California District Proposal

[JB987]

If CA goes to a district model, I know of one regional for sure that will be able to handle many of the international teams that attend CA Regionals. Many of the CA teams that attend our regional would likely not continue to do so, leaving many new spots open to join the numerous international teams we already serve. International flights to Las Vegas are in many cases less costly that those to California and other regions across the country and reasonably priced hotels are in abundance here.

Other Regionals that serve smaller/distant/low density FRC populations will likely be relied upon to also serve a growing international community as well...at least for the years to come. Our friends in China have formally submitted a bid for a Regional there next year and await a decision by FIRST HQ. Special thanks to 525 for getting things started with CUYRA there almost 3 years ago Teams like 3132, 4613 and other Australian teams have done a great job helping to establish an event there that serves that region of the globe and Israel has established a strong event. Expect more of these success stories as time goes on. As I have said before, I think FIRST realizes an assortment of event models will be needed to serve the mission of FIRST
and FIRST FRC resulting in a combination of Districts and Regionals around the globe.

Edit: Mia culpa...I forgot to mention the important role the Mexico Regional serves as well.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

I assume international teams are represented in FIRST HQ? Does Israel, Australia or China have an RD or the like? These individuals (if they exist!) should be doing the work to ensure their programs can be sustained outside of California events.

According to my scan of this page, there are regional directors in Australia, Israel, and Mexico (outside of US + Canada)

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by JB987

If CA goes to a district model, I know of one regional for sure that will be able to handle many of the international teams that attend CA Regionals. Many of the CA teams that attend our regional would likely not continue to do so, leaving many new spots open to join the numerous international teams we already serve. International flights to Las Vegas are in many cases less costly that those to California and other regions across the country and reasonably priced hotels are in abundance here.

Other Regionals that serve smaller/distant/low density FRC populations will likely be relied upon to also serve a growing international community as well...at least for the years to come. Our friends in China have formally submitted a bid for a Regional there next year and await a decision by FIRST HQ. Special thanks to 525 for getting things started with CUYRA there almost 3 years ago Teams like 3132, 4613 and other Australian teams have done a great job helping to establish an event there that serves that region of the globe and Israel has established a strong event. Expect more of these success stories as time goes on. As I have said before, I think FIRST realizes an assortment of event models will be needed to serve the mission of FIRST
and FIRST FRC resulting in a combination of Districts and Regionals around the globe.

Joe,

This is great to hear!

By my math, that puts non continental US/Canada Regionals at:

Hawaii
Mexico City
Australia
Israel
China (Hopefully!)

-Mike

[s-neff]

Why couldn't CA district champs reserve spots for international teams, for that "high-wattage" effect?

In general, I'm glad this conversation is happening. We NEED cost-out to grow the program and inspire more students, without compromising on the physical scale of the sport.

(Also, I can think of 2 venues in the East (SF) Bay that could host District events; a full Regional would be much harder.)

[Cory]

Originally Posted by s-neff

Why couldn't CA district champs reserve spots for international teams, for that "high-wattage" effect?

In general, I'm glad this conversation is happening. We NEED cost-out to grow the program and inspire more students, without compromising on the physical scale of the sport.

On the flip side why should CA FIRST deny spots to their constituents in favor of outside teams?

I don't know which answer is right and it would be unfortunate to lose international (or even out of state) teams at CA events but you gotta look out for your own before you can look out for anyone else.

[s-neff]

Originally Posted by Cory

On the flip side why should CA FIRST deny spots to their constituents in favor of outside teams?

I don't know which answer is right and it would be unfortunate to lose international (or even out of state) teams at CA events but you gotta look out for your own before you can look out for anyone else.

True that.
Though - I think *we* get a lot of benefit from the out of state teams as well. I wouldn't want to discount that before it's thrown away.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by s-neff

True that.
Though - I think *we* get a lot of benefit from the out of state teams as well. I wouldn't want to discount that before it's thrown away.

Just as a random thought: What about teams whose "home" event happens to land in CA but aren't from CA, or who are on the border, have the option to join?

Example: Chilean teams like the L.A. regional--combined, I think there's three of them that have two events elsewhere (one regional). I don't think anybody'd be opposed to offering them the chance, at least down here. Or, see the Alaska team in the PNW this last season.

If they don't want to come, then they had the choice and declined. If they do want to come, then they get to spend the savings from the second-event registration on travel costs instead--or maybe on the robot... Interesting dilemma for them.

Naturally, if that team's "home area" also went to districts, they'd have to join their home district area--leaving open interdistrict play.

[Liam Fay]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

I count 1,494 public and private high schools in Southern CA.

