Just the third play and any interdistrict plays fees in that District go to the not-for-profit that runs the district. Depending on how many third plays you have it could be a substantial amount of money, maybe enough to cover the cost of a district event.

Rahul, I think you've done a good thing and handled the situation well and hopefully we'll all be able to look back in a couple of year at this as the start of a change in Minnesota.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Currently the breakdown is:

$5,000 initial team registration (that allows for two district plays) goes to HQ, with $1,000 per team coming back to the district area.

All of the $4,000 registration for the District Championship event goes to HQ and not the district area.

$1,000 registration for third district play (that happen within that district area) goes to the district area, even if the team playing an extra event is from a different district area. (So when a team from Michigan plays in Indiana, IndianaFIRST receives the $1,000).

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Yeah, you're right, I edited my post. Thanks!

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Another question to answer: What will be done with the teams that can't afford (or aren't allowed) to travel for an event? Multiple teams in the Twin Cities area fit this description, and wouldn't be able to do a second event.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

That already happens in other areas and can be largely unavoidable unless you utilize advantages of the district system like run two local Saturday/Sunday events.

Questions like this have already been answered in other regions to varying degrees of success and it is up to the environment the would-be leadership operates in and the action they want to take to address varying types and levels of adversity in the system.

Not all district systems are created equal but they all deal with similar challenges. The road has been paved but it is not the road's responsibility to buy the car or pump the gas.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

With the number of events required, having 2+ in commuting distance for TC teams should be trivial.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I'm surprised about how the RPC didn't promote the mentor roundtable, yet expected mentors to show up. I was there all 3 days and didn't hear anything about this. If you hold a mentor roundtable, you need to promote it like crazy and get a majority of the mentors there. Maybe something at the state championship would be a better place to have the discussion, which it sounds like it may be happening.

I was also wondering why they got all taken down as well, as I glanced at it on Thursday but wanted to take a look at the cost on Friday. I was a bit discouraged looking at your flier about how you said that "These spots would be guaranteed to go to MN teams instead of Iowa or Wisconsin teams." I hope you know that 4 of the 11 Iowa FRC teams (almost half) attended the Minneapolis regionals this past weekend. That being said, I think it is a good thing to have districts to make it less expensive for everyone participating and potentially grow the program. They could be located closer to teams encouraging them to promote it within their local communities to bring their fans out. The architecture of districts is best for states with high saturations of teams and making it much lower key than regional events.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I can't imagine, out of the 10-12 events required in MN, that there wouldn't be more than two events within an hour's drive of the Cities. If I remember correctly it's about half of all MN FRC teams that are based in the Twin Cities or surrounding suburbs. There are a LOT of high schools, community colleges, and universities in the Twin Cities area which could be approached. Some of those high schools already host off season events or Week Zero events.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

As its been pointed out it shouldn't be a problem with where most teams in MN are located. Typically districts pop up within 15 minutes of previous events with more in between. We used to have three regionals within an hour of us and now we have five districts in that same vicinity. :)


Districts and travel are more an issue for rural teams. In New England it causes problems for teams from Northern New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine who might have one event they can drive to (less than an hour commute) and then have to travel to their second event. If they move on to the District Championship they typically have to travel however most of the region has to as well depending on how large your district is.

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).


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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...

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Our pit crew really enjoyed just having to check chains and do simple systems checks during short turnaround times at a district event and they really enjoyed their two industrial design awards, but to each their own!

