[FRC Blog] Two Championship Survey Results and Path Forward

[drwisley]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

My point was primarily to point out that the results for that question could be misleading, when the other stakeholders were not invited to participate in the survey.

Also, I'd say the program/event sponsors are the highest paying stakeholder here (by a wide margin).

I bet the engineering hours of our mentors being donated far exceed any of the green dollars spent by teams or sponsors. We're talking about the 'engineer's engineers' as well. Competing is fun, laughing at teenagers is also, but we could all be inventing or running side businesses with these hours.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by drwisley

I bet the engineering hours of our mentors being donated far exceed any of the green dollars spent by teams or sponsors. We're talking about the 'engineer's engineers' as well. Competing is fun, laughing at teenagers is also, but we could all be inventing or running side businesses with these hours.

If you're going to consider aggregate man hours donated, then FLL wins in a landslide. Even if you appraise an engineer's man hour higher than a teacher's or parent's, the quantity of FLL teams is an order of magnitude higher than FRC teams.

[jman4747]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Is that true? Do sponsors really contribute more funds than the combined team fees?

I honestly don't know. Would be curious to hear the numbers.

Both FIRST's sponsors and team's sponsors contribute. Though several major sponsors of both are on the board/were part of the decision in the first place.

[drwisley]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

If you're going to consider aggregate man hours donated, then FLL wins in a landslide. Even if you appraise an engineer's man hour higher than a teacher's or parent's, the quantity of FLL teams is an order of magnitude higher than FRC teams.

That could be, but having coached both, most of my mentors could do meaningful work with the 3-7 hundred hours per year donated to FRC. Average FLL hours per mentor don't compare.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Is that true? Do sponsors really contribute more funds than the combined team fees?

I honestly don't know. Would be curious to hear the numbers.

Looking through the 2014 data, I get pretty close to 50/50 for FRC. If you allocate FRCs portion of the FIRST G&A, then money outside of registration fees pays a bigger portion of what it takes for FIRST to do FRC.
Now if you consider that big chunks of those registration fees are also being paid by some of the same sponsors giving directly to FIRST, then you would likely see something more along 19-25% team generated funding vs. 75-90% Corporate donations. I am not saying teams do not work hard for those donations, but I am trying to remind everyone that FRC is a very heavily subsidized game we all play being subsidized by sponsors who are betting on us to help change the culture of the World, and provide the workforce they need to change the world.

PSA: Now that the season is over, Don't forget to thank your sponsors! It is one of the best ways to ensure they don't forget about you when they start handing out the money.

[drwisley]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

If you're going to consider aggregate man hours donated, then FLL wins in a landslide. Even if you appraise an engineer's man hour higher than a teacher's or parent's, the quantity of FLL teams is an order of magnitude higher than FRC teams.

Additionally, this is my very point, not FRC > FLL mentors, but that mentor engagement and motivation is the critical aspect of all STEM. Schools, sponsors and students have something tangible to be gained. The engineers can just as easily turn their hours into individual profit.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Is that true? Do sponsors really contribute more funds than the combined team fees?

I honestly don't know. Would be curious to hear the numbers.

Entry fees to Champs are about $3M. A quick estimate is that Regional Fees are about another $15M. I haven't added in District fees.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by evanperryg

Case in point. Angry people tend to be louder than happy people. However, Holtzman makes a very good point that we, and FIRST, should consider. The numbers show a larger negative trend than it might seem.
My problem isn't completely with the 2 championship idea. I think with the right refinements, it will work just fine. I have a problem with how FIRST is dividing the event, because, at least in my not-so-humble opinion, they are moving the wrong way. Here's a quote from Don Bossi, copied from the transcript of the 2 Champs informational session:
"At this event last year we announced that we found a way here within St. Louis
to increase that and try to get that back into the 20 percent [of all FRC teams qualifying for champs] range by going to 600 teams...
The story for FIRST® LEGO® League, FIRST® Tech Challenge, Junior FIRST® LEGO® League is
much worse. FIRST Tech Challenge has the capacity for about 3 percent of their teams at
Championship. FIRST LEGO League, it kills me when I talk to a FIRST LEGO League partner
for a country and I say, oh we can’t even send a team this year, we don’t have a slot this year."
He then discusses some thrown-out options for changing FRC. The fact that he doesn't go into detail about how changing the timing of FRC would improve qualification rates leads me to believe that the ideas he discusses wouldn't have fixed anything. As far as I'm concerned, his presentation of these ideas is little more than a way to strengthen his point through shocking the audience.
Rhetoric aside, the most viable solution to the problems experienced by FLL and FTC are most easily resolved by the one solution that was discussed for the least amount of time. Why not put FTC at one event, and FRC at another? I recognize that FIRST wants to keep their programs intertwined, going along with the "progression of programs," but by giving FTC their own world championship venue, the size and scale of the FRC venue, they will be able to boost qualification rates astronomically. An FTC/FLL championship would also permit FTC to gain its own public identity. When asked about student robotics competitions, I have never come across a non-FIRSTer who knew anything about FTC. Most of them will answer a question about student robotics with something related to "I saw one that plays basketball!" or "oh, the little lego robots, right?" Perhaps it's time FIRST allowed FTC to gain their own identity, and make their championship event into their championship event. Perhaps it would be more logical to expand FLL into a double championship format, as head-to-head competition is a small, even nonexistent part of their program. By splitting FLL, you avoid the problems with not deciding a single winner of a highly competitive program, and you offer more space for more FLL teams to qualify. By putting FRC at one event and FTC at another, you keep the 2 most competitive events together, while significantly increasing the qualification rates for FTC.

