New District Events for 2013?

[1986titans]

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

I know somebody has done this out there, but would love to see it again...

Does anyone have a google map prepared with team locations and regionals already mapped.

http://team1649.com/witwif/

[JimWright949]

Here is what in my opinion is the PNW district should be:



There are 170 teams in this section of the world. I included Turkey in this regional since most of the Turkish teams attend the Seattle Regional and I did not want to exclude them.

I was thinking the district motto may be 'Yep most of us can see Russia from here'

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by P.J.

Emphasis mine.

I'm not gonna go into the whole speech here, it's been done in lots of other places, but a District system actually makes it EASIER to get to Champs, because it isn't just the winners of the regionals, its the top 18 (or whatever) teams in the state by points.

And sorry for posting twice so soon after each other, but I didn't read through this whole thread before I threw in my first comment.

It makes it easier for the "best" teams to consistently go to Championships, but I suspect that it makes it a lot harder for teams like mine (which has never been to Championships before, and is going this year by virtue of winning a EI award) to ever go.

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by P.J.

I think the Northwest (meaning Oregon/Washington) is a very likely candidate to go to a district system soon. I've seen a couple people from high profile teams out in that area snooping around MI this year, but that isn't necessarily an indication of anything.

I am also a fan of a combined Hawaii/California region, and have heard rumoTrs of a combined Wisconsin/Minnesota region and a combined Indiana/Illinois region.

Nobody has mentioned it yet, but I figure I might as well throw out the idea of Israel going to a district system.

Now regarding Canada, I could see them going to their own region, but probably only under one condition, an option which I've been a supporter of since Day 1 (And I'm in MI so thats a long time ago ), and that is Cross-Region travel.

What is to stop a team from say, Michigan going to a MAR district and earning points that qualify towards the FiM state championship? As long as you still play the same 12 matches as everyone else, the points you earn should be the same, its just they count towards your own Regional Championship. I just think there shouldn't be a problem with crossover like this once (theoretically) all of FIRST goes to the district system.

We weren't snooping. We were scouting. We had a great time in Michigan. You have intense teams and incredible volunteers!!

[Ravage457]

It would be nice to have a district type system here in Texas, but i believe for that to happen in a few years. Texas could probably be divided into 3 different regions like all the teams in the north, here in south central Texas, and the south texas and coast region teams, i dont know how they would do it, but it would be nice to have a district system here, but would they also keep the regionals to, or would they do away with them?

[P.J.]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

We weren't snooping. We were scouting. We had a great time in Michigan. You have intense teams and incredible volunteers!!

I figured as much, I just thought it was funny considering what everyone else was saying in this thread.

And I'm glad you enjoyed your time here, we don't get many outside visitors anymore

[nobrakes8]

Originally Posted by Jacob Paikoff

With a number of regions moving towards districts I'm surprised there hasn't been any discussion about an open districts system. My idea is that everyone would get two district events, one would have to be in there region but the other one could be at any district event in the country that has room. This would fix the problem for low density areas or remote areas like Hawaii and allow them to have a district system without having as many teams as a larger area like New England. They would only need to have one event and then the teams could travel anywhere they want for the second one.

This is my FIRST year back in FIRST since high school and I'm still trying to figure out this whole district stuff. But I like this idea a lot because a few of us engineering mentors on my team have been talking about doing the team 69 model where they compete in a local regional and then go somewhere far away. Our team has mentors who are from CT, Pittsburgh, Rochester, & Philly so we'd obviously like to take our team out there (our philosophy is since the championship seems impossible to get into why not just travel somewhere further away to compete against different teams). I just hope they leave enough opportunities to travel if teams choose to.

I saw a few posts about Texas too --I hope they hold off a little bit on switching to districts. I think there are a lot of resource/mentor constrained teams here in DFW and I won't be surprised if we see a lot of teams merge in the next few seasons . I think we might see a reverse new england/midwest model where a lot of veteran teams started with 2/3/4 high schools and as individual schools got more involved they split off. Just my $0.02.

[EricH]

Something I remember from way back long ago, as I was going to a preship back in 1999 (the second year I was hanging around, but my first competition). What I remember was that I was told that FIRST higherups wanted to go to more and smaller events. 10 years before the district system started. 10. YEARS. That's a long time, and it takes planning.

