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Well Dave, let me first apoligize if I seemed offensive for my post. I didn't mean to flame other robot organizations! (I need to learn to stop posting to forums when I'm in a bad mood!)
The point that I was trying to make is that from a high schooler's standpoint (and that of most high schoolers I know), I will always put forth more effort to try to win competitions that appear to have more prestiege. For years our school was invited to programming competitions held by the Alabama Council for Technology in Education, but had trouble getting anyone interested in attendance -- because they knew that there would be little to no competition at the event and it just wouldn't be worth the time. However, when the University of Alabama launched a similar competition with hundreds of participants and full scholarships to the winners .... we got TONS of interest from high schoolers (I even won a digital camera and $1,000 scholarship!).
If FIRST can make a smaller event seem prestigious (I suppose they could), more power to them! I just will always favor the current (big and exciting) atmosphere that the regionals provide.
I fully understand that the expense of regional events is preventing FIRST from growing at the rates it would like, however at least my opinion is that that quality should prevail over quantity any day.
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