Two Nationals
 

This is something that I heard somewhere that I thought would be cool. Instead of one national event there would be two, they would more be an east and west coast one. You could have one at say Disneyworld and the other at Disneyland. Then either the winners of it all, or the winners of each division meet like in Houston to battle it out for the National title. This allows twice as many teams a shot at National Champions. It would take some working out, but I think it would be cool.

That would be interesting, but who would go to a competition that only 6 teams are involved in?

Maybe offset the to compititions by a week, and the winner of the first one would then travel to the second one, for that last match.

I like that idea alot. Off set them a week and then have the championship. That would make alot more teams happy because then twice any many teams could try at nationals.

Have to play the Devil's advocate here...

I agree itd allow twice as many teams to compete, but who wants to go to a nationals where you would either see all the west coast teams, or all the east coast teams? I personally want to go and see the teams and people I never see, meaning the east coast, rather than seeing the teams I see at every competition I go to on the west coast. Also, you get to play different robots then. I really dont think FIRST has the capability to hold two 300 team nationals, it just takes too many people, not to mention the cost of paying for two venues rather than one, which also means finding a suitable venue for whatever event isnt held at EPCOT/Reliant.

Cory

Seeing only a fraction of the teams is a price to pay for a such a large amount of teams.

As there becomes more teams there is no way to house such a large amount of them. Yes, it would be nice to see all of the teams at one nationals but it will soon become impossible.

I honestly don't think that having the winners meet someplace the next week is a good idea, I think there should be an east coast champion and a west coast champion and we should leave it at that.

To eliminate teams only seeing teams from there own coast I think that it should be optional as to which coast you participate in. If you live in New York and you can want go to the west coast finals I think that's fine. Go to your east coast regionals and west coast finals and you see all of the teams.

FIRST will soon realize that some boundaries need to be set. We can not keep growing like we do and stay as one organization.

i think that would make the championship not really a championship. you'd be able to win without even seeing half of the qualified teams compete, and then you'd only see teams near you. it would just end up being like 2 big regionals

lick.
 

It'd be like basketball, I think, where you have the west coast division and the east coast division, and then the finals, or something. I don't know. I don't follow basketball. Good idea in practice... though, the only way this would financially work is if FIRST itself arranged sponsors for the winning teams so the could go to the nationals championship.

how about one championship where u have to qualify to go...There would be no odd or even number system. It would be the best of the best. You would have to qualify that year to go to that years championship...that makes the most sense to me.:D

Assuming FIRST reaches it goal at some point of having a team in every High School, it may one day come down to only the winners of each State going to Nationals ;)

I'd say that it would be good, but just call it Nationals. No west or East thing. (Mabye "Woodie" and "Dean" for each National center) and let the teams register for what ever they want. So if you want to go to the west coast and you are on the east coast, you can, and vice-versa...:)

:edit:

I just thought of something. If they did use thoes names, imagine a kid saying "I just won the Woodie!" LOL!!

.. errr ;)

Personally, I feel 1 National Championship is the way to go. Big Mike's idea of the "Region" Champions (Northeast, Midwest, etc) doesn't really bode well for some teams. Just think if a New York team [810] were to win a Western Competition [SJ Regional] Would they be "West Coast Champions" or what about the non-US teams.. would they be the UK Champions (I'm under the impression there was only 1 UK team this year)?

Changing up the system already was rough once, why have it happen again. The transition of Orlando to Houston upset a lot of teams, why go through it again by adding more venues (higher costs) and down the line...

Adding another Nationals just seems to be more of a hassle than what it's worth. Not going to Nationals won't destroy a team or the moral of a member. I didn't go last year (team was odd number) and almost didn't get to go this year (team is even number). As long as the team can say "We are going to try and get to Nationals" they won't fail even if they don't make it.

I expect that it will be arranged much like the qualification for the Championship takes places now.

