Quote:
Originally Posted by MikLast
Hi, i am student.
Big thing to think about, 400 teams will be about 800 miles away, never to be seen by you. You will not be able to see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work. Teams like us cant afford either to spend a few grand to go to stuff like IRI or Chezy Champs, so teams like us will never interact with teams in Israel or New York, and vice versa.
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I don't understand this logic at all. I've seen others make similar statements about not being able to see all the teams, so please don't take this as specific to you.
Let's do the math:
4 days of competition (half day Wednesday/Sunday, full days Thursday/Friday/Saturday)
24 hours/day
60 minutes/hour
If you have 800 teams at one location, that gives you 4*24*60 minutes to meet with 800 teams. Assuming no eating, sleeping, walking between teams, or actually competing, you end up with a best case scenario of being able to spend 7.2 minutes per team. In that timeframe, how can you "...see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work." Even if you go to 400 teams, you're still at 14.4 minutes for a best case scenario.
Now that's only for you. What about those top tier teams? Can they deal with new people coming to their pit every 7.2 minutes for 4 days straight? Maybe think of it this way: at 7.2 minutes per person, a team could only meet/talk with 800 people.
FIRST estimates 3,000 teams this year and 75,000 students involved. If you took 800 teams to a single championship and the proportionate number of students, you would have 20,000 students. That does not include mentors, family members, and the general public that would attend as well. How can a small fraction of those meet all the teams they want? It's impossible.
If you want to argue that you might not be able to see your favorite teams, I can agree with that. However, you will have other teams you will get to see that you normally might not.
And sure, it's cool to see all the different robots. I get that.
This is change and people don't like change. I think it will all work out in the end. After all, is there ANY sport that claims a true, single WORLD champion? The World Series winner never plays baseball teams from Cuba or Japan. The SuperBowl champions never play teams from Finland or Belarus (I just looked those up - they play football or gridiron). Stanley Cup winners don't play Latvia or Sweden.