My thoughts on this whole situation, as someone who has attended the last 5 world championships and has learned something at all of them. Sorry in advance for any grammatical errors, writing is not my strong suit..
As an excited 8th grader starting FIRST 5 years ago, I would never have though that I would feel relieved to be leaving the program, but now, as a senior, I am disappointed by what FIRST is doing to the program. I have attended the FIRST championship every year since 2010 and each and every year has been helpful in either inspiring me, or making me better at FRC/engineering in general. This is a look at each year I have gone, how it influenced me, and why we need a 1 championship system (based on my experiences that year).
In 2010, The year before I started, my dad and I took a road trip from St. Louis to visit my cousin's team (future Hall of Fame 1538) in Atlanta to watch them compete. I was in complete awe of many of the teams there. I got to meet 1986's guitar hero robot, 1538 showed their 10 wheel drive train to me, and let me run the controls (while it was off the ground, of course). I had premier seating for the finals, not too high up, and pretty close to the center. After coming home from this, I was an inspired little 7th grader, paving the way for my years to come. I was not sure who exactly the "big teams" were at the time, but I did not have to. With everyone being in that stadium, a simple walk around the pits showed me the best robots in the WORLD, not just from the area. I did not have to know who was the best to see some pretty sick robots. With a dual championships, a person who is knowledgeable can Google their favorite robots, but a spectator who has no idea is missing out on (and will not Google the great teams they are missing) will surely not have quite the same inspiring experience as if they attended a championship with every powerhouse team.
8th grade year I joined the local high school team (the love of my life, team 3397) as soon as I turned 15. This happened to be the year that we won St. Louis regional and went to participate in World Championships. We had a blast on the Galileo division, even being able to compete in the qualification match against 254 and 111 (ever wondered what being inspired by being destroyed feels like?
Here is a video of the match. We are the robot with the awkward PVC arm) Now, in a duel system, there is no way we would have gotten to participate with these two teams. 111 would most likely have gone to Detroit, and 254 down to Houston. Those two teams and that match were my first eye openers to what real robotics teams could accomplish. The more these top level teams are split up, the less experiences like this one will happen, and, looking back as a senior, these experiences NEED to happen. We lose that match horribly, but just being against those teams was huge for us.
2012, my 9th grade year, I took time off of school to visit world championships, because, while my team had not made it, I live 10 minutes form the dome and could not miss the opportunity to go on down. This was a year of learning. I spent hours in the pits, taking photos and notes of pretty much every robot there.
Here is the album for anyone interested. All of the team's I met there? All of the information I learned helped my team move vastly foreward. While in the previous years we had only used PVC and woods, mentors and students from all over talked to me about gaining sponsorships and working with metal. I talked to teams from Michigan about sheet metal and teams from California about welding box tubing. Every region has their thing, and bringing all the regions together at 1 championship lets everyone see what the other regions are doing, past the 360p regional streams and low quality "teaser" pictures. If you are a team in the south, the only way you will get a close look at the robots from the north will be through those streams and photos. Trust me, a good, up close look is always 10x better and much, much more informative.
Alright, onto 2013, this year is a big one. Again, my tam did not make it, so I went on my own. It was my first year attending Karthik's Seminar at championships. I learned a lot from that, it was great, and will be something that only the northern teams will get to see live (although, I will be honest, you can get the same experience by watching the stream, unless you have questions, then you are out of luck.) The real great thing that year? Well, I got to hang out with team #610 that whole weekend. Starting Thursday, I was sitting with 1114 (I had no friends attending, so I just sat with them because there was an open spot). Their team started coming in though, so I started to move away, not wanting to have to split them up at my behalf. Well, Edwin from 610 saw me leave and offered me a spot with them. Soon I met the rest of their team, made really good friends with one of their seniors, Adam Scott, and he let me sit with him the rest of the competition. Yes, that includes when they beat 118/1114 and when they were winning Einstein. I can assume you all can imagine why this was inspiring, so I will skip over that. A single world championship is important due to the fact that it allows you to meet people from cultures all over the world. Every culture that makes it to worlds? You have the chance to interact and learn about each of those cultures. At a dual championship system, the north will not get the chance to learn about those from, say, Mexico and Brazil, while the south will not get to learn about Canada and, say, the Europeans. It is wonderful to get to interact with so many people in so many places, and having less of those to interact with definitely diminishes the experience.
Finally, 2014, the most recent year I attending. I do not have much to say here, just that sponsors love the whole world aspect of championships. I was giving the engineers from my father's company a tour of different teams and robot at championships. At the end of the day, they were talking about only two of the 10 teams that I showed them. These two teams? 1114 and 254. They did not even care about anyone else, just these guys, who, at a dual championships, would not even be attending the same event. The sponsors who go are constantly impressed by teams from all over the globe at champions, not just the teams form the local region. If we want these sponsors to keep being impressed, we need to keep everyone in the same location so that the people doing the funding can see the best robots from all over the world, not just from one region.
TL;DR: Dual championships is a bad idea because it inspires less, has less opportunity for lower tier teams to actually compete against the "best of the best", prevents a good deal of cultural interaction, and will not allow sponsors to see the best of the world, even though that is what they like to see.
Thanks for reading.