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Originally Posted by Wayne C.
1. any place FIRST hosts the Championship should be warm and not at the mercy of late season blizzards and other such events...In my mind this eliminates any place north of the Mason Dixon Line.
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Perhaps I'm the only person who froze my tush off in Atlanta during the team party. Weather is weather. It changes. In late April in Georgia, it was around 50 degrees. In mid-March in Indiana, it was 75. The Midwest, as well as the Southeast, Northwest, and every other direction you can think of, unfortunately do not come equipped with built-in temperature control. It's nice when it's warm, but certainly not mandatory.
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Originally Posted by tckma
Imagine this: you've never heard of FIRST, and you're on vacation with your family at Disney. The day your family decides to go to EPCOT, you see thousands of kids your age in colorful shirts plastered with buttons running around the park. You find out what's going on, check out some of the competition. You're so impressed with and excited by what you see that you say, "I want to do this!" When you get home, you tell all your friends, and try to start a FIRST team at your school. Or you're a teacher on vacation and you see the same thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for affordable venues. But are we more likely to get the message of FIRST out if we have our Championship Event in a place like New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles, or a place like Indianapolis, Kansas City, or Baltimore?
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While I agree that the flashier, more populated location is going to lend to more publicity, I can tell you honestly that I wouldn't want to take a teamful of twenty kids and release them in NYC or LA. There's a huge difference between Disney, which may as well be its own city, chock full of security and employees, and New York City, which would envelop the FIRST competition as if it were a science fair. There are simply too many 'what-if's'. For the students, don't get me wrong - I am not doubting your mature, responsible ways.
I'm simply insinuating that things happen, and as a volunteer (or if I were an engineer, or a teacher), I would not want the responsibility of taking someone else's children to a different state, into a large city, and trying to keep them under wraps, much less safe and secure.
Do I think this is a great idea in the long run, though? Yes... but I don't think FIRST is ready for it.