Hey FIRST we need a bigger national!
 

A reply to that guys we need more regionals thread. I think we need a larger national. Last year at the astrodome and reliant stadium they could have had over 400 teams there with over 6 fields. During the nations in 2003 Woodie Flowers came to my dads team's, 25, pit area and talked to us. When I suggested a larger regional his reply is there staff is to small to run something so big. My thought was that there are 100's of people that would vollenteer in a secound. I g2g school!

Ya but they should have 500 teams at nationals so people dont need to worry as much about winning a regional!

IMHO, you are only delaying the inevitable. What do we do when participation hits 2,000 Teams? 5,000? 10,000?

But Woody is right. There's only so much that a volunteer staff can do. Even then, the real issue becomes the fact that the difficulty of running an event doesn't really scale linearly with the number of participants; it's more appropriate to say it scales exponentially. It would simply be a logistical nightmare to try and support many more teams at the championship than they do now. It simply isn't going to happen.

Matt

First of all, get your facts correct. Second, a bigger regional means that it would be much harder than a meduim sized nats.

As long as there is the room, the resources, and the cooperation to do it, FIRST should increase the size of the nationals as much as possible. That's what makes nationals nationals.

it would be great for bugger natonals, i wouldnt be here tearing my hair out worying about winning at UCF

Who's facts need correcting? Tton's, Mike Bett's, or Matt Leese's?

What's your definition of a bigger regional? 75 teams, 100 teams? 150 teams? What about a medium sized nats? 200 teams, 150 teams, the same size as a bigger regional?

Basically, I can't disagree with you until I know what you are saying :p

we all know that soon when participation reaches into the 5000 range there will probably have a neater way of setting up nats....like maybe a semifinals nats....it would only allow winners from that to go to nats. then it would seriously be a championship!
but thats my worthless opinion

TTon said ther were 6 fields and 400 teams. That's WAY off.

Also, by a medium sized nats, I mean 300-350 teams.

Tton said that the Nationals venue was suitable for 6 fields and 400 teams. Read.

Haven't we done this before? (As in held this discussion)

why can't the volunteers manage a larger scale national competition, just because they are VOLUNTEERS doesn't mean they can't spend time doing pre-planning and organizing. It's possible to have a larger national competition, because as we saw in Reliant Stadium last year there was still a TON of room that could have housed more teams, another field or two.

Bigger regionals are nice for harder competition, but the feel of nationals is completely different.

Volunteers show up for three days to help run an event.

FIRST staff works for 11 months to plan that event. Planning includes managing the volunteers.

The problems aren't in finding enough people to volunteer at the time of the event, but in having the resources and manpower necessary to plan for a much larger event. Remember, unlike our robots, volunteers aren't autonomous -- they do need supervision. That supervision comes from the itty bitty, teeny weeny FIRST staff.

Running a larger Championship Event would require more paid FIRST staff, more fields and field equipment, more trucks, and -- in the end -- more money.
The workload isn't increased for those three days alone. It cascades down through the season and the year.

That means FIRST has to decide if it wants to expand in the short term by bringing on more staff, more trucks, and more equipment so that the Championship Event can be larger for a few years -- or if they want to use those resources for planning of the future and designing a system of competitions that's better suited to handle the large number of teams on the horizon.

off-seasons run completely by volunteers, it IS possible to do this without hiring more staff, just harder. All it requires is a little more time put in by the volunteers.

While off season competitions are run by volunteers, volunteers dedicate their time for a month or so... FIRST staff is at it the entire year.

If I thought about how much time and effort was put into IRI, I can't imagine those people getting together and putting together something of huge magnitude, for thousands of people, eleven months of the year and not asking for something in return.

Having everyone at nationals at the same time is a bad idea. Too many people are too hard to control. That's an awful lot of planning and consideration going into that.

FIRST and FIRST teams don't generate money, they suck it up. While they pay it back in full in the inspiration, dedication, and valuable skills they provide for students, money does not come from the program. Keep this in mind.

Do we need a bigger regional? Its interesting how 166 teams pre-qualified for the Championship and only 94 have signed up. I wonder what happens if the tier 2 teams fill it up after Nov 5.? Do the pre-qualified teams who did not sign up in time have to win a regional to still get in?

Raul

No I'm pretty sure they are going to be able to go if they pre quallified... then again i could be wrong... What are the dates for when the tiers open up??? I know Tj doesn't have a shot getting in by the tier system since we are in tier 6...

I couldn't agree w/u more. I think we should have semi-champs, and only those winners and finalists could advance to Nats. I think it would be efective to split up the teams by region, each region having a 'Regional Championship' then the winners and finalists of these 'Regional Championships' would advance onto a 'National :eek: scratch that, WORLD Championship'(can't forget about our Brazilian and Canadian teams).



But still, it would be cool to have a 500 team Champ.

The first group to qualify has had plenty of time to register should they wish to do so. So I think that if the tier 2 teams fill up the rest of the spots before teams from the first group get to reegister I think It's too late.

And tier six teams were in the first group to qualify, along with tiers 3-5, and prequalifying based on points and chairmans and stuff. 88 is in tier 1.

:)

Allison

...and volunteers eat a lot too! think of the food bill for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
;)

Unfortunately events do not scale linearly, the bigger it is, the more problems there are.

Re: Hey FIRST we need a bigger national!
 

the way FIRST is spreading.... i think that we should have more than one nationals or something to solve the problem of not every single team being able to compete at nationals....

Re: Hey FIRST we need a bigger national!
 

adding another nationals??? you mean regional... there should be only one nationals... they just need a way to get more help so they can get more teams in...

Re: Hey FIRST we need a bigger national!
 

"The Championships". Are they truly a championship? Not really. There should be one way to qualify...plain and simple...win. Win Win Win Win Win. Win a regional, runner-up at regional, win chairman's or the engineering inspiration. Doing the math there are what 30 regionals? That X 6 (runner up and winners) gives 180 teams. (Assuming nobody wins two) Add in regional chairman's winners (30) and regional eng. insp. winners (30) (again assume no repeats) right now we're only at 240. Then there are what 15 teams from all the years? Plus 12 previous national chairman's winners. Grand total=267 teams. divide by 4 divisions=67 teams per division. Again...this assumes that no previous chairman's winners win a regional or anything else that would lead to a team double qualifying.

Re: Hey FIRST we need a bigger national!
 

No, it does not. Registration does not require payment up front. Payment for all events is due on the same deadline for all teams, regardless of when they registered.