[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by jman4747

You know what, fair.

I still think this won't hinder anything we do for recruitment or demotivate us. If it stops anyone else remember that there are other ways to accomplish many of your goals that have been successful for teams who probably have less resources than you do. We "bottom ~%90" teams have outreach tech too.

Again, you're taking a narrow "I only care about us" view. And that's fine to do, but don't use it justify how other teams and the overall program should be run. The point of FIRST is not to do outreach team-by-team--it's to do it program wide, top down. That's what publicity is about. It's about having teams at more that just your high school.

As for resources, understand that until this year we worked out of shared math classroom and two outdoor shipping containers. We didn't get any money from our school district until this year. So please don't believe that we have a different set of resources that you have. Yes, we have several more years of experience, but that steadily erodes.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

My position isn't inconsistent, because that's not my position. You created a strawman, or minimally posited other people's viewpoint as mine. Stop trying to lump all of the people that you have disagreed with into one hivemind.

Show me the proof. So far we concentrate our "celebrity of elite teams" at both Championship and IRI, yet to date we haven't seen the widespread cultural inspiration we're aiming for (funny what happens when you suddenly consider that inspiration might not just be aimed at other teams, which also breaks down your opening paragraph's straw man). Perhaps FIRST's approach of more high profile events spread out might lead to more attention from broader society?

I think two regional championships does just fine as the sports metaphor in terms of reaching across society. The people that the "championsplit" impacts are within our own borders as a community, not without it. Nobody outside of FIRST is going to care if we have one champion alliance or two, or if teams from Michigan aren't playing against teams from Texas. Outsideers will be able to understand North Championship and South Championship perfectly fine.

STEM absolutely needs celebrities. The thing is, as you alluded to earlier, FIRST is about recognizing scientists and engineers as celebrities, not teams. FIRST doesn't replicate sports for the sake of FIRST being a sport. FIRST replicates sport for the sake of changing the larger culture. This isn't about making the Citrus Circuits a household name, this is about making Woodie Flowers a household name. FIRST growing as a sport can help that, but it's not the end-all be-all. Not to mention, but the reality is that the outside public doesn't know the difference between the Citrus Circuits and Dawgma. Neither of our teams is going to attract a significant difference in outside public opinion, regardless of our status within the community as "elite teams." We're not even close the point where people outside our own community track the results and learn about teams they aren't personally invested in. I'll be pleasantly surprised if we reach that point by 2020.

If what I responded to was not your position, then your's is not being stated clearly.

You say that no one outside of FIRST will care if we have one champion or not. And I've given you proof that it does matter. The fact that we were recognized much differently this year vs. the last 2 years is a strong example. That we get to meet with a key state senator comes from having one champion.

I blame the fact that there isn't more recognition society wide (which has been the basis of my posts--I've always talked about inspiring cultural change and my point doesn't break down when we go beyond inspiring FIRST teams) on the lack of a strong media campaign by FIRST HQ. I've posted about those shortcomings else, e.g. on the Championship Event Survey thread. We've tried to coordinate publicizing here with FIRST HQ and have heard almost nothing. If no one hears about it, of course it's not going to inspire the wider culture.

Which brings me to lack of celebrity. Yes, eventually we want Flowers to be the type of celebrity (but in fact I think we really want someone not even connected to FIRST itself, but rather groundbreaking researchers and engineers.) However, the idea is that teams can become celebrities. In California, the De La Salle football team is a celebrity sports program. Many sports fans know about them, but most could not name the coach or any of his athletes. DLS has the advantage of being embedded into a sport that has a whole journalist culture built around it. Our team has worked at extending media outreach in Northern California, but we've gotten little help from the FIRST organization. We have 3 teams in the region that have been on the last 2 world championship alliances but there's no coordinated media campaign to exploit this. Instead our team is going to be carrying the ball alone to promote FIRST locally. If FIRST hasn't even tried to effectively communicate the event to the media, how do you know that no one cares.

And sports/competitions can become suddenly popular with the right packaging. Two examples: poker and ultimate fighting. (OK, not the most wholesome...)

So I don't know why you want to make it even more difficult to reach the wider audience by splitting the champions? Every other sport is moving towards consolidated championships to increase visibility. Why run counter to what seems to be the collective wisdom? Again, I haven't seen how your rationale leads to a wider reach. Why is having 2 diluted champions a stronger draw? (I agree that having more teams at these events is a plus.) Is it simply "it doesn't matter"?

Originally Posted by Infinity2718

There are multiple things at play here so its not really a simple solution and growing pains are tough. There are many many ways to grow and expand an organization. Different people see different priorities as growth occurs and it can lead to disagreements.

Everyone knows that FIRST is for Inspiration and Recognition.

To me, inspiration and recognition comes from some cool stuff done by some pretty awesome people. How do you get cool stuff done by awesome people? You get them lured in somehow. How do you do that? With a sports model! This ignites growth in the program.

Like many others have said already, the competition is the vehicle. Slowing down the vehicle can slow down the growth. The championsplit does not completely extinguish the competitive fire, but it does not fuel it. It's a step closer to a science fair.

I love working with the kids, but if I had to choose between working with kids to enter a science fair or working with kids to build a robot to compete in a worldwide robotics competition, I'm choosing the later every time. How cool is that, a worldwide robotics competition!

Well, I guess there can be co world champions... that were at different locations... that didn't compete in the same tournament... that's pretty cool...

I was with you until the very end. That last sentence doesn't fit with the rest of your reasoning.