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

She's a programmer on the team. There's always something for programming to work on :)

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

This is bizarrely passive aggressive and not at all helpful.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Other Regional Events are in the works. I can speak to 2 different regional proposals in Minnesota. I have no idea how the timeline will work out, but some people are pushing for another event next year. I'd say the odds of it happening are low. 2-3 years and there will be another event or 2 in Minnesota.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

But this is kind of the point I am trying to make. To have another event is more money, more volunteers, more everything. So I think this is why people are thinking; "hey, instead of throwing more regionals at the state. Here is another way of doing it that has worked for people." And going to what Mr. Stratis said in the other thread. Does adding another regional or adding more plays create a more inspiring experience? It depends on the team. Will adding another regional in say the Thief River Falls area solve a large issue? Yes. But do we have to do that and that only. Is adding another regional the only option that MN FIRST has? No. I think this is why the idea of Minnesota moving to districts has been brought up so much.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Additionally, adding another regional is a MAJOR new cost to teams. I can't see 2667 being able to afford to attend a new regional even if we wanted to next year. Sure we'll work towards it, but it's very unlikely. We simply don't have $4000 plus travel expenses, and our area is pretty tapped out when it comes to finding new sponsors (though we are continually trying to identify and bring companies on board). We want to become a two regional team, but right now it's basically impossible and even if we get a new MN regional (or two, or half a dozen) it basically goes to being very, extremely difficult. Districts would let us do two events, even if we would have to decline a district championships invitation due to lack of funding (which might be more feasible to find if our additional event was something as ear-catching as a district or state championship).

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

We and a few other teams in the state also enjoy the ability to attend an additional event (fronting a large registration fee plus travel costs). But this group is barely 1 out of every 6 teams in Minnesota. A district model brings the extra competition time to all teams for the lowest registration cost available. For some teams, travel costs can be minimal as well if there are two events nearby, but if your team likes to travel (we do too!) there are always other district events in other areas. We've seen the enormous benefit of the second event over the years, particularly giving opportunities for qualification in 2013 and 2016 that never could have materialized in 2010. The level of competition and explosive growth in Michigan can be at least partially attributed to how much more teams improve with a second event.

More matches at an event with fewer teams also has the advantage of getting play time with all the teams at the event and many more opportunities to learn from the matches. We've had 6 weeks (or more) for working on robots, now is the time to run them. You bring up good points for the other side though, and preferences here will differ.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

This loads the system in other ways. The Iowa, WI, and Dakota teams who are regulars here have to find somewhere else to go. And we like it when they come to Minnesota! This should be a consideration with districts as well...

Districts for 208 MN teams would require (208*2/40=10.4) at least 11 district events with 40 teams each. Including about 20 teams who are just across the border adds another event, so 12 events (though this sort of arrangement is not well supported by HQ at the moment). Could possibly get by with 2 fields, 6 weeks of districts, DCMP week 7, but inevitably a 3rd field would be needed with any growth (which also allows a week 6 DCMP, to ease CMP planning). This is 3 times as many events, big load on the system, but better for teams. To echo another thread, the teams should be the focus. The challenge is how do we get there, and maybe adding individual regionals at first is better than nothing and a way to gradually build infrastructure.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Aren,
I think you need to take a closer look into match schedules and you will see that many people are looking at 30-35 teams per event and that makes the event total go to 14. One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is how many towns have hotel space for 30 teams.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

This guy gets where a lot of folks who see behind the scenes are going.

Let me put it this way: I reffed 4/2 events I was signed up to ref this year. Basically every event within 2 hours driving. Yep. I added 2 events late (still not sure I ever ended up in VIMS for one of them).

I did some back of the envelope math, and there is no way we'd have been able to pull together enough ref crews to cover the 9 events needed for the quantity of teams involved if we'd been in a district system. On the plus side, now that the press-gangs--er, VCs and their minions--have finished recruiting for the year, there's a chance that we've got a solid core group of refs for next year...Assuming they all come back...

And that's just one of the many pieces that has to fall into place. Repeat for all your key volunteers, repeat for the non-key volunteers...

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

The members should be the #1 focus of what we as volunteers, mentors, and staff do.

If you had districts in the right places with the right amount of teams, you could potentially not need very many hotels if people were able to stay at their homes and travel to the venue each day.

