Posted by Ken Patton.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]
Engineer on team #65, The Huskie Brigade, from Pontiac Northern High School and GM Powertrain.
Posted on 6/1/99 3:37 PM MST
In Reply to: Bite the bullet in 2000 posted by Joe Johnson on 5/27/99 8:56 PM MST:
I'm not sure that we are ready for an 'invite-only' or 'qualification-only' Nationals. Seems to me that part of the excitement of FIRST (particularly those who AREN'T yet involved) is that you get to go to Disney World. I know, you and I know that's not what its all about, but this culture that we're trying to change isn't there yet. Lets get more teams first.
I would rather see a way for the competition to handle more teams in the current amount of time allotted. This would keep the travel/food/lodging costs from rising. Some possible ways to do that, in no particular order:
1. More teams on the field at once (alliances is a subset of this)
2. Shorter matches (I know, dumb idea
)
3. Longer days, maybe combined with a staggered, known in advance schedule.
4. Reduce the time between matches (can you say instant scoring?)
5. More fields (although this creates a chaotic, unfocused event)
6. Multiple Florida events
7. An open practice area that runs in parallel to the matches.
8. Any others???
My personal favorite 'growth' idea: Have a 'regional' every week at Disney World. As we add more teams, all of them can still go to Florida. This allows any team to go to Florida. We still have other regionals around the country as demand rises. Disney gets our money week after week, so Mickey can continue to hire copyright lawyers (sorry, got off track there
). The regionals are used as qualifers for the nationals, and the awards at regionals determine who goes to nationals (this sounds more objective to me than 'invite-only'
). Nationals could be anywhere.
Ken