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Unread 04-11-2003, 19:11
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Quote:
Originally posted by dlavery
You guys have it all backward.

...

Mini-Regionals are:
- limited to no more than 20 teams
- cost-capped at a maximum of $500 per team to attend
- designed to physically fit in a high-school gym/basketball court (including play field, pits, and audience)
- organized and produced entirely by a local committee
- require no participation by FIRST Manchester staff
- have a limited award structure, so no more than five (5) judges are needed
- audio-only (i.e. require only audio amplification),
- do not have large-screen projection video systems,
- without a formal "team social" event, unless one is organized by the teams
- designed to be set up in one day or less, and
- distributed all around the country - not just in a few locations that require expensive travel arrangements.

In other words, these are relatively small, simple, low-cost events that are easier and cheaper to produce and attend. Think of them as similar to many of the off-season competitions staged by teams, but incorporated as part of the formal competition structure supported by FIRST. Accordingly, many more of them can be conducted during a competition season. On any given weekend, there could be one or two DOZEN Mini-Regionals going on, instead of just two or three regional competitions.
Here in North Alabama, many schools are participating in a program called BEST (http://www.bestinc.org/). BEST is similar to FIRST in that students build a robot in six weeks, work with sponsors, try to mentor other teams, etc. except the competition is much smaller and resembles one of the "mini-regionals" you mentioned. Have you ever attended a BEST event? There's one coming up in Auburn, AL in two weeks. I guarantee you that if you attended it you would scrap the "mini-regional" idea instantly.

A team from my school participated in the program this year and I tagged along for the competition. It was terrible! None of the judges or field personnel had any experience (they were "local volunteers") and there was basically mass chaos.

It's no coincidence that FIRST has trained staff members at every regional event. It is simply 100% necessary to make things work!

Not to mention that the most exciting part of the FIRST experience is the competitions! The lights, the sound, THE PEOPLE ... it's incredible! FIRST has established their position as THE PREMIER high school robotics competition because the exciting atmosphere of the competitions rewards students for hard work. You want to water that down to a small game in a high school gym? WITH FEWER AWARDS? I don't know many kids that would be willing to work their asses off for six weeks just to go play in a gym somewhere (Proof: There were only ~6 people on my school's BEST team as compared with our FIRST team of ~50).

While I do agree that cost saving measures can and should be implemented for regional events, it would be a disaster for FIRST to make any drastic change that would rob the regionals of the elements that keep FIRST ahead of its competition.