To echo the expense and time to get districts going, why don't you get started now to ensure that FIRST in Minnesota can continue to keep growing at a reasonable pace? It's inevitable that Minnesota will out grow the regional system (and maybe even the district system). When thinking about pursuing or not pursing this change, remember the student members. They should always be put first and the decision should ultimately benefit them.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Yep I wasn't clear about that, we've taken this into account, I should have mentioned that 11/12 events is the minimum. The point was that 3 fields are a necessity. And of course 2 more events need more volunteers.

Hotel availability is an important factor I hadn't considered.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Should the teams be the focus? Or should achieving culture change be the focus?

Granted, those two are typically going to go hand in hand. But if underlying circumstances create an environment in which greater cultural change in the surrounding region can be achieved by fewer higher profile events, I don't think it's the wrong call to go that route (presuming the organizers have good reason to believe that's the case).

I'm not saying that's what's happening in Minnesota or anywhere else. In fact, I'd probably wager that, in general, the district format probably does a better job at changing the culture of the surrounding area than the regional format does. However, I am challenging the assertion that the team's experience is the only factor that should matter, which has been implied here and elsewhere. While it's certainly a massive factor, giving a service to the teams is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is culture change.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't actually seen anyone arguing against Districts completely. It seems like Minnesota, and many other areas, will eventually move to the District system. It's a matter of overcoming the obstacles needed to get there, and MN has pretty much all the obstacles. Time, patience, and constant offers to help are probably what is needed more than shouting and demanding for change.

So, once again, here's my offer to help: If anyone from Minnesota wants more experience volunteering and learning key volunteer roles, please contact me. I'm the Senior Volunteer Coordinator for Indiana, and I would be happy to have you come visit us and train. We are currently training a lot of new people from our own area, but we will do the best to fit you in and help give you experience. Come down and talk to us, ask us questions about everything that goes into managing our district area. The door is open.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

The biggest problem with the regional system is that so many teams only get to compete in one event. Iterating on the design after seeing it perform on the real field in a real competition is huge. I would argue that improving the robot after the first event is the highest impact engineering experience that FRC offers.

When people are pointing out some of the difficulties involved with creating more events, I hope they will avoid implying that districts can't be done. It can be done.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

The availability of event volunteers lags the growth of teams by a couple years. For teams with a few years of experience, all of their volunteer effort (correctly) goes into building the team itself.

When I started, our team had just enough resources to field a robot. We've now grown to the point where we have enough adults and students to offer some people to the event to help out.

If you look at the Duluth events, 2/3 of the teams are newer than ours. They're on the same journey.

I hope the tone of this thread remains civil. The other threads, containing personal attacks on key volunteers who individually spend hundreds of hours a year working both with their team and volunteering at events, could easily hurt our efforts to recruit more volunteers.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I keep reading and hearing volunteers are the issue, we don't have enough volunteers, we don't have enough volunteers with experience in the key postilions, volunteers volunteers volunteers.

Going to districts is going to be a growing pain no matter how large a region is. I have said this many times of late but Michigan required each team at each of their events to provide at least 2 volunteers for the 1st 2+ years. There goes your argument that we don't have enough volunteers. (40 teams * 2 is 80 people)....

Now the argument of not having enough people trained in key positions, that might be but none of the volunteers positions are so terribly difficult* (except probably FTA) that they can't be trained fairly fast (1 year, 2 max if not going to enough events)

Ask Gary Voshol how many of the district events he Head Reffed back in 2009 and 2010? It was pretty much all of them, and that is what will probably be needed to start. 1 or 2 people who are trained in each position being shadowed/shadowing** the people at each district making sure they are getting trained. In fact if a region had a date set for working towards districts say 2018 for example Minnesota had 4 regionals worth of time to train people this year and those same 4 (maybe more from rumors) next year. That's more than enough time to get the people you need trained trained.

