Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format

[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.)