Future First Championship News

[Squillo]

I think most of the kids (probably all of them) on our "middle-of-the-road" team would be just as happy, excited and inspired to go to a "half-worlds" championship, get to play with and be inspired by half of the best teams in the world, as to go to a true "World Championship." I can see both sides of that part of the argument. If this new arrangement actually accomplished that for a majority of teams, it might have SOME merit. Though a "super-regional" on the west coast would do just as well in that regard.

It's just a shame that their attempt to "lower travel costs" does absolutely nothing for the teams on the whole west side of the mainland US, not to mention Hawaii, Mexico, Australia, China, Japan, and the other teams we play with over here. Nor for teams in Europe/Israel/etc.

When I started reading the post, I thought - "Wow! Geographical split! They're finally going to have a championship event on the west coast! (Because west coast/east coast, or something similar - Detroit/Las Vegas, maybe? - was so obvious...) But then I read on.... You can't tell me that they couldn't find any city in the whole west side of the continent that could host this event???

This makes things easier for the MI/Toronto/NE/MAR teams only, as far as I can tell. Someone should figure out exactly what percentage of all the teams are benefited in any way by this, and ARE they the teams that really NEED that help the most? Does this actually benefit teams that are NOT currently attending champs BECAUSE of the travel cost? I'd like to see some data on that. Where are the teams who qualify for champs but can't go because of cost - are they in Michigan or NY? Or in Washington State, China, and Israel? Or in Florida? Just curious. I know if we'd qualified any year between 2011 and this year, inclusive, we would most likely not have been able to go, due to cost.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

While my initial reaction was very similar to many of those expressed earlier in this thread, I think there's something that we're missing, and that we need to reserve judgement until we find out what it is. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but Dave Lavery's post has made me believe that we're not seeing the entire picture, and that the final result will be better.

The sky, contrary to popular belief, is not falling.

[nerdrock101]

Originally Posted by Jacob Bendicksen

While my initial reaction was very similar to many of those expressed earlier in this thread, I think there's something that we're missing, and that we need to reserve judgement until we find out what it is. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but Dave Lavery's post has made me believe that we're not seeing the entire picture, and that the final result will be better.

The sky, contrary to popular belief, is not falling.

This is my thought too. I'm taking a Hanlon's Razor approach to it: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity". Though, in this case I might change that last word to ignorance. Reader's choice.

I volunteered for a regional last weekend and it completely changed my perspective. There were many teams that were just happy that they finally got the stack of three they designed their robot for, or got a buzzer beater tote onto the scoring platform. It's about what the students can do, not about who else they can beat. If we're proud of them for winning, it's little different from a traditional sport. I'm proud of the robot that comes out at the end and all the work they put into learning how to make it.

[madhav]

Originally Posted by Squillo

I'd like to see some data on that.

This might help. Posted wayyy back.

Originally Posted by Madison

For the sake of informing the discussion, the circles on this map represent a 750 mile radius drawn from each of the three cities. It's pretty clear that these areas encompass a majority of current FRC teams.

I chose 750 miles because that's the furthest I've ever driven without wanting to die. It's about a 12 hour drive.

[Karibou]

Its been a while since I've posted on CD and i havent been directly involved with a team since 2011, but for what its worth:

I can't speak for "higher level" teams who's goal is to win a world championship. I see how you're disappointed in the split. I'm not saying you're wrong for wanting to win big and be the definitive winner. But, I'd like to remind everyone that FIRST IS growing. Would you rather have one, proportional championship event, with no wait list and potentially nearly 1000 teams attending one event in several years? Or would you rather have more, equally competitive teams spread between two events? Or force teams to travel three weekends in a row at the end of a season to attend a district championship, then a super regional, then the world championship? Even two weekends for a super regional+worlds would be bad

Remember that these venue contracts have to be signed a few years in advance, and while the propositon may seem unreasonable now, it may work a lot better in 3 years when there are more, more competitive robots, from fantastic teams. You cant wait until growth happens, and then change the model that year, or even the year after. From my perspective, FIRST is just planning ahead.

Would you be more disappointed if you were a crucial component of a winning alliance and had a high performance robot, but could not attend CMP because only first round picks were invited to attend to keep the number of teams attending down, but you were the second round pick of the #8 alliance?

When I was in high school, my team's sole goal was to make it to eliminations of any event (regional or district). Our robot wasn't great. Heck, a couple of years we just wanted a working robot. Even with our bar set low, we were still inspired. It didn't matter to me who was crowned the best, all I see through my poor-performance-goggle is "those teams are awesome", not "omg 469 won CMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". 1189 is currently very much in the running for one of MI's bids to CMP. The team has not attended a Championship Event since 2005. We have had two full four-year generations go by without attending CMP. Last year, the team was one of the top teams in the state and had the opportunity to go, but couldn't for financial reasons, since they had not planned for success. They no doubt deserved to go. Its obviously a slightly different view being based out of metro Detroit, but I think 1189 can relate highly to the east coast and Midwest teams (which is quite a lot of teams) who now have a closer CMP to attend with a smaller travel budget. They would be thrilled to just be able to attend. I imagine this viewpoint is probably very different than that of a team who performs well every year and qualifies for CMP every year.

Even if FIRST had split east-west, nobody would win besides those within a 10hr drive time radius. Those in the midwest would still be faced with large travel times, just as how the west coast and other areas are still faced with high travel times for the new model. There is no perfect solution to make travel reasonable for everyone, and I fully support FIRST in their choices of cities. With the current competition model, Michigan has a huge number of teams and is sending a lot to CMP, and Texas has also seen significant growth in the past few years. A LOT of teams come from the east. If we're basically splitting east-midwest+everywhere else, I don't know how someone could argue that Detroit is better than STL diatance-wise when considering convenience for the majority of teams attending, assuming that teams will be able to pick their preferred event (and we don't know that yet). Fact: there is a higher density of teams along the east coast and in MI.

Think about the big picture. Perspective is everything.