Certain specific performance goals at a regional will be worth points, with a given number of points being required to attend a "Region-wide" event. The event you attend should you qualify will be determined by your team's home-base, not where it competes. So, by your example, 810 might earn points in San Jose, but they'd compete in a Northeastern Division.

Internation teams pose an interesting problem because there aren't enough of them to warrant a division of their own. Never mind that grouping them all into an "International" division with, possibly, a traveling event, would require enormous funds for travel.

It seems that this process is also going to extend the length of our competition season by two or three weeks. There could be six 'divisions', assuming that the number of new regionals next year requires 6 per weekend in some cases. The divisional competitions would be held simultaneously around the world, and the people who qualify there go on to the Championship.

This isn't a matter of if, but when. Adding levels of competition is the only way to manage the growth of FIRST with the limited resources and staff that they currently have. My fear, of course, is that such an expansion would place even more emphasis on competition and winning and, overall, hurt FIRST's efforts at involving and inspiring students.

I like the idea of turning some regionals into superregionals, with two fields and 100-120 teams. Pick the venues that have the room for this (LA and Annapolis come to mind, and happen to be on opposite coasts) and fill that space. This will allow something closer to nationals, but on a smaller easier to manage scale.


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~
There is no box.

two nationals
 

I was wandering off in english class today when I thought of the idea that have two championships on each coast, then the top eight alliances travel to the opposite coasts chamionship two weeks later (alternate the coast every year), and then compete against the other top eight alliances. You can have the top eight of each compete just like at at regional to reseed them. Then when the second coast cham. is completed the 1v8 of opposite coast and so on compete for the all out championship. For the teams from Canada, Brazil, and the UK can choose which coast championship they will go to. I not sure if this would work but it was better than reading julius caesar:)

IF they do this lots of MAJOR re-organization is needed so the new nats and two nats won't run into testing, allow for booking, etc.

I am against the idea totally. We could barly afford one nats let alone two. This further makes FIRST more about the competition instead of the learning and the experence.

Re: two nationals
 

Assuming it is like this past year, you would have:

(8 x 3) + (8 x 3) = 48 teams competing at the Championship event. It could work, but does FIRST want to spend so much money holding that event for only 48 teams?

I think the way they are doing it now will still work down the road. You have lots of regional competitions, and from those you can qualify for Nationals. You can even do it sort of like the NCAA, and rank teams based on their points. From that list, only the top 200 go to Nationals ;)

If they do a point based system however, they should only count your best regional. This makes it somewhat more fair for teams that can only afford to go to one regional :yikes:

i think they shoulda just let the rookie all-stars go ;)

Ok I would just like to point out that the word Nationals means a competition that includes everyone in that nation, it actually should be called the internats but oh well. Anyways I dont think having 2 nats is the best way to go b/c one side will eventually become the one where all the hard comp goes and one will be the easy aka loser nats. I agree with others here it should be based on points.
Look at any sporting comp that has a Nats they r allowed to go by winning other comps or being last yrs winner. This is the best option, it allows Nats not to be compromised and allows the best robots to compete. Yes it leaves other teams behind but thats why FIRST came up w/ the odd and even years. Seriously havin 2 Nats and then a comin together one would be ridiculous, honestly who would pick Disneyland over Disneyworld.

I would rather just have one nationals... I think it would be horrible to have two Nationals... Just the thought of splitiing it up like that... If it Nationals then there should be only one not two...

Considering that a large percentage of teams are in the center of the country, talking about an "East Coast" and "West Coast" nationals is kind of rude.

I think they should have a few Regionals (four or five) late in the season, where the Regionals are true regionals. Only those teams located in the Region would be eligible to compete. There would be something like 60-100 teams per Regional.

You would have to register for one Regional in order to qualify for Nationals. Based on the number of qualifying spots, a certain number of teams from each Regional would be able to qualify for Nationals.

For instance, if there are 150 available spots and five Regionals, then 30 teams per Regional could qualify.

