[Jim Zondag]

To comment on a few items in this thread:

The goal of this initiative is to test a new model of FIRST Competition.

The purpose of this change is to increase the "Return on Investment" (ROI) for teams. All teams who compete in FIRST commit a certain amount of Investment in the areas of Time, Money and Effort in order to build a robot and manage the team. Their Return on this investment is how many times they get to play with this robot, and the experience of the competition events.

In today's system, the ROI for many teams is very low and many teams compete at only one event. Creating a system where teams can compete at 2 events for the price of one effectively doubles the ROI for many teams. The new district events will guarantee 12 qualifying rounds per event compared to many of today's events today which often only have 8 rounds/team. Thus in 2009, a team can get 24 qualifying rounds for the same price as 8 round cost in 2008, a 300% increase in ROI! Odds of advancing to eliminations increases for all teams at the new smaller events.

Other factors further increasing this are, reduced travel costs, no shipping costs, etc.

An earlier post spoke of sustainability of existing teams. This change will help everyone, new and veterans, because it reduces the amount of time, money and effort that all teams must commit while maintaining as much of the experience as possible.