California District Proposal

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by jpetito

Rather than more words here on an ever-increasing chain, I've published a White Paper as summation of current status, and to refocus the topic. See it here:

California District Proposal White Paper: Refocusing the Conversations

I've no interest in producing competing white papers, or being staid in my point of view. The District Model is meritorious. We have to find a way to implement it despite our multi-varied views.

Joe,

Thank you for the well thought out white paper. I am excited to hear you see the benefits that a district model can bring to our FRC program in California, but even more excited to see many of considerations and proposals you have put forward in your post. I'd mostly be giving thumbs up if I tried to address your whole post, so I just wanted to address the proposals set out at the end, and keep the discussion moving forward.

* Start small, prove it, expand based on success. This is not like going to space or the moon where we killed people meanwhile. But we built our capacity for spaceflight incrementally, with success propelling the next steps, and then the objective, a combined engineering/human relationship challenge. Maybe Northern Cal would be willing to be an incubator for the District model, proving it, gaining experience meanwhile to overcome our SoCal structural difficulties.

From my point of view, we have already started small. Looking at the list of California Venues, I am already seeing many HS venues that have hosted a off-season or Regional that can support 36-40 teams. This tells me that those dedicated California FRC communities that host Offseasons have already shown the viability of their venues to run a district event. Seems like we've already "started small" on venues, so now we are ready to fill out our venue repertoire at get a confident line up that meets the population needs (as you noted, 45 miles in LA could mean 2+ hour commute!)

* It's incumbent on us to go to places where the District model is successful, observe, shadow the principal players to better grasp the macro/micro views.

I've discussed Districts with many movers and shakers at MI, NE, IN, and PNW. This includes DPC Chairs, BoD members, and some of the creators of the original District Pilot Program in MI. You are welcome to contact some of these individuals as well with your questions, just PM if you'd like, or ask me specific questions.

* A simple, workable way must be found for teams outside the west coast Continental US to have choice of venue despite whatever District rules that others must adhere to. It's difficult enough to travel the distance to get here, and special accommodation must be provided.

This is very tricky. I feel the same angst as you, areas like South America, Mexico, China and Hawaii all have a regular presence in California. The walls put up between districts are partly self-inflicted, and partly established by FIRST HQ. I'd be very interested in seeing a way we could tweak district boundary rules to allow our distant friends to compete. Have there been ideas on how that could work?

Initial thought: An outside Regional team could register for any CA event (after CA teams get their 1st and 2nd events locked), pays 5k for FIRST HQ, 1k gets kicked back to FIRST CA, and the only bummer is this outside FRC team plays at the event like a game of Who's Line is it Anyway, where the points don't matter and they don't qual for CMP.

Throw stones

-Mike