Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Donow
Not to mention that (and this is something that I now regret not asking at the town hall meeting) nothing seemed to prevent FIRST from saying, "We are looking into holding two geographically-locked championship events; thoughts?". That's the real kicker for me. We knew when FIRST renewed their contract with STL a few years that they were looking at other cities (IIRC the list was STL, Indianapolis, and Orlando; someone can correct me if I'm wrong on this but I remember a blog post from Frank on it), so what stopped them from proposing the idea of two championships to the community? Then proposals like the World Festival/World Championship could have come up earlier and be addressed during the town hall*.
*That's the one major thing I gathered from the meeting, and the major point that angered me. The meeting clearly showed that FIRST has absolutely zero indication of even considering community input in doing anything other than two geographically locked championships.
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I think its safe to say they knew the reaction from FRC participants and figured it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. Any attempt to gather feedback from teams and the community at this stage is a bad attempt to make things right. Best case scenario they consider options into making a World Festival and a World Championship however in my opinion FIRST is trying to steer away from the competitive side of robots so they don't lose the culture they want to see. Worst case they continue forward and they employ the strategy of if you don't like it quit because what you want isn't what we are about. Sadly I feel like this is where they are headed.
I think its in poor taste to keep calling it a championship(s) and instead we need to call them a World Festival. If I were an executive showing up in Houston or Detroit to see the championship I'd be concerned for the rest of FRC if I was seeing some of the teams on the field that I am. I feel like I'm one of the few who can say that considering I competed with one of those robots that shouldn't have been there. Its really sad for teams in districts because we know our DCMPs have a better field of competitors than our divisions and splitting the pool into 8 divisions this year made for some shallow divisions.
FIRST needs to stop using the waitlist at the Championship. Even if more district systems overtake regionals they will still fill all of these vacant slots with waitlisted teams. I'm curious if waitlisted teams this year kept late qualifying teams from attending the championship because finding transportation and hotel was impossible while the waitlisted teams were able to book early.