[JesseK]

I can't speak for other local teams, yet after having more fun at an off-season event than we've ever had during a competition season event (from a holistic perspective) our new strategy seems to be register the $6k for 1 official event and get in the lottery for championships. NOT planning to go to St Louis and then winning a spot means we pay 30-60% more just because we didn't reserve transportation/hoteling far in advance.

If we don't make it to St Louis, then we will gladly attend 2-3 off-season events with the money we would have spent on the Championships. It has become very apparent to us that to spread FIRST's message at any accelerated rate is to do so at our own team's detriment in the form of sponsorship dollars that are spread very thin. So this year we will do more with less, for our own school's students (for once).

What kind of plan can FIRST enact to increase the amount of students without severely increasing the amount of burden upon the current mentors of a team (i.e. fundraising)? We all need to work on finding an answer. We all need to figure out how to keep from spending 25.3 million dollars on FRC every year. Right now FIRST incurs a cost of ~$600 per student (~$15k per team) just for a team to get a KOP and go to one regional (of which the team pays $6k). This is according to FIRST's 2009 annual report.

What can we do in addition to FIRST's current objectives (2-day events, MI model, etc) to increase quality while (at a minimum) maintaining costs? Sell light bulbs? Fund raise by recycling? Reduce the NFL-wannabe-ness of Regional events (i.e. hold higher quantity of smaller events in inexpensive venues culminating in REAL super bowls)? Should we agree to raise the bar of entry to a minimum amount of students per team? Or should we craft and enact programs to give incentives for teams in saturated areas to consolidate?

I do not believe my current FRC team will exist in 5 years unless the over-arching FRC model changes. Of course given that I didn't know Jack 5 years ago, who knows what I know now.