* I am not trying to belittle the amazing efforts all volunteers, especially key volunteer positions give to do what they do. But Head Ref needs to have the rules memorized students and mentors do this every year, LRI needs to know the robot rules front and back, again students and mentors do this every year. Yes I know there is more to it that just knowing the rules, but you'd be surprised how much just knowing the rules and enforcing them properly affects a regional for the positive.

** With the shear number of repeat robot inspectors and repeat refs that I see year after year at the same events, if they are not being trained to take those key volunteer positions should the need arise that is a fault of those in those lead positions. The 7 P's people the 7 P's.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Who is "we"? And where did did you take it into account?

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

The difficult part of getting new key volunteers isn't getting them to read the rules. Speaking for inspections, it's very, very easy for someone to be a good inspector without being a good pick for LRI. I've seen it happen before. It goes well beyond technical and rules knowledge - my basic assumption is that any returning inspector has plenty of that. It's a question of how they work with teams, how they handle adverse situations, how they interface with their inspectors and other key volunteers at the event. I have experienced inspectors at my events that I love working with, but that I know wouldn't be a good fit for LRI. And that's fine. I also have experienced inspectors that have turned down the opportunity to become an LRI. It took me 4 years of effort to identify and train enough LRI's to make MN self sufficient.

You have to remember that a bad interaction with a key volunteer can ruin an entire event for an individual or team.

If you think just one more year is enough time to fix all the key volunteer needs for a transition like that, then I have to ask... How many key volunteers have you identified, asked to step up, and trained?

I also really chafe at being told that the existing key volunteers just need to step up for the first year or two of districts to get it going. That is my time you're volunteering. It's time I spend away from family, it's time I spend away from my other hobbies, It's time I spend away from many of my friends, it's time that comes directly from my vacation time at work. and it's not trivial time, either. You're talking probably 30 hours a week for 7 weeks in a row. I'm sorry, but I just can't afford to do that. My hat is truly off to people like Gary who have.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Yes. This. There is a lot that goes into recruiting and training GREAT Key Volunteers. Some personalities are best fit for certain roles, and that takes time to figure out. Certainly in a crunch, anyone can fill in as a Scorekeeper for an event, but it would be draining on the FTA to have to babysit and train new Scorekeepers at every event they work.

It's been said a few times that the team experience is what matters the most. Key Volunteers can make or break a team experience. An overwhelmed Lead Queuer can lead to rushing teams along and stressing out drive teams, and other volunteers, leading to a bad team experience.

One other thing that I take into consideration when trying to recruit new Key Volunteers is the likelihood that a person will stay in our area for a while. When trying to build up a base of Key Volunteers, you don't want to hinder growth by training someone who may move to a new area in a couple years. It's for this reason why it's sometimes difficult to choose college students as Key Volunteers. Unless they have deep roots in the area, it's likely that they will move somewhere else once they graduate.

This doesn't mean that the lack of volunteers is an issue to STOP pursing Districts. Just that it's an obstacle, that is worth acknowledging. With time, this obstacle will be less of an issue, but it's not a simple problem to have.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

This a Bazillion times.

In my opinion way too many people who are in support of the District system focus way too much energy on the cost per match advantage of the District system and loosing sight of the biggest advantage and that is that ALL teams get the chance to play twice.

I'd be happy participating in the District system if only allowed for 10 or even 8 matches per event as long as the teams, ALL the teams got to go to 2 events.

As a Senior Mentor I spend a lot of time talking to the Rookie teams throughout the season. Back when we were doing Regionals in the area what I heard from many if not most of the coaches of Rookie teams how much they wished that they were able to go to a second event but couldn't either because of funding or the lack of available space at a somewhat local event. They constantly reported that the students had come up with a number of ideas that they thought would improve their robot's performance. Some may have tried to implement them in the off season but a second event would make upgrading the robot a big focus.

