Registration 2013

[Nemo]

In my estimation, the district system doesn't have a major impact on driving distance from Iowa. We'd probably be going to Kansas City, St. Louis, etc, which are the same places we're going anyway.

I would be pretty happy to get into a district system because of the lower cost per event. I'd be sad to lose some of the current flexibility to travel in any direction to a regional event, but in the end we might retain that if everything goes district.

Originally Posted by Donut

How FIRST handles less population dense areas will definitely be key to the success of the District system. Having lived in Arizona as FRC got started there and Iowa now I've gotten a front row seat to FRC when there aren't a huge amount of teams or events around. The northern plains (Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, western Kansas) and the mountain west (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming) don't have any events or many teams right now and have a substantial amount of distance to travel to the nearest events. Where we're at in Iowa there are about 5 events equal distance from us but all are a 4-5 hour drive to get to so we'd be looking at substantial travel time for a district system. The southwest (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, lumping in Utah since they have a regional) has clusters of teams and a handful of events but they are spaced 6+ hours apart. Assuming teams could not compete in the California district events Vegas and Phoenix are the best off since they are 5 hours apart (though a Tucson, AZ regional has been discussed), Denver is over 7 hours from the closest competition. Eliminating the entry fee for a 2nd event sure helps but I think we could see a lot of "skeleton crews" consisting of the drive team and 1 or 2 mentors attending events when these areas become part of a district due to the substantial travel costs. Either that or teams will just forgo the 2nd event entirely.

Short of "forcing" new events in these areas and hoping new teams start up with them I'm not sure how FIRST is going to effectively move the District system into these areas on their timeline. I think it can happen in the future but 2015 is an ambitious goal for these regions.



We could always try to add one in Southern Minnesota/Northern Iowa If only there were teams there...