[Karibou]

Last year, I wasn't a fan of the District format. I hated it, because it meant no travelling out of state (going to Pittsburgh as my first FIRST event freshman year was the highlight of my season). Since then, I've been somewhat converted. In 2009, we would have been able to only go to one event, because of monetary issues. The district format allowed us to attend two events, and gave us time to fundraise for states. While MI doesn't have the worst economy in the nation (to my knowledge), we have one of the highest concentrations of FRC teams all badgering for the little money that's available. From a financial standpoint, FiM is great.

However, I don't support the idea of implementing the same system in other states, because of the travel constraints it would impose. If we were to shut out all of the events in the Northeast, all of the events in CA, and all of the events in MI...well, that would put the teams who don't live in those areas in a VERY difficult situation. Teams from Nevada wouldn't be able to go to their CA events. You wouldn't see 217 at FLR, and you wouldn't see a lot of the Canadian teams outside of Canada (Israel would be the one exception, though - open that up to Israel and Turkey and any other teams from the Middle East area, and it would be a great event. Especially given the struggles from this year). Somebody mentioned that MI kids aren't as exposed to the rest of the FRC world outside of MI, and I completely agree. Soon, very few MI kids will recognize names like Wildstang, MORT, Exploding Bacon, etc.

(my quick $0.02 while waiting for our team meeting to start)