Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Zondag
Agree, the road is paved, please follow.
If we ever want Robotics to be a sport which competes with 'real' sports, then we all need to up our game. Sure after 25 years, we have had great success and now have tens of thousands of participants, but in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. There MILLIONS of kids who play basketball, and that it just one of several main stream sports. If we truly expect 'cultural transformation', then we need to get MUCH larger, and do it MUCH faster.
Reducing participation costs and increasing ROI to bring us closer to parity with mainstream youth activities are the best way to achieve this. Ignoring this reality will restrict growth until this change is made.
BTW: Here in Michigan, according to the data we have, in 2016 we now have more high school students participating in FIRST Robotics than we have playing Hockey. So we have actually finally passed one of the 'real' sports. Can any other robotics organization on Earth claim this?
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I hate disagreeing with Jim but...
Jim, the work FiM has been doing has cleared a lot of the event logistics and cost hurdles but it has done nothing to solve the mentor hurdle. FiM has been able to handle it's astonishing growth in part due to the large number of engineers and engineering companies in the region. I haven't looked at it in a few years but I'd be willing to bet that a large number of FRC teams are congregated around the I75 corridor through Automation Alley (Detroit -> Flint -> Saginaw) where the density of engineers and companies that are long time supporters of FIRST is unparalleled. It also has at least 3 HoF teams within a 45 minute on a side triangle. (51, 67, 27) And more World Championship winning teams exist in Oakland County than exist in most states. This has led to not only a massive growth of teams but also an increase in quality.
My point is, there's still one last hurdle to explosive quality growth that FiM cannot help regions with, the road is there but you still have to figure out how to drive down it.