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Originally Posted by Knufire
This is absolutely great, and definitely a big help to MN.
Do you think that ND would be lumped together in MN if MN were to switch to districts? I'm just wondering why the solution seems to be for 30-50 college students who are located 3.5 hours away from the venue to volunteer at a regional held in a university 3x the size of NDSU. Is there just a proportionally higher amount of FIRST alumni or students willing to volunteer at NDSU compared to the University of Minnesota?
According to the lookup page on firstinspires.org, ND as a state only has 3 FRC teams. Is Bison Robotics also involved in expanding the FRC program within the state of North Dakota?
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My goal when I decided to attend NDSU was to put North Dakota on FIRST's map. It hasn't really changed but there are interesting road blocks. So Bison Robotics has been volunteering in Minnesota because they host the closest events, and also because most NDSU students are from Minnesota (I love volunteering in MN for the record).
I don't believe there are a higher percentage of FIRST Alumni here than there are at most Universities. NDSU doesn't do anything special to target FIRST alumni outside of what Bison Robotics has started. I certainly think we do a good job of recruiting the FIRST alumni that do go here, as well as bringing new people into the FIRST community. FIRST volunteering is not difficult to recruit for in my opinion, get people to events, hang out and have fun at the end of the day, wake up early and repeat. Pretty easy sales pitch.
If I had to guess, I would say a Minnesota-only district system would devastate the surrounding areas. Iowa with 11 teams, North Dakota with 3 (including 1 that is no more than 15 minutes from the MN border), etc. I just don't see those states thriving if they are put on an island. If we include them in our district, we have to decide who we eventually cut off. We take Iowa and North Dakota, but should we take Wisconsin? South Dakota? I don't believe there is an easy solution.