One of the big reasons that I am so vocal in getting more and more areas to make the transition to the district system is so that ALL teams get the advantage of 2 events. I also believe that if all areas have made the transition they we have a good shot at getting FIRST to agree to a greater amount of un-bag time. I envision something in the neighborhood of 15-20hrs of time out of the bag between a team's 1st and 2nd event and also adding time out of the bag before DCMP. It is the Regionals that still exist that stand in the way of making that happen because it would only increase the disadvantage that teams have that are stuck in the Regional system vs those that have the benefits of the District system. I'd still propose that for the first event that the un-bag time be limited to the existing 6 hrs or so.

So yeah I just said it those that cling to the Regional system are hampering giving teams outside of their area from getting a better chance at the full engineering experience of testing their product in the real world of a competition, then building upon the knowledge gained from that real world testing to improve their robot.

I also believe that a complete transition to the District system will encourage FIRST to make the long term goal of the portability of points a reality. A big reason behind the unified District points system was to allow that points portability.

There are certainly people who do more than imply that the transition to the District system would be near impossible and they are often vocal in stating the reasons why it just isn't possible "at this time".

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

You know there are several threads talking about Minnesota District events and the more vocal people keep bringing up that volunteers are the issue that is preventing that from happening. They are also ignoring the other posts saying that there are many factors that need to be addressed for a move to districts and volunteers is only one.

1. Money is the biggest issue. Where to get it, how to distribute it, how to keep it coming. You need a 501c3 to get tax status and that takes a long time. You can't really handle money without it.
2. Venues are needed. It has been pointed out that to just handle the teams in MN, perhaps 14 venues plus a district championship is needed. That means 14 locations that have to have hotels, food, and a hardware store or big box (Lowes or Home Depot) within 30 minutes.
3. Infrastructure is needed, trucks, fields, spare parts, storage, etc. See #1 above.
4. You need to prepare the venue, set up the field, clean up the venue (bathrooms included), provide for parking.
5. You need insurance.
6. You need contracts for most of this and that kind of requires #1.
7. You need to continue running the current regional events until the move.
8. When you have all of this, then you have to find volunteers to staff the events. You have to feed them and help them find hotel if they are not with a team.

#8 is way down the list. So how about we stopping wasting electrons talking about volunteer needs when there are so many other issues that need to be in place first.

BTW, all of FIRST will go to districts/states/sub-states at some point, it is inevitable.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Well thank you for your support, but I am hardly the most active ref in FiM. Most years most of us are head ref at 2 events, and may ref at one or two more. A few do more. (When I was off work in 2010 I did more events.)

You want to see the crazies, look at the FTA's. They work almost every weekend.

Back in 2009 we only had 7 districts. 3 head refs did 2 each, and the 7th was covered by Andy Baker. Something similar in 2010, but we covered all 7 events with refs from Michigan.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Jon,

I agree with everything you have said here. Key volunteers can affect the team's opinion of the event and they need to be chosen carefully.

Some of the things you list are not only beneficial traits of key volunteers, but volunteers in general. I want inspectors to be able to make a good call without pulling the LRI over and I want them to be able to do it in a way that makes the team feel good, I know that won't happen 100%. Have you talked to the people that you feel would not make a good LRI about why you feel that way? Have you asked if they want to become an LRI?

I have rarely received feedback from volunteers about how I could improve in my key volunteer roles and I would hate to find out that they thought some of my actions weren't up to snuff and they didn't talk to me about it, even more if it prevented me from taking on a higher profile position. The most feedback I get is being placed in the position again at another event, which makes me believe I am doing well.

While this post is directed at Jon in a thread about districts in Minnesota, I encourage any key volunteers (or VCs) to provide feedback about how someone can improve their performance.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

For the most part, it isn't about something specific they've done (when there is an issue like that, I address it with the volunteer face to face). It's more a question of personality and mannerisms - they just don't quite feel right for the role. I can't really provide a reason why.

