Re: Qualifying for CMP in the future
 

- While taking care to avoid any deeply political statements -

Indiana has put a priority on Math and English/Language Arts, potentially at the expense of other subjects. It has slashed school funding, practically erasing many transportation budgets. It has placed a premium on 180 full days in school.
The combination of these three things, along with others, potentially make it difficult for teachers and students to get school board approval to miss more than one event's worth of school, even if the experience likely outweighs what that student/teacher may get from the classroom environment.

We are fortunate to have a fantastic administration that is supportive of STEM in general and FIRST & PLTW in particular. I've heard anectdotal stories from other schools that are not so fortunate - one that springs to mind is a team that essentially split itself in half - 1/2 the team attended one regional, 1/2 the team attended another; it's even more difficult for teams whose students don't belong to a single school/system (regional teams, 4-H teams, Scout teams, etc.).

Re: Qualifying for CMP in the future
 

John,
With 2100 teams, it would require 500 open slots/year for every team to have the opportunity to attend the Championship 1 time within every 4 years. If this was the model FIRST wanted, I would recommend changing the name to the FIRST World Invitational as it clearly would no longer be a championship.

The championship has been just barely functioning on an old model that essentially outdated itself 3-4 years ago, but statistically is just now coming to a head. 2012 will unfortunately be a very rough year for many areas of FRC and FIRST HQ. I think there will finally be an additional 1-2 "areas" that adopt the district model, and FIRST HQ will have to adopt some other method of qualifying teams for the Championship. This will upset a lot of people that aren't prepared for the change. And there will be an inordinate amount of people threatening to quit. Ironically their threats will be to join other competitive leagues that already have qualifying systems in place (gotta love that).

All in all, FRC is going to go through a drastic change that will likely take about 3 years to settle out. Personally, I think it will be for the better. 5-10 years from now, the young teams of tomorrow will get to hear stories of back in the day when anyone could buy into a championship, and you would have entire alliances that couldn't even execute the scoring objective.

By 2015, we will have around 3000 teams with 150 district comeptitions and 30 Regional Championships. The big question I have is whether or not the Regions will have theoretical borders or practicle borders.

Re: Qualifying for CMP in the future
 

Or what if FIRST says that they will stop creating new regionals for a few years and just build up the regionals that they have now? Turn the regionals that we have now into multi-field super-regionals.

Re: Qualifying for CMP in the future
 

Some musings...

WHY HAVE THE CHAMPIONSHIP AT ALL?*

I believe that for a while, FRC has done the right thing in awarding "robot performance" and "team performance" nearly equally in guaranteeing championship slots. More importantly, there have always been spaces available for teams to register who had not attended championship in recent years. It has allowed FIRST to keep the focus where it says the focus should be. If FIRST has outgrown the ability to do this, perhaps it should separate the FLL, FTC and FRC events as Madison has suggested, or it should look at creating other opportunities to "change the culture".

What if FIRST took some of the resources spent on the championship and made each regional event have an elevated level of "show"? Invite vendors, bring back the team social, have a series of workshops/conferences, etc?

Over half of the FRC teams do not attend more than one regional. Only one in six go to the championships. Many times, however, the folks in New Hampshire seem to forget about these teams and place all of their focus on the big show. I suggest that instead of focusing on "how do we cut down the number of teams at the championship?" we should focus on "how can we make each regional feel like the championship?"

The alliance competition system of FRC almost guarantees that the winning alliance is NOT made of the three best performing robots. This alone casts doubt on the idea that winning a regional means you are "championship worthy" - as is evidenced by suggestions that 3rd picks not be eligible to attend. The fact that teams compete with alliances throughout qualification rounds and the not-quite randomness of the schedule makes the entire process suspect.

Besides... from what I understand, the real hard-core competition is IRI...

-Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox



* I do know the answer to this - national sponsorship - I know... but still...

Re: Qualifying for CMP in the future
 

Please correct me if needed.

I believe that the number of teams attending Championships should be increased. This can be done by adding a new division. Einstein would need to change to compensate for this. Instead of having elims immediately, have a round robin on Einstein that eliminates the "weakest" alliance, and also allows for a less random 1v4 and 2v3 rather than AvC and NvG.

I have never attended Championships before, so I am not sure about the space issue, but adding an extra field is a plausible solution, although the expanding pit area will be something that will need to be dealt with.

Thanks for hearing me through.

Re: Qualifying for CMP in the future
 

This reminded me of something I noted at CMP. In New York City, we are lucky to have a "super regional" with FLL, FTC and FRC all competing. It's great because the FLL kids can see the "big bots." At CMP, a couple lego kids came by and were amazed at the "big bots." They don't have FRC at all in their city so it was the first time they saw it. I think it's really cool having all three together to inspire the younger kids.

I'd also like to mention that Einstein wasn't idle - it was used for FLL earlier in the competition.