What would you do to improve the FIRST experience?

[cadandcookies]

Going back a bit to the FTC/VRC thing:

FTC needs to start treating its teams better. Specifically this past season where they essentially had thousands of teams beta test a control system during their actual season, after barely even being warned that they would have to drop hundreds of dollars on a new control system (which has a number of major design flaws that could have been caught with FRC-style beta testing). There is so much right with FTC (custom robots? no weight limit? no cost limit? open season? Yes please!), but having used the VRC control system it is just so much easier to work with (of course, this comes with the trade off of having weak motors and weak on-board processing). I don't really have any claims about the tournament side of things, but that's because the partner in Minnesota is absolutely fantastic and does some things that are against the grain (like provide feedback to teams).

In general, I'll agree with an earlier poster that more emphasis needs to be put on the FTC program. It's the more sustainable program that can fit better into existing educational models. FRC is great, but FTC is probably the most flexible robotics program in existence right now, including non-FIRST competitions. That flexibility can be leveraged into growing "right" both inside and outside the US.