Before we decide on two nationals, FIRST needs to fix other problems, like this year there was a lot of technical problems, those in the Archimedes division know that! And they need to find a final home, especially when not many people liked Houston. Maybe in the future, but for now FIRST needs to stick with one national.

East vs West on CBS
 

What about two semi-finals, one east and one west with the the two champions facing off on a one hour show on CBS (or any other major network?)

Highlights from around the country could be shown between matches. Proceeds from show help defray costs of semi-finals.

Ken Loyd
Team 64

Who is John Galt?

all of this talk about 2 nats makes me think.......

If you guys wants 2 nats how about just make an east and west division at the one big nats event. The division in the county(and world) would be the Mississippi river....the east division = the Dean division....the west = the Jason Morella (sp?) division.

next year i believe there will be 26 regionals....3 regional winners....1 chairmans......2 quality awards= 5 teams (26 * 5 = 130 for all of us lazy people out there). Now, we can also take the runners up for each of those award listed above and send them too (130 * 2 = 260). With 260 teams we'd have an event about the same size as what we had this year.

see how 2 ideas can become one

Evan,

3+1+2 = 6 ;)

The problem with this idea is that it leaves you with 260 teams scrambling to make reservations at the last minute. Talk to any team who has registered late and they will tell you its not fun.

If you used this plan you would have to leave at least two months between the last regional and nationals. which either puts regionals in February or nationals in July.

The best thing to do for the short amount of time would be tell all team to prepare for the possibility of attending national. Also have a block of rooms etc. reserved just apply a team when they qualify.

Well, the real benefit to having two nationals would be to allow more teams to have a shot at being national champions. To have two nationals would double the amount of elegible teams. Cost issues, I think that this idea... Could be done, as well as bring wanted attention to FIRST.

This kind of makes me sad... I see people talking about Nationals and all and then I read that people think that you should have to win regionals and all that to make it to Nationals... I think we still need to realize that FIRST is not about winning its about learning and having fun doing what you like to do...

The Idea is really interesting. I still think it would be hard for some teams to swing the money for another trip, especally another national expense.

Good Luck to everone at the invatationals. See You Guys at IRI!

Is it me, but wouldnt this just defeat the purpose of a regional? I mean you are having competitions that build up to the big competition. Why have regionals to go to nationals, then super nationals. Nationals would just be a really big regional called nationals. Call it super regional and people might think differently about the idea of 2 super regionals.
:confused:

Anyways, we all know 2 nationals and then another national will never happen though. Why bring it up?

Then maybe the question now should be "is there really a need for nationals?" Being that FIRST is about the learning and winning isn't important since we're all winners, why do we need a big competition to prove that?

I think that we definitely need the nationals. Without them I believe that many people would feel as if there was no determined winner. We're not in elementary school anymore; face the facts. In real life there are winners and losers. This is just another of FIRST's many lessons that they teach us.

Good luck to everyone at the invitationals.

Perhaps the point is that it may be advantageous to FIRST to de-emphasize the "winning" aspect of the competition by eliminating the singular Championship event.

It would certainly send a message.

As I've probably said two hundred thousand times by now, so much about FIRST is about changing our culture. Saying, "Well, that's how things are," lacks vision and indicates that you're perfectly happy working within the constructs of today's culture.

I understand that not everyone involved in FIRST has the need, want, or ability to envision a new, exciting culture in future generations, but it seems like such an enormous waste of potential to try to make FIRST operate within the confines of society. We're supposed to be breaking down the barriers society erects, after all.

I would agree that it is not all about winning. When we make our robot we are learning about FIRST, the same as we do at the events. I know that FIRST is about learning, but without a set winner you are saying, that in life there are not real winners and loser's, which we all know is a lie. I think that by first having a nationals they are teaching us early that there are determined winner's and losers.

Our team was coming of back to back championships, but what did they say about this year. We went out there, did our best and still learned. It doesn't matter what place you come in, what matters is what you learn. That is what first is all about.

Good Luck to everyone at the invitationals.