I think what'll probably happen in 2013 is that no new areas go district (maybe MN and WI). But in 2014, there will be an explosion of areas going district--New England and California being the most likely, with the Pacific Northwest being right behind.



For all you including all of Montana in a PNW district system: Make sure you also include Wyoming and Colorado. Otherwise the eastern Montana teams won't have a close competition to go to. Western Montana is a stretch as it is unless competitions are added to Idaho. The same goes for western South Dakota in a Minnesota district system--Denver's closer at this point in time than the Twin Cities.

[Mark Sheridan]

Eventually as districts grow, we will have teams that are stuck between two districts. A lot of the international teams will have a similar problem. We should give these teams the option to chose a district they want to be part of. To draw an example from high school athletics; there are two nevada high schools that compete in California leagues because they are closer.

This may not be convenient at all for international teams. In cross country, track field and most distant running races have all-comer meets. these events have people of all ages compete. Often there will be professionals looking for training or make a qualifing time for a professional event.

If most of FIRST goes district, we could have a week 6 lull where all-comer events could take place. These open events enabling the regional spirit to continue. Teams could continue the tradition of traveling far to a new event. It would enable some teams to bypass district qualifing adding some redundancy in qualifying for champs. Hopefully by being week 6, these all-comer events would be a lot of fun since most teams have should have fixed all their bugs.

[JimWright949]

Originally Posted by EricH

I think what'll probably happen in 2013 is that no new areas go district (maybe MN and WI). But in 2014, there will be an explosion of areas going district--New England and California being the most likely, with the Pacific Northwest being right behind.

I think the PNW is closer to the District System than 2014. My bet in talking to our leadership it's probably next year, some people have been thinking about it for a year or so now.

Originally Posted by EricH

For all you including all of Montana in a PNW district system: Make sure you also include Wyoming and Colorado. Otherwise the eastern Montana teams won't have a close competition to go to. Western Montana is a stretch as it is unless competitions are added to Idaho. The same goes for western South Dakota in a Minnesota district system--Denver's closer at this point in time than the Twin Cities.

You may have missed my post earlier that put three districts around Boise, one of them could be in Butte, Helena, or Great Falls.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Mark Sheridan

Eventually as districts grow, we will have teams that are stuck between two districts. A lot of the international teams will have a similar problem. We should give these teams the option to chose a district they want to be part of. To draw an example from high school athletics; there are two nevada high schools that compete in California leagues because they are closer.

This may not be convenient at all for international teams. In cross country, track field and most distant running races have all-comer meets. these events have people of all ages compete. Often there will be professionals looking for training or make a qualifing time for a professional event.

If most of FIRST goes district, we could have a week 6 lull where all-comer events could take place. These open events enabling the regional spirit to continue. Teams could continue the tradition of traveling far to a new event. It would enable some teams to bypass district qualifing adding some redundancy in qualifying for champs. Hopefully by being week 6, these all-comer events would be a lot of fun since most teams have should have fixed all their bugs.

I could easily see a point a few years out where the hard lines between districts fizzle out.

As much as I dislike the idea of walling off enclaves, the borders are necessary to get the district style events up and running, to get the volunteers and support infrastructure in place. But...

Once enough areas move into district formats (especially when there are neighboring districts), there doesn't have to be hard boundaries between districts to prevent cross-pollination of teams. Both areas have the events and support infrastructure in place, and both allocated enough open spots at their districts for all teams.

Assuming the teams who want to "travel" is roughly equal between the districts, there's no reason to prevent non home-district teams from attending those events. If ten teams want to compete elsewhere in Week 2, there are now ten slots available to all teams. Registration could also work with the first two districts being guaranteed to local (home district) teams, while third district registration is first come, first served for everyone.

At that point, the only real need for borders is to determine which district championship your award/performance points accrue toward.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by JimWright949

You may have missed my post earlier that put three districts around Boise, one of them could be in Butte, Helena, or Great Falls.

You're right, I did. But that still doesn't solve the problem of the mountains and the long drive over them to an event.


My point is this: When you're drawing the region boundaries for districts, look at where the teams are going currently. 9 times out of 10, teams will go to their closest event or closest 2 events. If you have a team that is going to Utah and Colorado but not Spokane, then you should probably ask them if they're interested in being in a district that includes events in Great Falls, Helena, or Butte.

