How do I help my area move to districts?

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by CalTran

I think the difference is goals that teams and organizations have. Generally, a team's prerogative is to compete and qualify for the FIRST World Championships (Admittedly, who doesn't want to qualify for that?), whereas the RPCs want to maximize the amount of matches and experience overall for teams. The disconnect, it seems, is the work it takes to be successful in a District model. (Things like time, necessary steps to qualify for Worlds, etc.)

Regionals seem better for teams because it looks "easier" to qualify for the World Championships.
Districts are better from an "experience" standpoint because it gets teams the nearly double the amount of matches (or triple if you qualify for District Championships followed by World Championships).

I can tell you that districts have made it easier for my team to qualify for the World Championship(s). Where before we had to win an event to qualify, now we just have to rely on good performance to qualify.

This "it adds one more level to be able to qualify" comes from people that don't understand how districts work.

To answer the original question about how you can help. One of the original goals of the Rumble in the Roads offseason event was to prove to VA FIRST that our area could support district events. We wanted to use our offseason event to grow our local volunteer base and show that an even that size could be hosted in the area.