Writer's block on a presentation I'm giving at a conference in late May shifted my attention to this ripple in the FIRST universe which was throwing off strong enough of a signal for me to log in to CD for the first time in years and pitch in some commentary.
I haven't been too terribly involved in FIRST since 2012 when 66 and 470 we're still separated by school district. I pondered volunteering this year, but didn't get past getting an account on VIMS. Before 2012, my years of heavy involvement in FIRST were between 2002 and 2008, my wonderful teenaged life.
So about this shift in championship event scheduling and locating. First of all:
yay Detroit! There's a lot to be excited about that city, and this only adds to it.
Second, some questions for you all:
- Are you networking within and outside of your teams?
- Are you critically analyzing (AKA: studying) what makes a great team and vice versa?
- Do you have a working strategy on 1 and an evolving conclusion on 2?
If you're good on these three, relax. Changes in competition structure aren't going to do squat against your bulletproof strategy that works not only in FIRST but also life overall.
We have the internet, so if there are now a couple of Championship events, study the best of the best at your assigned event, and compare with the others you can find online. Thought experiments are fun and a great exercise. It may not compare too terribly to actually being there, but it's certainly better than expending $$$ and limited resources that doing so would require.
Now, given most of you are going to/will be going to university or college (I went to community college before university FWIW), let me rewrite that 3 part strategy in the form of questions:
- Are you networking within and outside of your College/University, ensuring your network is a diverse set? Scholarships and interships/post-graduation work are hard to get, but your chances will increase greatly if you do this.
- Are you studying hard, and focusing on what makes a response/answer to things/questions of academic/scientific merit valid (not necessarily 'correct', though it is a goal to aim for)?
- Do you have a working strategy on 1 and an evolving conclusion on 2?
I believe if you ask yourself these 3 things, as simplistic of a model as it is, you're not going to be in bad shape. Study hard and smart, treat it like you would any job (some of you probably have a word about this, but I'm making a good faith assumption here), and be sure to have some fun in college/university, it helps.
Additionally, forms of these three questions are good to continually ask yourself in the workforce, which given I've been in it for 3 years now, I can safely say is quite a frenzy. No real 'winners' out here, just the occasional flash of success which we celebrate after work every time they occur.
Which leads me to my final point:
TL;DR - The commentary here in this thread is great, but our prince/princess is in another castle, or more directly our championship event(s) is(are) on a different field.
My gut feeling is that this will be a more sustainable strategy going forward, given the way competition structures and necessary logistics have evolved over the time I've known FIRST.
That's about it from me. Good luck out there!