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Originally Posted by IndySam
Eric, Ohio has the Cleveland regional and Pittsburgh is right on the border with Ohio.
Jim, does 10k include the cost of fields? I think your number is a bit low. But I do agree that MI had shown the way for the rest of us and it's where FIRST should head.
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WPI has a model that costs $25k to host a regional at a university. I was shocked to hear it could be pulled off for this price. Also they were able to give travel stipends to teams who applied. I believe one teams got as much as 2k for travel (its a need-based thing).
One interesting number I got talk to the folk at WPI, FIRST charges $50k just for their lighting people to light an event. Many universities already have lighting and sound groups who will do that for pennies, and sometimes will do a better job.
What's interesting is that the cost of these events are completely unrelated to the cost of FIRST, as fields are reused I group them under a FIRST related cost, but I think with all the electronics they value the field at around 75k but even if it was the responsibility of regionals to pay this, that would come out to 10 or 15k per regional. But again, we pay a huge budget, some events cost 25k to pull off, other cost 300k. However we are all paying the same. Some regionals have found ways around FIRSTs ridiculous rules.
If you want to keep pulling off huge events, you will keep losing 10% of your teams. Maybe that's the price FIRST is willing to pay, to keep their events at the state their at.
That being said, I think if you are going to host $300k huge events, they should work closely to up the actual production value of these events. Namely stop having awful streams and awful taping of events. If your gonna pay 300k do it right.
What will make us not be the new battle bots in the publics eye?
again it comes down to emotional connections. same reason you connect with a sports team, or even a car(nascar) you have a human element and an emotional connection. I've already brought one other discussion, so I won't start talking about it here again, but I think for FIRST to be sustainable and still maintain their growth rate (there's no reason they can't) it comes down to money.
If school boards go through a budget and see a 5k expenditure for a robotics club with 6-12 people actively involved theres a good chance it will be cut. That being said I have also wanted FIRST to emphasize entrepreneurship and business more on an organizational level. If they were to do this, and step away from STEM, but more focus on technology based solutions, many more students would be interested in joining, and thus increase the perceived value of the organization to schools, and help to justify that 5k expense.