The growth of FIRST may be a double-edged sword.
For those who haven't noticed, we have had a sharp economic downturn for the past two years, particularly in the areas of technology and industry that most FIRST sponsors work in.
A quick economy lesson: Businesses survive by generating profit. Profit means making more money than you spend. With production and revenue down, companies must cut back on expenses to increase profit. This results in layoffs, and a cut back in expenditures.
FIRST teams cost a lot of money, time and resources. They also have few tangible benefits that would result in direct monetary or economic gains for their sponsor. FIRST teams do not generate a profit, or even some revenue for their sponsors. At least, most do not. There are probably exceptions.
In a time of a negative economic outlook, corporations will be unwilling to sacrifice money for a program that does not have a return on their investment in the close future.
FIRST has picked the wrong time to expand: teams are going to have a hard time finding sponsors willing to spend so much money, and resources on them.
FIRST also need to generate more attention. To be bluntly honest, people don't watch sports games to see everyone have a "good time" or see players interacting with one another. They watch for the competition, for the stunning victories and brutal defeats.
FIRST doesn't have that. I mean, even I get bored watching FIRST events, and I am IN FIRST and understand the game. The game play is way to repetitive. There is always one strategy that emerges as dominant, and pretty soon, all robots follow it. This year, after the second week of regionals, most teams realized that stacking was a pathetic waste of time, and converted their robots to plows to pushing bins around.
Wow...2:10 of robots pushing plastic bins from one end to the other - thrilling.
If FIRST wants to grow, they need to become much more friendly to spectators - particularly the media. This involves games that are exciting and clean to watch. This year’s game, to be honest, looked on TV like featureless robots smashing into one another in a sea of plastic bins. Not quite prime-time material.
But do we want FIRST to grow enough to have a team in every school?
Putting aside the fact this in impossible due to the number of regionals requires to support thousands of teams, what would be the purpose of having FIRST become so big?
I understand the whole "change the culture" attitude but within FIRST itself, I see attitudes changing, and not for the better.
In my opinion, FIRST does not need to grow larger, it needs to grow better.
1. Teams need to continue to uphold (or, if they do not, start to uphold) the spirit of gracious professionalism (both parts) that FIRST was founded upon.
2.Teams need to build robot as tough and as competitive as they can. This makes the game more interesting.
3. Teams need to understand that Gracious Professionalism should not mean: from each according to ability, to each according to need. Not only should teams help one another, within reason, but they should work themselves to try not to need help. If a team does not have a working robot the day of the competition, they should be pulled from the roster.
4. FIRST needs more quality volunteers, preferably ex-FIRSTers that know how things work
5. FIRST needs to standardize rules at all regionals: the amount of swing the rules have according to each regional is absurd, and unprofessional. I don't care if they are volunteers: they need to be at least consistent with other regionals, and know the rules.
6. FIRST needs to figure out whether or not it wants to "go mainstream." If it wants to be known to the average citizen, FIRST needs media coverage other than NASA TV, an exciting game, and different and cool looking robots to show it off. The silver and black boxes smashing into each other won't work if FIRST wants to grow up.
Of course, if FIRST leaders decide that they should concentrate on improving and maintaining teams that are already in FIRST, rather than recruit new ones. (Quality over Quantity) then steps should be taken to do that, including a revised nationals system based on merit or some sort of qualifier - not just a number being odd or even. I like to call this qualifier "incentive" for teams to go the extra mile to make interesting and competitive machines.
I'd also like to see FIRST as it grows, to develop better games that do not punish teams for not making smashing machines, and a revised set rules with clear definitions of terms and even a gracious professionalism guide for teams that are new. Instead of "rookie all star awards" I'd like to see awards rewarding teams for being professional and competitive, and trying something different.
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Personally, I think FIRST is on a downhill streak, and that focusing on recruiting more and more rookie teams is not a wise decision on their part. FIRST needs to expand slowly, building up what it has. Instead of 30 regionals, I'd rather see 10 with the lowest average score being a couple points lower than the highest. I'd rather see more competitive competitions, than just more robots.
I am somewhat against FIRST expanding so rapidly - I think FIRST needs to improve and strengthen what it has rather than seek out more. Retaining long-time veterans would do more good in the long run. It’s quality that is more important.