[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I'm going to cheat, I'm going to say what I WANT to see.

Focus on documenting impact: We're an expensive program and right now it's difficult to prove that FTC/VEX/BEST/BunnyBot type programs are not as effective from a cost perspective.

Return to emphasis of partnering with industry: Looking back through FIRST's history teams that partnered closely with local industry were revered. Now many within FIRST revile them. I'd like to see HQ go back to comments about how this is not some science fair, this is a "professional sport" and we need trainers, we need experts, we need professional analysts and strategists. I'd love HQ to come out and say "Teams like 67, 1114, and 254? They get it!"

District Reorganization: Districts are a stop-gap measure to decrease apparent costs to teams (5k => 8 matches is bad, 5k => 24 matches is less bad) and it's wonderful for that. The problem is it's crap for changing our culture. It IS a bunch of nerds in a high school gym. It's not as awe inspiring as full size events used to be. I don't know what the solution here is but it needs to be investigated. (Of course, some of the Regionals are pretty badly run and I'd be embarrassed to bring higher ups or politicians to them too)

Decrease in Robot Size: I think this year's robot size decrease should stick. It opened up the field a lot and led to more exciting energetic games.

All of this, with one caveat: Districts, while potentially lacking the wow factor, do add one big thing for changing the culture: getting it spread into more parts of the culture. It is very hard to expose people locally to FIRST (especially at larger-than-SCRIW scale) when the Palmetto Regional is three hours away in Myrtle Beach.