[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by Anthony S.


From my understanding of the Championship Eligibility , if you win the regional chairman's award, that qualifies you for current year nationals only. But if you win it at nationals that qualifies you for next year and so on. I didn't see any points for the regional chairman's award either. Some one correct me if I'm wrong, think link is above.

One thing to keep in mind...when the res_art9.htm page was created, it was specifically for the 2002 competition. Therefore, since there was no regional chairman's award winner in 2001, it was not listed. I am almost certain that, with the Chairman's award being the most prestigious award given by FIRST, the regional Chairman's award will have some point value for 2003.

I support the idea of not 2, but 3 seminationals. One for the middle of the country.

I think before determining where to have a national event, or even how many are needed, a look into the distribution of teams nationwide needs to be made. The last time I checked(which was a year or two ago), there were not enough teams in the center of the country to warrant a national event there.

But imagine the cost! most teams have to travel to make regionals, let alone the nationals or hypothetical semi nationals. And the winners, or top 8, 15, 20, whatever amount of teams do qualify, only large teams with gracious funding will be able to make all the trips. Think about teams, early in their lives, with smaller budgest than other teams that have been around longer. Also, I 've seen some low budget teams turn out great robots this year- it would be a shame to deny them competition because of money.
Money talks, the rest walks? No way fair.

As others have mentioned, due to the nature of the event, there will always be a financial barrier for some teams. In that respect, I offer the following suggestions:

1. Get your team's school(s) and/or community to recognize the FIRST team on a level close or equivalent to that of any of the sports teams, with the same stipulation that the district/community/"boosters" will assist in travel expenses if a team does indeed qualify for nationals.

2. On FIRST's end, give the teams who qualify based on the current year's performance a waiver on their registration cost for the national competition. For those teams who get to go based on previous years' performance or the odd/even year criteria, they must pay the $4K registration costs as normal. This eases the financial burden further for those teams who are planning for nationals at the last minute because of performance at a regional event.

As I have mentioned several times before on this board, it is my feeling that having multiple national events dilutes the prestige of being able to call yourself national champions. After all, which sounds more impressive, "national champion," or "national champion, eastern division" ? It's my feeling that with a system similar to what I have described above, a single national event would still be feasible for some time to come.

Dean Kamen is being a little hypocritical with the rule changes, I admit, but I think it's better to limit the amount of people competeing in the nationals than the amount of people that can join FIRST.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that limiting the teams at nationals is the way to go, rather than placing a team # cap on FIRST itself. However, in regards to your other comment quoted above, I have to disagree. First, as I have mentioned previously on this board, shifting the blame to Dean on issues such as this is completely incorrect. While I'm sure he had some input on the process, in general, I am certain he has very little to do with event logistics, which this would definitely fall under. I suppose my main other issue with that statement is that I fail to see where Dean/FIRST is doing anything that I would call hypocritical. If you would clarify what you meant when you wrote that, I would be glad to discuss it further.