[Alan Anderson]

Pardon the ramble, but I have a bunch of stuff in my head that wants to get out.

Part 1: location

I like how convenient it is to get between the pits and the fields in St. Louis. The layout could be tweaked further, but it's pretty good. However, it's FULL. There's not really room for growth.

The World Congress Center in Atlanta is spacious. The field layout in the Georgia Dome was great. The walk from pits to stands was a hike, but not ridiculously far, and I enjoyed the regular opportunity to experience the outdoors along the way.

I prefer the experience I had in Atlanta by a very small margin, but I was a few years younger then. As I get busier (and perhaps a bit slower), I appreciate the proximity of pits and dome in St. Louis more.

Part 2: size

Option A: don't have more teams attending The Championship Event

As more regions make the transition to the district model, the number of Regional competitions will eventually decrease. That will make it possible to keep the number of teams qualifying for The Championship from growing past the currently barely manageable size. Perhaps it could even be reduced.

Option B: have more teams attending The Championship Event

Simultaneously inviting more teams and giving each team more matches just isn't going to work without adding more fields, and probably more divisions. A larger Championship needs a venue larger than the Edward Jones Dome area. Having more divisions also makes the Einstein matches take longer. And how does FIRST deal with the after-event party getting even larger?

Option C: add another level to the competition hierarchy

Instead of making the FRC Championship bigger, how about making it smaller? During the current "off week" in the competition schedule, hold a set of "Conference" competitions to select 24 teams to send on to the finals. It makes things more complicated, and it adds to the interference with school.


Part 3: experience

That "interferes with school" thing is a problem. It keeps a lot of teams from planning to attend the Championship without competing, even though there's so much to get out of it anyway. Many people seem to think that each team should have the opportunity to attend every so often, just to give the students the experience. Well, nobody at FIRST is stopping them from showing up and enjoying the event, or attending the presentations, or volunteering to help run it.