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Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/FRC Pilot Rookie Competition
Ultimately, the money must be coming from somewhere right? Just because the venue, lodging, and shipping are all donated does not make it more cost effective. How scalable is this really?
I came from a University of Washington team that is no longer in existence because of funding (and not from a lack of trying). The few suitable sites for a full regional are prohibitively expensive on this scale. It took Microsoft, and presumably a great financial support to hold a regional in the this area at all.
I feel that working with FIRST to bring regional costs down would be more valuable then trying to add new events through a separate system. It is frustrating how expensive some of these events are, but in reality it is because there are usually huge costs associated with running an event.
If it is easy to run events where the registration fees were only $500 then why can't all existing regionals be ran this way? And if it is just in specific locations that this program works then why not create official regionals there through partnership with FIRST and the University or other organizations and then take whatever extra funds there are to sponsor rookies and provide team grants?
I agree with the intentions of this program, to encourage new rookie teams to be created and increase the likelihood of these teams developing into sustainable organizations. Leveling the playing field though? Obviously money should be a limited factor in how well a team does, but this would be effectively giving rookies an extra couple days to work on their robots over other teams only attending 1 regional. It is no good to discourage a 2+ year team that has worked hard and yet are marginalized among the rookies who have had longer to work on their machines and some field-practice time. You have to keep out some of the randomness that comes from artificially leveling the playing field in ways that are not unilateral.
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