We get plenty of returning inspectors each year, I'm not going to ask every one of them if they want to be an LRI, so long as I already have one or two in training. It's a different story if they ask to be trained as an LRI.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Some may misconstrue that as, "If I don't like them, they won't become a LRI because I say so."

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

A few notes on this:

First, I'm not sure how other Districts run, but in Michigan most events are run out high schools and, as far as I am aware, have no "rental cost" to FiM or the event planing committee (maybe this was just our event, but I was pretty sure it had been a FiM prerequisite at one point). That cuts roughly $10k off the cost of each event right there. Obviously this requires enough High Schools with the necessary facilities and I'm not sure how MN compares to other states in this regard.

FiM largely solved the volunteer issue by requiring all teams to provide two volunteers for each event they participate in (though the volunteers do not necessarily have to go to the specific event the team does). Many key roles are still filled by a few "regulars" in the state who generally go to multiple events over the course of the competition season, but basically everything else is from the teams. It's certainly not perfect, and some events are sometimes a bit shorthanded, but all the events manage to get pulled off.

A simple solution to AV is to find a company that does AV productions for events and simply rent the expensive components of an AV system (projector, sound system, ect.) and supplement it with inexpensive video recording like the "GoPro on a Stick" method FiM has used for a number of years. When districts get more established it's possible to buy more of the expensive equipment to defray rental costs over the long term or to simply have a more elaborate AV presentation.

Media, while nice, and expected these days, is technically optional. There are still events that do not have live webcasts, an event website can consist of a well formatted google doc if done right (though it is a good idea to have event information on a website for the state organization), and social accounts are a nice feature to have but totally unnecessary in the grand scheme of things.

Finally, money is still, obviously the biggest hurdle, but as I mentioned above, if you're not paying venue costs, your event costs can drop to closer to $15k - $8k (and generally get cheaper over time). Bigger corporate sponsors are of course good places too look (we've actually found that some local companies that were not interested in sponsoring local teams, were interested in sponsoring an event), but there's also a lot that can be done in terms of in-kind donations from smaller local sponsors for events.


[/2cents]

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

This might seem like a weird question, but when I think of available venues in Minnesota, I think of ice hockey... do school systems own hockey arenas in the state?

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

It has nothing to do with liking someone. And as I said in a part you didn't bother quoting, it's a completely different question if they express an interest in becoming an LRI. I have yet to deny anyone that opportunity to train.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Chris,
While there may be no direct cost for the venue (that may not be true of every venue), there are other costs that are not obvious to participants. By the by, there are more robot teams in Minnesota these days then boys hockey teams. Pretty cool for the state where the highest number of NHL players comes from in the US.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I think you mean NHL... :p Don't worry, I won't tell Dottie. LOL

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

haha wouldn't that be something :yikes:

Edit: Jon with the snipe

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Nope, typically events run at high schools in Michigan have 2 gymnasiums, the main gym is used for the field, the auxilary gym for the pits (though there are exceptions to this, as some schools use other spaces for pits). The biggest issue is finding venues with enough seating (FiM reccomends ~1500 seats).

True, but I was accounting for those in my $15k - $8k estimate (I'm on the planning comittee for our local district so I can only speak for our costs, but my understanding is that estimate is comparable to other districts in the state). It also does not include the cost of the field as those costs are covered by FiM. I could dig up our event budget from last year if you'd like. ;)

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

Edited, thanks. That was a close one.

Chris, I always go back to the school workers who need to paid (sorry 34 years as a union steward point me in that direction) and knowing that school districts have their own rules like security people, building engineers, etc. In Minnesota they will also have to worry about snow removal, even in April sort of like the UP.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

If I recall correctly, our budget accounts for overtime for like 1 or 2 of the schools janitorial staff for the event, and a few hours of time from a certified electrician (makes sure all the wiring in the pits is done right). Basically everything else is done by volunteers so the labor costs are minimal.

Re: Experience promoting districts in Minnesota
 

I just noticed that MNFIRST released this press release last week.