Originally Posted by maltz1881 (Post 759827)

One thing you have to take into account, a regional here in Mi. cost approx $250,000.00 to put on, that takes a ton of sponsors.

We put the Kettering Rookie Event on for under $15,000.00. If my memory serves me correctly it was closer to $13,000.00.

If you take that $15,000.00 and x by 7 you are still under 1/2 of what a regional costs here.

It would be mucher easier going to a sponsor to say for that $15,000.00 you can be the sole sponsor ( yes I know FIRST wants as many as possible) than it would be to raise that 1/4 million dollars.

We could take that $125-130,000.00 and help struggling teams.

Each year a generous donor gives approx $50,000.00 for new teams to start up. They each get the $6,000.00 if needed. We have a great infastructure here in Michigan.

Remember it is Dean's dream for every school to have a team !!

Originally Posted by artdutra04 (Post 759804)

I wouldn't use professional, but I would use 'less worthy of potentially [tens of] thousands of dollars our money for sponsorship'. Or less 'Wow, that's really unique!' and more 'oh, you have one of those teams too? That's um... nice. Now can you let me get back to work?'.

Look at your local high school sports teams. Chances are if they have team sponsors, it's places like Joe's Service Station or Hometown Bank for amounts like $250 or $500. You don't see Nike or Adidas or Reebok sponsoring high school sports teams for $5k, $10k or $20k+ each. Why? Because there are just so many of them - it wouldn't be economically feasible.

FRC teams as they currently stand can enjoy a lot higher corporate sponsorships than high school sports teams largely because they aren't in every high school, and because they can have a positive effect for the sponsoring company.

And my greatest concern is that it is impossible to cut so much "excess costs" from FRC that it becomes cheap enough to get into every high school without sacrificing the core strengths of FRC from the program. If they do manage to get it cheap enough, you'll end up with a program that more or less is exactly the same as FTC or IFI Vex.

So why kill your "crown jewel" competition model, the one that is great for getting large name sponsors [and their sponsorship donations] and for exciting and inspiring everyone with something that is "over the top" of all the rest of the robotics competitions, just to turn it into a low-cost program that already exists?

It all comes down to economics. I don't think it is economically possible to get FRC into every high school in the country. And this is coming from someone who lives in what is often cited as the "richest state" in the country. There's a reason why the number of new FRC teams in Connecticut hasn't drastically changed for years - and that's all the major sources of funding (corporate and government) have already been been tapped.

And in these economic hard times, with many town and state governments running in the red and pushing severe budget cuts to get into the black, and companies looking to shed excess costs anywhere they can to stay afloat, this isn't the time to look to press for huge expansion of the program. Rather, this is the time to hunker down, shore up the existing resources, and wait until the economy improves to begin a large growth of the program. Otherwise you're setting yourself up for failure when you can't get the necessary funding in place to properly do a district-level competition, and that's not fair for the teams who are "locked-in" to that format.

I'm not opposed to growing FIRST by any measure, but I am opposed to doing it unsustainably. I'm tired of constantly pushing to get new teams started, just to watch them fade after a year or two because there isn't enough companies in the area to provide the sponsorship to keep them afloat. There are much better, cheaper methods (FTC and Vex) that are a lot more sustainable for immediate large growth of the program.

Originally Posted by Cory (Post 759845)

I refuse to believe that you can put on an event not named IRI equivalent in stature and atmosphere to a normal regional with only $15,000. I'd love to see proof otherwise.

Furthermore, if it's *that* easy to cut $235,000 off the price of a regional, why hasn't it happened before now?

Something doesn't add up.

And to the point that you could take the other $130,000 and spread it to the teams--if you tell a sponsor that an event costs 15 times less than it used to, they will probably either cut their donation by a corresponding amount, or wonder what the heck their money has been going to previously, for it to be that much more expensive.

Originally Posted by maltz1881 (Post 759858)

Well I do have the info. I was the volunteer coordinator. We did do the event for the price I stated earlier. Kettering donated the space, we didn't have to pay the $100,000.00 for an arena.

We didn't have to rent the automation equipment, we were able to borrow it from on of our committee members who is a top engineer at Delphi.

Why is that you think that because you don't spend a ton of money it can't be top notch? Trust me, it was incredible. Something that I am proud to say I helped put on. :D

Originally Posted by M. Krass

Relying on donations immediately calls into question the sustainability and extensibility of this pilot, as far as I'm concerned.