To take the South Dakota example, which I'm a bit more familiar with: Most of the (now non-existent) teams would have gone to Kansas City--this was before Colorado existed, let alone Minnesota or Utah (the regionals, not the states!), and I have that from one of the mentors at that time. But, with the current regional setup, teams in eastern SD would tend to go to Minneapolis for either 10K Lakes or North Star--it's only a few hours away. For the teams in the western half of the state, that's a full day's drive and possibly then some (5 hours to Sioux Falls, not counting the time change, then the few-hour drive). For those teams, Denver makes more sense, as it's only most of a day driving (or a short flight for a team who had a few frequent-flyer miles lying around)--if Utah was considered, it would be a second option along with Minnesota. So if MN decides unilaterally that the Dakotas are part of their district, the western half of the state will be in the same boat that Michigan's UP is in currently--their closest event is not in the district system. (Note that this whole example is currently a moot point--SD has no FRC teams.)

See where I'm going? I know you can't please everybody, but at least making the attempt is better than just saying "You are in our area". That's what MAR did by only including certain parts of Pennsylvania this year.

And, as a corollary: When forming a district, asking teams that go to only events in that area, regardless of where they are physically located, if they would like to stay in the district or not would be a really good idea. (Ask the Chilean team--one year at Great Lakes and then MSC formed, so they've been at Los Angeles ever since.)

[Lil' Lavery]

I find some of the objections to district events a little strange given what MAR has done this season. Particularly states/regions claiming they need more regionals before they move to a district system. MAR only has 99 teams and the area only encompassed two existing regionals (Philadelphia and New Jersey). Granted, both events are very old and the volunteers and teams in the region have had a long time to get acclimated from FIRST. But the region certainly doesn't have the team or volunteer population of many of the other areas, and relied heavily on volunteer crossover between events and drawing volunteers from other nearby regionals (New York, Chesapeake, DC, etc.).

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Although it seems to be against what others are saying on this thread, I for one don't really want a district system for California. It seems to me like it would just make it a lot harder to get to Championships, and make us miss a lot more days of school (two/three district events, district champs, and then real Championships).

Personally, I really like they way things are now.

Dawgma missed a grand total of two days of school to attend three MAR events this season. Each district is only two days long, and some of them are Saturday/Sunday. We lucked out by having day 1 of Hatboro fall over an in-service (no school) day, so we didn't miss any school until Thursday and Friday of this week for MAR Championship.

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

I'm not sure if Ontario would go to a District model just yet, seeing that FIRST Canada is pretty set on expanding FIRST across Canada right now. Montreal is going to be a BIG regional next year (their growth has been phenomenal), and I think the focus should be to develop FIRST in Western Canada (one day I could see Calgary as a powerhouse region for FIRST).

I don't see how those are mutually exclusive.

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

District Championship would rotate between Manchester, Hartford and Worcester or just be in Worcester based on it's central location.

It would be semi-ironic to have Dean Guceri's "new" university (WPI) host the New England region championship when his departure from Drexel was one of the big impetus for the creation of MAR (due to the additional cost of the Philadelphia regional once Drexel was no longer an option).

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

MAR district events are all Saturday-Sunday so kids miss no school here...

Edit: Sorry for the double post, guys!

Only the New Jersey events were Saturday-Sunday. Hatboro-Horsham and Chestnut Hill were Friday-Saturday.

[SamMullen]

Originally Posted by JimWright949

Here is what in my opinion is the PNW district should be:



There are 170 teams in this section of the world. I included Turkey in this regional since most of the Turkish teams attend the Seattle Regional and I did not want to exclude them.

I was thinking the district motto may be 'Yep most of us can see Russia from here'

I think that as soon as the PNW goes to a district model, most (if not all) of the Turkish teams will go to the Midwest regional, where if I remember correctly one of the four Turkish teams goes already.

[Nemo]

Related to teams caught between districts:

We're in Iowa (only 4 teams in our state), and I'd love to see a district system near us, as long as we get an opportunity to join it. I don't see how being forced to travel would be a strike against districts, because we already travel a decent distance to any event we attend. I'd be thrilled with a district system for the simple reason that we'd get an extra event for the same registration cost.