Originally Posted by PayneTrain (Post 1621407)

it currently is heavily incentivizing districts to exist in the not north part of the continental US

Originally Posted by marshall (Post 1621408)

Well you know, we have better BBQ down south. ;)

Originally Posted by marshall (Post 1621405)

....

Originally Posted by PayneTrain (Post 1621410)

yeah, like in texas

Originally Posted by MARS_James (Post 1621412)

To take a break from the meme game all of us regional and district teams had the same day to get our money in and finish registering for events, and that day was November 28th according to FIRST's website. FIRST waited 12 days to get the capture the number of teams.

What confuses me is the discrepancy between the FIRST site team listing and FIRST's internal numbers. Why are there 14 teams from The Chesapeake district who are listed in events but haven't paid? I only ask because on one very embarrassing occasion I got the registration payment date wrong and my team was kicked from our event. I figured this was standard procedure.

Originally Posted by marshall (Post 1621405)

So this system incentivizes the districts to move to the PNW style model or am I wrong? In that model I believe the district pays FIRST HQ and then the teams pay the district.

Doing that would result in like 90%+ teams having secured funding and thus more teams going on to championships. The district directors (particularly ours) have no qualms about wanting their own teams to be successful at championships and to do that they need to get them there first.

So I don't quite understand this process... It seems to be at odds with some of the stated goals for FIRST.

It seems to incentivize districts with smaller numbers of teams so larger percentages get paid up and thus more of that district's teams go on to play.

It also seems to incentivize districts with teams who can secure funding which means more rural areas that have a harder time getting funding secured are less likely to have more spots. Those same rural teams are more likely to have underserved and minority youths.

I swear I just took some training material about unconscious bias and one of the things I learned was that by looking for students in specific locations and not targeting the whole community we end up getting a less diverse team.

Isn't the same true for the championship events? Don't we end up with a less diverse group of teams by ensuring that only teams that can pay can go? I mean, FRC is inherently unfair but this seems super backwards with the stated goals.

I really don't know how I feel about this. On the surface this doesn't seem quite right. I was more ok with them basing it on the number of teams in each district.

Originally Posted by TDav540 (Post 1621415)

I'm gonna be honest Marshall, I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. Yes, you're right, it does incentivize the PNW model, but that model has a lot of positives to it, so I'm not sure why that would be a negative.

Second, if you haven't secured funding at this point in the season, it isn't too unreasonable to think that you might not actually play, and furthermore, might not be able to fund a trip to Championship.

Third, yeah, we do end up with a slightly less diverse group of teams at Championship if we don't include the teams who can't pay to go. But Championship has always had an entry fee, which right now is the same as the standard registration. So that really isn't a change from anything else we've been doing. If a team is struggling to pay for their regular event, why would they be able to go to Champs?

To me, this system rewards districts which have already (with less than 25 days left till kickoff) found funding for their teams. Which makes perfect sense to me.

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure (Post 1621332)

Compared to last year's allocations (7.4.4 of 2016 admin manual)

FIRST Chesapeake -2
Mid-Atlantic Robotics even
Indiana FIRST +1
New England +3
FIRST North Carolina +5
FIRST in Michigan +6
Peachtree +6
Pacific Northwest +9

Originally Posted by Chris is me (Post 1621470)

You can clearly notice that if a region is going to South Champs, they got way more additional spots than if they are going to North Champs.

This really is not resulting in "bringing the Championship experience to more teams" in an equitable manner between the halves. The north half gets zero benefit from this split other than 1/3rd fewer teams at their event.

I'm sure the FIRST BoD will deem this split a success regardless of what happens, though. The numbers went up, more registration fees entered the account, the people that made the decision who didn't have to do any of the implementation will feel good while the staff who has to pick up the pieces of this top-down decision will struggle through these growing pains and bear most of the complaints.

Originally Posted by AdamHeard (Post 1621473)

Other than getting rid of two champs, or moving the locations to make them more geographically balanced... what's the solution here?

If FIRST gave districts equal representation divided among both champs but a norther district was given the southern champs likely 2-4x farther from them, would that be acceptable?

Not disagreeing with you, more so rambling about how the quantity and locations of two champs makes it really hard to make any such assignment equitable.

Originally Posted by Chris is me (Post 1621475)

It's a tough problem, but I think it would have been better to either make or allow more teams from the north to travel south, even if it's a bit farther travelling than going to the North Championship. As long as it's not drastically worse than travel to Atlanta / STL, it's not a huge problem, and it would make distribution better.

Originally Posted by MARS_James (Post 1621498)

Yes that is still a lot of teams however FIRST really can't do much except hope that we have more growth in the south.

Originally Posted by MARS_James (Post 1621498)

however FIRST really can't do much except hope that we have more growth in the south.