Originally Posted by Art Dutra

I wouldn't use professional, but I would use 'less worthy of potentially [tens of] thousands of dollars our money for sponsorship'. Or less 'Wow, that's really unique!' and more 'oh, you have one of those teams too? That's um... nice. Now can you let me get back to work?'.

Originally Posted by Greg Marra (Post 759868)

Where do you think money for Regional competitions comes from? Boston University (graciously!) allows the Boston Regional to use their facility, and many more local corporations and schools donate the significant amounts of money it takes to orchestrate an event of that scale. In that regard, Boston is potentially unsustainable as well.

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol (Post 759857)

So you're saying that FIRST should be more elite, that we should not seek to give other students the opportunities that are there for existing teams today. And that without all the bells and whistles at a competition, no one would be inspired by the 6 weeks of work in build season - which, I might point out, in most cases is done in a non-professional high school shop!

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 759883)

FIRST events should not be watered down.
Teachers, mentors, students, know better that its the learning experience that counts. But, do the stakeholders that help support teams know better?

Why do people have huge banners of their sponsors? Many of them are a business first, and anything to help put them in the spotlight in a high quality event with lots of news coverage is important to them.
Its the harsh reality of it all.

Bells and whistles on your robot and the event, puts an audience in awe. At our regional, guess who was on the front page, in the news, and in all other media coverage. The PINK team! Why, because they had an awesome eye-candy robot in addition to looking cool with their pink shirts and having a spirited attitude.

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 759883)

The Hawaii Regional planning committee spent nearly 30,000.00 for a Friday social event near the beach. It was THE best social even for me who has lived here all my life.
If instead to save cost, we did some watered down version in a much less scenic area with low-budget food, sure.......we could say we saved money, and it isn't the point of FIRST. But, the comments by everyone was that it was an event they would never forget. Heck, one team said it made up for the frustrating day they had earlier.

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 759883)

Having a fabulous experience can only help when teams look to sacrifice year after year in spreading the word of FIRST. We all know that anyone that does FIRST makes huge sacrifices in time, money, and personal life.

Originally Posted by artdutra04 (Post 759893)

I'm not saying that at all, in fact, quite the opposite. I one-hundred percent believe FIRST should get into every school in the country, but I don't think FRC is the perfect vehicle for that widespread expansion.

FRC != FIRST. FIRST is about much more than FRC; it's also about FTC, FLL, and JFLL. It is a lot easier to get one (or two, or three, or four) FTC or Vex team(s) in every high school in the country than is is to get an FRC team into every high school in the country.

As such, I would rather see every high school get a FTC or Vex team first. Not only is it a lot more economically feasible, but the entire competition model of FTC/Vex is much better suited for a large scale competition with tens of thousands of teams. (Everything about FTC or Vex costs but a fraction of even the cheapest FRC off-season competitions).

Once FTC or Vex gets into 60-80% or more of all high schools, then come back to talk about looking to get as many of those expanded to FRC, as by then the necessary support infrastructure is already in place, and over the very short term goals, we have expanded the scope of FIRST much more than a [cheaper] FRC could ever have.

That is not elitism, that is looking to get the opportunity and inspiration of FIRST, as far reaching as quickly and cheaply as possible. That's like anti-elitism.

I have no qualms about FRC expanding to district-level competitions, I just believe that FIRST isn't pursuing the most cost- and resource-efficient methods for expanding the scope of their outreach.

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol (Post 759905)

And taken to the ridiculous extreme, the counter-argument to that position is that we should cancel FRC entirely until FTC or Vex gets near saturation. After all, that's most cost effective, right?

Either you make a form of FRC available for all-comers, or you are acting in an elite fashion - someone is kept out because they aren't deserving of it yet. Who will make the determination of who can enter?

I don't agree with everything FIRST in Michigan is doing. I have reservations about some aspects of this proposal. But I recognize that we can't stick with business as normal because costs and resources are being stretched to the limits.

Even if these districts can't all be run with a budget of $15,000, they can surely be done much cheaper than regionals. If $500,000 is saved by not holding Detroit and West Michigan as traditional regionals, and 7 districts are run on an average of $20,000 or $40,000 - well, as Mark is wont to say, "That's why we do the math!"