Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format

[Kevin Sevcik]

How many teams are you planning on for your FRC-only Champs? You can only cram so many into a venue. I'm pretty sure Houston can host 400 teams in style. 600 teams and 8 divisions would start to get crowded. Any more than that, and I think you're going to be disappointed in the results. I'm pretty sure 600 team capacity is necessary, since regionals this year could generate 336 champs slots. So unless you're eliminating some of those slots, you're going to have to have 600+ teams at some sort of championship event come 2017.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

How many teams are you planning on for your FRC-only Champs? You can only cram so many into a venue. I'm pretty sure Houston can host 400 teams in style. 600 teams and 8 divisions would start to get crowded. Any more than that, and I think you're going to be disappointed in the results. I'm pretty sure 600 team capacity is necessary, since regionals this year could generate 336 champs slots. So unless you're eliminating some of those slots, you're going to have to have 600+ teams at some sort of championship event come 2017.

I'm not directly arguing for the proposal, but isn't 2017 also the deadline to roll out more Districts? I wouldn't expect to have 56 Regionals in 2017, not with Texas, Minnesota, NY, Capitol Region, California (however they do it), etc, switching over. Or is this not happening/not definitive?

I like the Detroit FLL/FTC+Exhibition strategy. I'd actually suggest switching it so this is in Houston, only because that keeps FRC Worlds centrally located in St. Louis a year longer. That means only 3 years of a Detroit Championship are set in stone, not even a full high school career. Just a thought.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Siri

I'm not directly arguing for the proposal, but isn't 2017 also the deadline to roll out more Districts? I wouldn't expect to have 56 Regionals in 2017, not with Texas, Minnesota, NY, Capitol Region, California (however they do it), etc, switching over. Or is this not happening/not definitive?

While at this point I've heard even the most ardent regional supporters are now saying "when" about Districts in Minnesota, whether we'll be in Districts by 2017 has yet to be seen. Certainly there hasn't been a public announcement or any obvious planning.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Siri

I'm not directly arguing for the proposal, but isn't 2017 also the deadline to roll out more Districts? I wouldn't expect to have 56 Regionals in 2017, not with Texas, Minnesota, NY, Capitol Region, California (however they do it), etc, switching over. Or is this not happening/not definitive?

Districts are going to sweep across the country in the coming years from what i've been seeing and hearing. Virginia, the Capitol Region, Minnesota, even Georgia and North Carolina have been in talks of transitioning over in the next few years. I feel like the transition to districts in so many more regions may be enough to circumvent any overpopulation issues at championships.

[EricH]

I've got a "different" proposal. I'm not going to discuss 2 Championships with 800 combined teams, or 1 with 600+ teams.

I'm going to counter with: "When (not if) does this become 4 Championships, with a combined 800+ teams, with/without a single World Championship Final Event? And, what does that look like?"

I'm early, I know. But if you really want to make things "easier" on teams, why go north/south when you can go east/west (or even all 4 directions)?

So let's think about this a moment. Say you have 4 championships. North, South, East, West. South is (generally) held somewhere in TX/LA/FL/Ga. North tends to migrate towards MI/IL. West is somewhere on the West Coast (we do have a few venues out here big enough); East is, obviously, somewhere on the East Coast (but biased towards the Northeast). Each championship is fed by teams from a defined area, by some defined set of qualifiers. (For simplicity: the standard 6 teams/event will do, at least for discussion.) Each championship gets at least 200 teams, probably more (200 is too small and too big to work with what's next).

As a side note, you should be able to get a 400-team event into any of those regions, somehow. For a 2-championship system, this allows some rotation between cities--and said rotation offers a different batch of teams a better chance to slide in as volunteers or spectators if they don't make it.

Per championship event, you will have either 2 or 4 divisions (leaning towards 4, each with 60-70 teams, rather than 2 with 100). See "previous years' championships" for play style. Each event will also have a feed from the other championship events for viewing. At the end, you send all the winners and certain other designated teams to one location--let's just say about 60 teams in all, to St. Louis, because we can. And then... they play for the World Championship. (For some reason, venues that can handle a 60-team event are much easier to find than venues that can handle a 400-team event...)

Or you come up with some other way of naming a World Champion--computer simulation, FRC Top 25, highest total points, best win-loss record as an alliance...

[gblake]

Folks it's almost amusing to see just how deeply many of us are stuck in the rut of thinking that FIRST Championships (now that there are going to be more than one) will only occur in North America (a few years from now).

Discuss ...

Blake

[EricH]

Originally Posted by gblake

Folks it's almost amusing to see just how deeply many of us are stuck in the rut of thinking that FIRST Championships (now that there are going to be more than one) will only occur in North America (a few years from now).

Discuss ...

Blake

Where are the vast majority of teams and events located currently?

Or rather: Name the 4 official regionals that have taken place outside of continental North America in at least one year. (Hint: Brazil Pilot Regional only lasted 2 years; the other 3 are going strong.)

That being said, I can see in the far distant future having one or more outside of North America. Exactly where is an open question, though...

[gblake]

Originally Posted by EricH

Where are the vast majority of teams and events located currently?

Or rather: Name the 4 official regionals that have taken place outside of continental North America in at least one year. (Hint: Brazil Pilot Regional only lasted 2 years; the other 3 are going strong.)

That being said, I can see in the far distant future having one or more outside of North America. Exactly where is an open question, though...

Eric, your post just happened to be the one before mine. Mine wasn't written as a comment about yours in particular.

My counterpoint to your specific points quoted here is that I'll bet a cold Mountain Dew that China jumps into FRC with both feet very soon.

Regardless, how long do you suppose it will be before there are 100 to 200 decent teams in a cluster somewhere on Earth, who make a good case for not having to travel halfway around the planet to participate in one of the multiple North America Championships? And instead justify having one of their own?

If you want to plan for the future, it makes sense to include that scenario in the possible futures you assess.

Blake

[EricH]

Originally Posted by gblake

My counterpoint to your specific points quoted here is that I'll bet a cold Mountain Dew that China jumps into FRC with both feet very soon.

Regardless, how long do you suppose it will be before there are 100 to 200 decent teams in a cluster somewhere on Earth, who make a good case for not having to travel halfway around the planet to participate in one of the multiple North America Championships? And instead justify having one of their own?

I would suspect that it might be quite a while. Other than possibly China, nobody's been able to field more than about a dozen traveling teams to North America, and certainly not for long (China has a bunch of rookies right now; we'll see how they go next year). Brazil folded, mostly, as far as events and most of their teams. New Zealand/Australia is probably the leading candidate in my mind--before Australia got going, NZ was seriously considering having a regional but dropped out. They also happen to be "relatively close" to China and Hawaii (who also have a long trip regardless of where they go--logistics are a touch easier to the U.S. as far as "still in the same country" goes).

Once that happens, I would suspect that for the World Championship, you'd simply redistribute the numbers per Region Championship to include the "International" Championship. (Something like the Little League model, give or take a few stretched analogies.)