I wouldn't be too sure about that list - neither my school nor my team are there.

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by Liam Fay

I wouldn't be too sure about that list - neither my school nor my team are there.

The more, the merrier!

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Joe,

This is great to hear!

By my math, that puts non continental US/Canada Regionals at:

Hawaii
Mexico City
Australia
Israel
China (Hopefully!)

-Mike

According to the FRC Wikipedia page, the non-US or Canada teams are:

Israel (62)
Mexico (53)
Australia (39)
China (36)
Turkey (20)
Brazil (6)
Netherlands (3)
Taiwan (3)
United Kingdom (3)
Chile (2)
Dominican Republic (2)
Japan (2)
Bosnia-Herzegovina (1)
Colombia (1)
Czech Republic (1)
Denmark (1)
Ecuador (1)
France (1)
Germany (1)
India (1)
Poland (1)
Singapore (1)
United Arab Emirates (1)

So lets pretend all of the US and Canada went to districts suddenly (so I don't have to account for team growth).
Completely ignoring the political/economical/many other factors and just focusing on geography and assuming teams from countries with Regionals go to that regional:

South American and Caribbean teams can go to Mexico
Taiwan, Japan, India, and Singapore can go to China
Israel goes to Districts (Based on geographical size and # of teams alone this seem feasible within a few years)
Bosnia-Herzegovina and the UAE attend a new regional in Turkey along with maybe Poland and the Czech Republic

This would leave 9-11 teams (depending on where Poland and Czech Republic go) all in Europe who don't have a regional. They could go to Turkey or that regional could go to somewhere in Europe that is more central to all of the teams. If Israel still holds a regional, then it probably makes sense to have the new regional in Europe. There could also just be 2 new regionals on the assumption that a lot of American teams would want to go to a European regional. Other than Europe, I think every international team is either as close or nearly as close to a regional as they are right now. It wouldn't be great and I have no idea how the international community will be able to adapt to growth and the potential transition of the large team population centers to Districts, but I think it is possible, at least right now, for the international teams to sustain their own events.

However, I do think it FIRST should come up with a way for teams in low density areas to at least compete in district events, if not qualify for Champs through them.

[Nate Laverdure]

Originally Posted by Liam Fay

I wouldn't be too sure about that list - neither my school nor my team are there.

Cool. That's because Francis Parker comes up as an Elementary School in CA DOE's database.

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

1. International Teams Join the District
   1. The team attends X events, but with a larger points multiplier (4x for one event, 2x for 2 events, maybe) that lets them qualify straight for CMP alongside the rest of the district teams, but not be required to atttend DCMP, thus reducing the travel burden.
   2. The district could set aside X slots at their DCMP for international teams (who attend as their only event), who earn points at some larger multiplier (4x?) towards qualifying for CMP

A district team will get 5 events worth of points throughout the season (1xdistrict1 + 1xdistrict2 + 3xDCMP), so if a system like this were to be implemented, the multiplier should be 5/# of events attended.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Emphasis mine.

Many of CA regional events are already held in high school and community college gyms. If CA needs to not only be open to international teams, but also provide a 200k regional for them, I suppose our hands are tied

I also agree, the pressure needs to be on international groups to serve their populous with more events closer to teams.

-Mike

Because, apparently a data set of high school gym square footages in the united states would be TOO FREAKING CONVENIENT...

Let's use school size as an analog for it. Kinda assume that high schools have a gym (last study I found said 81% percent did, but it was an old facilities survey from 05, the updated version lacked this data) A gym can probably sit a significant portion of the school population. So, based on this - https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer...LeyzbhbxgjjZms Here is a map of every public HS (offers grade 12 per NCES dataset) compared with the 2013 Team locations for the state of California with school population. [1]




[1] I actually have this data for everywhere, but Google Map Maker doesn't let me upload data sets with more than 2k records and my public schools data set is 90k or so


EDIT: The quoted post was totally NOT the one I thought I quoted... now i'm confused. Either way.

[GeeTwo]

Texas is going to a regional model this year, which shall probably open up a number of slots at Bayou and other regionals surrounding Texas for teams in other states, and international teams. I fully expect Bayou to be a regional for at least the next 4-8 years, and the western half of the US to have regional competitions for a couple of decades at least.

[Rick Vogl]

Originally Posted by EricH

Now, that being said, I think it's time to get creative--has anybody, anybody at all, ever tried to host an FRC event in a theater?...

Hartford Regional at the Meadows Music Theater 1999-2001. Teams that did not fit in the lobby were put in tents. It kept the snow off the robots. RAGE (FRC173) did a mean tailgate breakfast in the parking lot.