[JimInNJ]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

I read this quote by Don Bossi at the townhall meeting in the survey thread:

The story for FIRST® LEGO® League, FIRST® Tech Challenge, Junior FIRST® LEGO® League is much worse. FIRST Tech Challenge has the capacity for about 3 percent of their teams at Championship. FIRST LEGO League, it kills me when I talk to a FIRST LEGO League partner for a country and I say, oh we can’t even send a team this year, we don’t have a slot this year."

And I thought about how the Chairman's criteria was changed to emphasize creation of new FLL teams. And I felt a letdown. I realized that what happened with FRC in championsplit is a complete afterthought for FIRST HQ.

I will now be speculating, but I think it's internally consistent.

FIRST HQ is primarily focused on expanding FLL. Given that LEGO is a major supporter of FIRST and the Mindstorm package is credited as an important factor for the turnaround of LEGO, FIRST HQ may be getting pressure from LEGO to continue to expand that market. FIRST recognizes for younger students just going to a "world" event is sufficient incentive, so having more "world" events is good for expanding FLL.

I started my first FLL team 3 years ago, and let me say that FIRST doesn't HAVE TO try to expand FLL. I believe that even if FIRST completely ignored FLL for a year or two that it would still continue to experience its' same tremendous growth for a couple of reasons. The program is affordable, it's easily mentored, and it's SCALABLE/EXPANDABLE within your school district, local youth organization, or even your dining room table, especially when everyone else in the area finds out that the program is available to them too. Startup costs are typically less than $100 per student, and ongoing costs are half of that. With ever-shrinking school budgets and family disposable income, this is a serious concern for parents everywhere. Teams can easily be coached by a teacher or parent without specific engineering skills, thanks to a huge amount of online training material available, not to mention the mentoring from local FTC and FRC teams doing their outreach.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

FIRST HQ's second priority is FTC. It fits into a smaller scale so it can be more cost effective in more middle and high schools. And it faces a strong challenge from VEX. FIRST HQ has to find a way to turn around the FTC ship. Right now it's lost in the championship event.

I'm about to be a first year FTC coach, so I'm still learning. I have many concerns about how FIRST has dealt with FTC. My first problem is the way that FIRST has been dealing with this year's new technology rollout. Information has been dribbling out in too small pieces since March, and they aren't sharing the rest of what we need to know until the end of JUNE, but that's a problem for a different thread. My real issue is the way that FIRST "DISPLACED" the 128 winning FTC championship teams to a hotel ballroom up the road SO THAT THEY COULD GIVE FRC TEAMS THAT WERE SIMPLY SIGNED UP ON A WAIT LIST A PLACE TO BE IN THE ACTUAL BIG SHOW IN THE DOME. (I kinda think that my brain understands why, see below.) I realize that I'm probably throwing a hand grenade into the room, but maybe someone can explain this so that it makes sense to someone on the outside of FRC looking in.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

FRC hasn't caught on fire--it's not a wildly successful marketing tool to promote widespread adoption of robotics programs across the US. (I've talked about how FIRST HQ hasn't adequately pushed this model, but that's a different thought.) So FIRST HQ is trying to figure out how to keep FRC around at these events in sufficient numbers and quality to inspire the FLL and FTC attendees, so that they feel like they are part of a bigger event.

Without attacking the current FRC team roster, I wonder if FRC, as it's currently de$igned, is expandable at more than the current annual percentages, as there are a finite number of new Fortune 500 sponsors that FIRST can attract to the program. While the current size is probably sustainable, I really question how much longer FRC can continue to find new "deep pocket" sponsors.

As far as "how to keep FRC around at these events in sufficient numbers and quality to inspire the FLL and FTC attendees", I wonder if I want my FLL and FTC attendees to be "inspired" by the attitudes shared in several of the current threads here on CD about how FRC team members can't be bothered worrying about whether FLL or FTC attendees are there at all, because it's supposed to be all about FRC. I hope I'm overreacting to a rude but very vocal minority here.

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Ultimately, FIRST HQ sees an "AYSO" future which focuses on elementary school participation. Unfortunately AYSO hasn't been particularly successful at changing how the US looks at soccer, and it doesn't seem to have much of an impact on physical activity levels. Increased soccer interest is mostly driven by increased immigration. (The PNW might be an interesting exception worth looking at.)

So I'm afraid this whole discussion about how FRC is affected by championsplit is doomed to fall on deaf ears. We're just not their prime constituency anymore. I believe they have made a serious miscalculation, but at the moment, FIRST HQ isn't ready to hear that.

I think that you have missed the real reason for the "Championsplit". FIRST's prime constituancy isn't FRC, it's the companies that fund FRC, and FIRST in general. They love to come to the championships and point to the teams that they supported, and be able to say "My company invested well, look at the successful teams that we sponsor!" More FRC teams at championship, more happy sponsors that can point and smile! More happy sponsors, more sponsor investment. If all else fails, "FOLLOW THE MONEY!"

All of these opinions are solely my own, and I sincerely mean no disrespect to any individual, team, or sponsor.