Re: Where will FIRST be in 10 years
 

In ten years FIRST will bear little resemblance to what we see today. It will either be invisible (gone), or look like high school sports, or look like NASCAR, which is current path because the powerhouses and multi-teams will have devoured the “competition.”

The third will then become the first because mass TV is more inclined to watch cars turn left for 500 miles than they are to watch that inspiration stuff.

So that leaves the second route. One that has the season start in the fall and local teams compete while they continually improve (OCCRA anyone?). Regionals will be exactly that – regional. No more cherry picking first year events or signing up for many. The winning local teams will get into the regional for their one shot at the championship. Similarly, the Championship will be exactly that – champions every one - not just the ones with the resources to get there – winning the regional will pay their way.

Re: Where will FIRST be in 10 years
 

That's about how I see it.

Re: Where will FIRST be in 10 years
 

You know, I can say from experience that the latter system works if you've got the right arrangement.

Back in my earlier days of high school, I was on the quiz team. (Anyone here remember Irmo High? Jonathan Hess? Hodges Lewis?) You have events throughout the school year at other high schools, usually either a few hours away or perhaps a day-long drive for the bigger ones. This is where a lot of teams do a lot of their competing (and lose a lot of weekends. ;))

At the end of the year come the championships. (Back in my time, Irmo competed in three of them.) The one I'm most familiar with (and the only one I competed in) was the National Academic Championship. It's held in three phases, with the winners of the first two phases being flown into the third phase on the organizers' dime to compete in the semifinals. (It should be noted that those teams starting in the semifinals were often defeated there, since they were starting cold against a team that had just spent the past two or three days living and breathing quiz bowl. I doubt a FIRST championship would have this issue.)

FRC could adapt to such an arrangement, I'm sure. But would we be able to find enough volunteers and venues for smaller events, particularly in the fall?

Re: Where will FIRST be in 10 years
 

Alot of the issues that would keep FIRST from spreading massively could be dealt with in many ways.
Money:
FIRST spreading to every high school doesn't necessarily mean FRC spreading to every high school. FVC is a perfectly suitable and much much cheaper alternative. It is FRC on a smaller scale. Mechanical design, time limitations, programming, etc. And VEX doesn't need as large of a student base to run either (and if a larger student base is interested you could potentially have multiple FVC teams at the same school), nor Engineering support. And yes, power tools and fabrication are still involved (you try to get pure stock Vex pieces to fit precisely how you need to them without modification on a custom robot!)

Engineers:
The FVC solution has already been posed, so I'll suggest another one. Although this is dragging in another controversial issue, here it is. Inter-team co-operation. I will use the NiagraFIRST triplets as my example. Each of the 3 teams used their mechanical and engineering resources to contribute to the overall effort the best. The idea is that, after each of the teams agree upon a similar route to take (doesn't have to be identical), each school can work on producing the parts they have the better resources to produce. School A has a mechanical engineer, so they work on ironing out the precise design and fabrication of the manipulators. School B has electrical engineers, so they produce the control hardware and sensors. School A and B both produce their own individual drivetrains and coding (this could be adapted to fit many other situations).
This not only helps with mentoring issue, but helps schools with lesser machining capabilities as well.
Additionally, not every team would have to enter into one of these, only those that felt it would be beneficial to their situation.

Competitions:
If truly every public school had an FRC (or every school had a FVC) team, each of the individual competition could be arranged very much like High School Sports. You could have various "regular season" competitions (you may or may not even need to have elimination rounds with them), and based on those you could hold regional, district, county, and/or state tournaments. A qualification system based on those winners would advance them to the next level of competition. For instance, the winning alliance, chairman's winner, and the top 5 seeds advance to the next competition (with this years game that would result in between 6-8 teams moving on to the next competition). The qualification criteria would have to be adjusted based on the population of the competition and how many various competitions feed into the next level.
Another way would keeping a similar model to our current, but increasing regional competitions to a much much higher number (150 or so at least). The winning alliance and Chairmans winner from each competiton would automatically move on to Championship. Teams would still be allowed to attend multiple regionals, so some teams would be likely to receive multiple of the automatic bids (via winning multiple regionals, or winning a regional and chairmans, etc). The championship event would have to be massive, around 400-500 or so teams. Each of the remaining spots not given to a team with an automatic bid would be given to a team selected by either a committee (ala NCAA Basketball) or some sort of ranking criteria (yay for the BCS :eek: ).

