[A. Snodgrass]

Another barrier that I haven't noticed mentioned is for the teams coming from either a) different countries or b) whom are not part of the 48 continental states, transportation costs can bring the amount of money required for investment up much higher then it otherwise would be.

This has changed in the last couple of years in Hawai'i, not so much for Alaska as of yet.

However, distance from a regional competition has to be stated as a potential barrier to growth and development of the FIRST Robotics program for groups from certain areas. When there is no regional within a day to two days driving distance, the amount of money to make it to the regional certainly expands.

On not affiliating with a school, I've seen a couple of teams on the west coast effectively form teams unassociated with a school through groups like Girl Scouts. This is a solution that, as has been pointed out earlier, enables the group involved to get past school rivalries, and it can assist in the development of a team within an area that could not potentially support having a FIRST Robotics team at every high school. A side benefit to associating yourself with a group like this can be that there are potentially discounted places you could stay near the regional, or group rates that they can take for plane tickets if the regional is far away.

Another barrier that I would point out can be the perspective of FIRST for companies within the community, and occasionally within the FIRST community itself. Yes, FIRST exposes high school students to engineering, math and science fields, with the added benefit of encouraging those same students to go into engineering, math and science in college. However, there are additional benefits that come out of this competition. These benefits are things like teambuilding, time management and organization skills, critical thinking, creative thinking, goal setting, and enthusiasm for a final product. These are skills that can be useful in many different fields, not JUST engineering.

I hope that this provides some food for thought.