Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format

[rsegrest]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

The response regarding thinking we would be further along in regions moving to Districts holds merit. This change could possibly help move that forward. I'd love to see more discussion about that.

This ^
I believe FIRST thought the majority of states would be on the district model by now. I don’t think they expected moving to districts would take so long or meet with the resistance that it has in some areas (which begs the question of why they were surprised that there was so much backlash over the schplit but I digress). It is human nature to be fearful and angry about things we don’t understand or that we feel have come at us from out of the blue. The problem they have encountered with the move to districts IMHO right now is several-fold:

1. A lack of understanding of the district model (which I am very guilty of myself but am taking steps to rectify for me personally)
2. Concerns with the costs of moving to the district model (who is going to pay for everything and how)
3. The geographic density of teams (in some states it is sparser than others)

Jane, I agree, I think that this is a huge push to make districts happen by ’17 and I think that this all goes back to the fundamental vision of having FIRST everywhere.

*Sidebar*
As far as the complaints about Detroit and Houston only time will tell if they were the right choices or not but I will say this: Please remember, this is a public forum and we are setting the tone for which these two cities will accept us as a community. If I were either a Detroit/Michigan team or a Houston team (which we are...kind of the red-headed step-child but it's our home regional ) I might start to get a little miffed at all the negative rep our HOME has gotten here on CD.

Thank you guys who did attend the meeting and try to get some answers. They may not have been the answers we wanted but at least you were there and took the notes!