Florida Rankings 2014

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by AlexD744

I should have re-phrased my question: Does anyone have info regarding what FIRST in Florida leadership is thinking about eventual transition?

On a personal note, I think we have almost enough teams to host a district with 4 districts. Although, at the current growth rate, I would agree with you and extend to say we'll never have enough teams, since we have had net loss of teams the past two years and this year we lost almost 25% of the teams that competed last year! However, I'm of the belief that we would have better retention rates in a district model, as teams get more for their money.

My biggest concern, however, is getting the volunteer base ready, as that is one of the largest hurdles when adding events quickly. I know others have also expressed concerns about the loss of the international teams that we compete with every year.

Speaking for the Orlando Regional Planning Committee, we're still exploring our options. There are many pros & cons to a district format, and many things that make Florida a unique situation not suited for exactly copying the other district models. One is not just team density, but location of the teams in the state, as well as the overall geography of the state. There's a lot of dead zones between clusters of teams. And many of the infant-mortality has come from the JC-Penney grant teams that never established a stronger sponsor base.

Schools are different - you don't have the large indoor spaces of schools up North, instead you have sprawling outdoor campuses. Teams that come to Florida are unique - how many Regionals can boast teams from Australia, Dominican Rep, Puerto Rico, Brazil, & Mexico? Not to mention we're a huge draw for snowbots .

Preserving the integrity of the competition & volunteer base are essential for us, and are main challenges in creating more competitions. It's been challenging enough for us to populate two regionals of volunteers, nevermind five or six. I understand with the large increase in districts up in Michigan, (not to mention the stressful game design this year) volunteers are being taxed to (past) their limits -4,5,6 events. Whatever we do in FL will have to have a strong volunteer development program first.

Plus like I said, we've got some ideas of our own to increase value at competitions (anyone heard of #botsonyachts?) without making any potential sacrifices to quality. Look at RoboVisionOD, RoboShow, and Thursday workshops. Not to mention the Mouse in the room down here...

TL/DR: We've got a lot of work to do before we can do districts here in Florida.