Re: Where will FIRST be in 10 years
 

If FIRST ever did the regular season competition I would like to see somewhere from 10 to 12 weeks of competition. 1 day events held in high school gyms or small (inexpensive) arenas with a season long standings kept of every match. No award cermony after the matches.
At the end of the season there would be a FRC seeding banquet were alliance picking would happen.
The tournament would be a one day affair with awards passed out at the end of the tourney. The winning alliance, the Chairman's award winner and the Engoneering Inspiration winner would qualify for the championship.

Re: Where will FIRST be in 10 years
 

Having a FIRST team in every high school would be cool, and yes more regionals would be a plus. On top of the fact that it would cut down on travel costs to just get to one regional, it might allow the teams with less funding to attend 2 regionals because they would be more local. Could you imagine one of the national news stations cutting out all through the month of March for FRIDAY NIGHT FIRST MADNESS?! How cool would that be?

I also like the idea of funding the winning teams to attend nationals with all the extra money coming in to the game. On the other hand, all that extra money could be given out in scholarships as well. Perhaps splitting it 50/50 between the two options would be nice. I know scholarships are a huge incentive for me. I applied to a few FIRST scholarships, and was lucky enough to walk away with one of the Embry-Riddle scholarships. What a payoff for working on robots for a few years!

FIRST has been around for 15 years. Look at how much it has grown. But when I look at it, I see alot of growing that can still be accomplished. FIRST is still the bottom of the list at my high school, with football at the top. Of course, football has been around alot longer, but if FIRST could someday sit up there with the ratings that football gets, it would say something about our standard of living in the US. Like Dean said, how many people go on to become professional athletes? Now look at all those that have gone on to become professional engineers. How many pro athletes have you met? I've never met any pro athletes, but I have had the pleasure of meeting both Mr. Dean Kamen and Mr. Dave Lavery. They are both amazing, down-to-earth gentlemen making a difference in society, and I look to them as role models. I for one am signed up to go to college as an engineer. Colleges don't usually offer degrees in professional football playing for anyone that wants to sign up. They do offer a multitude of engineering degrees though: Aeronautica, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil, Structural, Construction-related, Architechtural, Software, and more. That's alot of engineering. But as I was saying before, if FIRST became something that rivaled high school football or at least was as well known and watched as a game of pigskin, it shows that our society has grown to accept, nourish, and embrace the science and technology of tomorrow. After all, isn't it science and modern technology that brings us many of our creature comforts?

And last, I saw this posted in an earlier reply on this thread, and couldn't resist but to reply.

Whoa! The mechanics of the robot are half the fun! Without a bot, there is no need for electronics. Besides, if all you can use is the KOP, then all we really have left are 1100 cloned robots that might be able to do a few different things in terms of sensors, etc. I've worked as an electrical engineer, and robotics is clearly my mechanical side. I strongly favor mechanics, and after working with EE's, realized that they don't have the mechanical touch. But hey, that's ok! They's why there is ME and EE! Getting rid of one side is getting rid of 50% of the fun! For my team, programming is a breeze. With little mechanical effort involved, our robot would probably be done in 2 weeks. I think that last crunch to meet the deadline comes from mechanical work, and hey...FIRST only gives you 6 weeks for a reason. Isn't it a good feeling to know that after all those sleepless nights you are left with an amazing piece of machinery that is not only robust, but is able to perform all the actions that you ask of it?

EE + ME= 100% ROBOT! :)
(And don't forget the all the blood, sweat, and tears that go into a robot!)