This is an interesting passage because it reveals an important motivation for FIRST HQ. I think they see FLL, not FRC, as their future. I suspect that LEGO has a huge voice behind FIRST--FLL must be an important market of LEGO. So raising the visibility of FLL becomes most important.

Unfortunately, this is like trying to use AYSO to promote interest in soccer. While AYSO participation has exploded, it has had little impact on the interest in soccer in the U.S. In fact such interest has only increased as the women's team became dominant at the World Cup and the men's team really became competitive in 1994.

[Citrus Dad]

One question we asked was just a simple ‘How do you feel about having two FIRST Championships starting in 2017?’ with an answer of 1 representing ‘Strongly Oppose’, an answer of 5 identified as “Neither Oppose nor Favor” and an answer of 10 identified as “Strongly Favor”. The average answer to this questions among all respondents was 4.45, somewhat below the 5 "Neither Oppose nor Favor" rating.

This statement is misleading. Based on the graphic, the respondents to the survey oppose the championsplit 62.5% to 37.5% (after removing the '"5s"). That's a pretty overwhelming landslide in opposition. I'm not sure if a presidential candidate has ever exceeded that in the popular vote. The decision looks to be deeply, deeply unpopular.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

This statement is misleading. Based on the graphic, the respondents to the survey oppose the championsplit 62.5% to 37.5% (after removing the '"5s"). That's a pretty overwhelming landslide in opposition. I'm not sure if a presidential candidate has ever exceeded that in the popular vote. The decision looks to be deeply, deeply unpopular.

That's actually a very interesting comparison. Wikipedia tells me no; the highest popular vote take home was LBJ in '64 with 61.05%. This means that no US president since 1824* has had this level of a popular vote mandate. Granted, even the US has better voter turn out than this. *First available data.

[grstex]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

This statement is misleading. Based on the graphic, the respondents to the survey oppose the championsplit 62.5% to 37.5% (after removing the '"5s"). That's a pretty overwhelming landslide in opposition. I'm not sure if a presidential candidate has ever exceeded that in the popular vote. The decision looks to be deeply, deeply unpopular.

26+11+11+7=55%. I don't know where you're getting 62.5%. Even if you split the 12% of Neutral responses, that brings you to 61%. But splitting neutral responses really wouldn't be fair analysis. That's like counting undecided voters as going to one candidate or another, when they've clearly stated they're undecided.

[mklinker]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

This statement is misleading. Based on the graphic, the respondents to the survey oppose the championsplit 62.5% to 37.5% (after removing the '"5s"). That's a pretty overwhelming landslide in opposition. I'm not sure if a presidential candidate has ever exceeded that in the popular vote. The decision looks to be deeply, deeply unpopular.

This statement is misleading! There is no valid interpretation of the data that shows 62% of respondents opposing the championship split.

[Knufire]

55/88 = 62.5, neutral voters were removed from the total as well. So 62.5% of respondents who did not answer neutral were in the opposing range, which is exactly what his statement said.

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Karthik

FIRST's analysis of the survey numbers and this thread are great examples of the old theory of "people are just going to see what they want to see in the numbers."

When I looked at the numbers, I immediately grouped the data into buckets.

Strongly oppose (ratings 1-3): 48%
Neutral (ratings 4-7): 29%
Strongly favour (ratings 8-10): 23%

Of course, my parsing of the data is probably skewed by my own biases. Your mileage may vary.

Seems to me this is the most reasonable analysis (could argue 7 is favour, but could go either way). Removing neutral voters makes no sense. They have an opinion. Neutral is a totally valid opinion.

I don't think you can look at this data and reasonably say "most of FRC is opposed to two Championships," especially when the nonvoters likely don't care/are neutral.

[grstex]

Originally Posted by Knufire

55/88 = 62.5, neutral voters were removed from the total as well.

I see. But that doesn't actually represent the response to the survey. That's only a poll of those who are biased one way or the other. It's not like the neutral opinions don't count.