[FRC Blog] Two Championship Survey Results and Path Forward

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I don't have anything of statistical significance, no. I did text a few members of my senior class on 116 if they remember who won in 2007, and none of them did (with the exception of me, if that counts). One of them had even returned to mentor 116 afterwards.

I'm not sure that 2007 qualifies as "a year or two" (-quote by Dean). Anecdote: Using 1640 for the past two years would be cheating, but I know most of my students from say classes '11 to '14 could've told you how 469 didn't win in 2010 and (for '12 onward) that 1114 didn't in 2012, even if they don't remember who did. (This is an example of something below*)

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Dean's next sentence in that quote is: "They leave here with a whole new perspective on the world." He seems to be making the argument that the N people who don't remember who won also don't care who won. I'm not sure this is accurate. Think about what you remember most vividly in FIRST or even in life. *I think people remember inspiration, they remember upsets, they remember crazy amazing things. Using the inability to remember a string of numbers as a proxy for not caring about the elite competition doesn't make sense to me. If we want people to be inspiring by STEM, then the vehicle we're using should be as good at its intended purpose as possible. Dean's quote is in a CNN article entitled "Superbowl of Robotics". Worlds is what people are supposed to watch when they want our Superbowl.

I understand the argument that not enough people see that vehicle right now, and I can accept that HQ sees the Split as a solution to that. I just want it to be understood as a legitimate trade-off rather than an 'any level of play is good enough' or a 'not enough people watch Einstein now, so it doesn't matter how good it is'. (These aren't intended as direct quotes of anyone, least of all Sean.) I guess what I'm saying is, Dear FIRST: near time fix your webcasts, up your production values, improve the Einstein broadcast, help DCMPs and Regionals do the same, up your broad PR initiatives, accredit your conferences so teams can come for teacher PD and student leadership. Then try to tell us as a community that we would will still benefit from getting more teams to an experience that's half of Worlds. You could've helped a lot more people with a lot less mess.

EDIT: Or, you know, what Madison said.