Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
That isn't how I understood the original FiM push for district events when it was being done. During the brief time between my hearing rumors of it and the official announcement, I always heard one dominant reason: the quantity of teams in Michigan was too high for all of them to be able to participate in one of the three "local" regional competitions, and there weren't any good places to add more full-scale regionals.
There was a lot of discussion between FiM and FIRST about how to deal with the money part of it, and what to do about robot shipping and drayage. Eventually it worked out that the large number of smaller/cheaper district events was a way to give teams nearly twice as much competition time for a single entry fee. The "bag & tag" experiment was a success and is now the standard for all of FRC. But the first information I heard about the Michigan region was based on the need to accommodate more teams, and the benefits of lower cost and more play time were listed as desireable outcomes of the plan rather than primary goals.
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Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party in responding to this.
I am fairly knowledgeable on the topic as I have all my information firsthand from Jim Z but I am by no means an expert. Because I don't have an answer for you that I know is correct I am not going to speculate about exactly what FIM's goals were in the beginning. I'll only to say that it has become an engine to do what I described if it is allowed to be by FIRST.
While I don't have all the answers about FIM I do know that Jim Zondag was going to release a paper about FIM: how it works, what it’s purpose is, etc. Unless things have changed that should be released sometime between now and kickoff. (but don't hold me to it)
Regards, Bryan