Registration 2014

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Can you believe there are tons of mentors in the area who want to delay this region's districts to 2016?

We're on the waitlist for Chesapeake - we wanted North Carolina or Palmetto since we haven't been to either, but both were totally full at 12:08 when we were able to get on for round 2. I was hoping to be able to get to see some old friends who now mentor teams attending Palmetto.

Thankfully 2014 is the last year the teams around here have to deal with the race to a 2nd regional. Yet even with that good decision for next year, it's undermined by the fact that FIRST put the Philly FTC Super Regional on the SAME GD DAYS as the DC regional. If FIRST ever wanted to send a message about what teams should prioritize, that would be one. We have some tough decisions to make in the coming weeks, and other FRC events being jam-packed doesn't help at all.

While there are many benefits to the district system and I am glad that my area is going to be participating in such a system this season avoiding the race to the second registration is not one of the advantages of the system. Just look at the wait lists in FiM. You may get a break in that the first year or two, particularly if the growth rate is stagnant in the district.

As far as "FIRST" putting the FTC super regional on the same weekend as a FRC event I think you are blaming the wrong entity. Fact is for the most part FTC is run separately from FRC. Area FTC program managers are often not in contact with the RDs and it was planning committees made up of those FTC program managers and others involved with FTC who have organized and set the dates for the FTC super regionals FIRST headquarters had little to do with that. There are many things to consider when setting those dates and a lot of it has to do with how FTC has been run in those areas traditionally, including the dates for their qualifiers and a number of other factors. FIRST is in a transition period and going forward they are looking to unify how the different programs are implemented across the US. A good example is the fact that the FRC district system will be playing with a unified points system for this season rather than leaving many of the details of that to the individual areas to decide.

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

You mean you don't like scrambling for the chance to pay $9000 for 16 matches instead of being guaranteed $5000 for 24? Are you some crazy person?

*cries*
*shakes fist*
*emails regional directors again*

I'm sorry but you just don't know the effort required to transition to the district system. If you did you would know why there is resistance. One main factor is finding the volunteers required for all those events. Sure we have some great volunteers but we have to be very careful to prevent burn out if we try to have the existing base cover 6 or 7 weekends of events rather than 1 or 2. Certainly there are those among the base that are going to be happy to have the chance to volunteer at many more events but for others we run the risk of pushing them away if we ask too much of them.

Then there is the need to find the locations for all those district events. People from WA FIRST robotics visited around 100 sites to pick the locations for the 7 district events to be held in our state. You must consider many factors in determining if a venue is suitable and you have fit within the availability of the multiple facilities.

Finally there is just the logistics of the fields ect. WA FIRST Robotics has rented a large warehouse to be able to deal with the fields that we have had to purchase. A team of 6 of use spent most of Tue evening just painting the wood to construct the road cases to transport our fields. Even more people spent about 10 hours on building those cases yesterday and we don't even have a single case completely finished. We expect our team of 10 to put in another 10-12 hour day today and probably spend most of Sun before we get the basic cases built.

The amount of labor and capital to get a district system is enormous. I hope that when your area goes to the district system you put your hammer where your mouth is, step up to the plate and be one of the many people who will be needed to make it happen. For example there is a group from Oregon who have traveled about 6 hours to come and make the road case build project happen. They left Oregon at O'dark:30 to be at the field house by about noon yesterday and they will probably not be home until midnight Sun.