I worry about "social desirability bias" within and between teams.
And I hinted at it before but as I think about it how is "Keeping attendance costs reasonable" so low? It bothers me. To me it says that a higher proportion of teams don't need to worry about paying the same or more money for registration and travel. That is not indicative of a lot of teams.
Going deeper:
We do know more people care about (or people care more about):
- Seeing and competing with the teams with the best robots in FRC
- The experience of attending a major, multi-day event with my team.
- Participating in a competition that identifies the best teams playing the game
- Seeing teams you have built relationships/partnerships with over the years
Who would care most about these things but also not need to worry about costs?
Lets look as attendance costs as registration fee first. Reasonable is most likely not less that $5,000 as clearly that's whats been needed. It also says "
keep reasonable" implying the $5,000 we've had is reasonable. So if the majority of teams/people answering don't need registration to stay = or < $5,000...
Lets even assume that the vast majority of teams actually have a sponsor who will upon the team qualifying pay the fee in full; money they would not have had otherwise. In that case travel costs are the only major money concern. Those costs go over $3,000 for hotels alone very easily.
Who would care that much more about the above 4 than costs staying at least where they are?