Should teams be allowed to attend multiple regionals?

[AJunx]

Imagine that we are living in a perfect world, in which U.S. FIRST has all the money they could ever need. Should teams be allowed to attend more than ONE regional event? Please read below prior to voting.


[Reader] “Andrew, what on earth are you talking about? Of course teams should be able to attend more than one regional! How is this even a question? Have you been getting enough sleep?”

[Me] “To the latter question, the answer is no ; to the former, here is why I think this question should be discussed:

Every additional regional event that a team attends this year costs that team $4,000 for the entry fee, as well as any travel and accommodation expenses. Let us suppose, for simplicity’s sake, that for any team attending an additional regional, the average cost of participating is an even $5,000.

Assuming, now, that had this $5,000 not been spent on participating in an additional regional, that the $5,000 would still be in the team treasury. (That is, the team would be able to spend it however it desired.)

Do you believe that this money could be better spent in the interests of achieving the goals of FIRST (to inspire in young people an interest in engineering and science) if the money was not spent on attending an additional regional event, but on engineering outreach instead?”

[Reader] “Hmmmm. I’ll have to think about this one and post a reply…”

[Me] “Here’s some (statistical) food for thought. Last year, 930 teams attended at least one regional event. Of those teams:

-507 teams went to ONE regional.
-285 teams went to TWO regionals.
-122 teams went to THREE regionals.
-16 teams went to FOUR regionals.

For those of you keeping score at home, this means that over 44% of teams attended more than one regional last year.”


-Andrew

P.S. A search of threads started in previous years concerning this subject has been conducted. The results of that search seemed to indicate that further discussion would be appropriate, particularly concerning the use of money spent on attending additional regionals.

[Steve W]

Andrew, if you are having a vote then edit your post and add a poll.

My answer is yes.

This subject is another subject that has been brought up multiple times and beaten to death, search around, theres plenty of civil discussion on it.


My opinion is what a team does with their money is their business

[Koko Ed]

A team should be allowed to attend as many regionals as they wish. FIRST isn't a perfect world but then again there is no such place in the mortal world so we make do with what we got.

[Allison K]

I'll bite...

Originally Posted by AJunx

Do you believe that this money could be better spent in the interests of achieving the goals of FIRST (to inspire in young people an interest in engineering and science) if the money was not spent on attending an additional regional event, but on engineering outreach instead?”

Does participating in a regional not count as acheiving the goals of FIRST? Are you telling me that you are not inspired by attending regional events?

Besides, I'm also a firm believer in teams spending money as they wish. They did all the work to raise it, afterall.

~Allison

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by AJunx

...

Assuming, now, that had this $5,000 not been spent on participating in an additional regional, that the $5,000 would still be in the team treasury. (That is, the team would be able to spend it however it desired.)

Depending on where/who the money is from, it may go back to the team treasury, it may not. I know with my high school team, any money the school gave us that we didn't use went back to the school at the close of the school year. So if we got $15k in September and spent $10k, the remaining $5k would go back to the school district in June.

Regardless, I agree with most of the above posts; if teams can afford the time and money to go to more than one regional let them. As it is, isn't there a 3 regional per team cap right now?

[BaldwinNYRookie]

If I had the time and money I would attend competitions everyday. If your team has the money, and they really want to, then why not? Although, you could argue that in doing so they increase their chances of going to nationals, and if too many teams go to nationals it wouldn't work out very well.

[dhitchco]

As a rookie team,
we attended three (3) regionals

Did it cost a lot of money? YES
Could we "afford" it? OBVIOUSLY, we did.

Could the same funds have been otherwise spent? MAYBE

Will we spend the funds in the same manner next year? MAYBE

Each team should be empowered to spend their funds just like a real corporation does to earn the maximum RETURN ON THEIR INVESTMENT.

I will tell you that going to all three regionals for a rookie team has had a HUGE value on each one of us in many ways more than just additional practice with the robot itself.

But, not to brag.....
Finger Lakes Regional....."Rookie All-Star" Award
Buckeye Regional.........."Highest Seeded Rookie" Award
Toronto Regional..........."Rookie Spirit" Award, "Rookie Inspiration" Award and #1 winning alliance.

[Mirza95vx]

I think that teams should be allowed to attend as many regionals as they choose. Our team has been to three regionals thus far. We planned this this way because it was our first year and if we didn't make it to nationals we would have had more experience for next year. It would have been real disappointing if we only went to one regional and then we didn't qualify for Nationals.

I see your point in using the money to inspire kids through science and technology but i also believe that one of the best ways to achieve inspiration is through experience and the FIRST competitions are so inspiring to participate in.

[Jessica Boucher]

It's a question of opportunity cost: would the quality of engineering outreach that a team would achieve by not attending another FIRST regional be better than the quality of engineering outreach the team is recieving at attending another regional?

From there, you need to define quality matrices (Percentage of students enrolling in engineering higher ed programs? Finishing engineering higher ed programs? Taking a job in science or technology-related fields? Enrollment/Demand for science and technology-based classes? Higher math standardized test scores?), and figure it out mathematically from there. I would definitely be interested in seeing the data on that.

But in the end....I don't mind teams going to more than one regional. Just a personal preference.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Teams should be able to attend as many regionals as they please. It is, after all, their money that they are spending. Teams that attend multiple regionals usually do a good amount of fundraising to attend these regionals.

Let teams use the money they've earned to do the things they want to do.

[DarMagi]

I think that teams should do everything in their power to attend at least two regionals. My reasoning is that one regional can be a local event and the other being a travelling event. This will give teams an opening to see what other teams are producing, that don't generally come from their area and whom they do not get to see regularly, and some of the ideas that they have. It will inspire more people as they will see more ideas and spread their ideas to a more extensive group of people. Just my thoughts though.

[XtremeEagle04]

Do you believe that this money could be better spent in the interests of achieving the goals of FIRST (to inspire in young people an interest in engineering and science) if the money was not spent on attending an additional regional event, but on engineering outreach instead?”

there is no better way for a student to be inspired to gain an interest in engineering and science than to attend an event with hundreds of their peers that share a common interest.

[ngreen]

Andrew,

I see what you are thinking with this one but I haven't seen a good way to make that kind of thought a reality in the real world.

Many teams work very hard to raise the money they need to compete in this competition. This basically means that neither I or FIRST have the ability to directly tell them how to spend their money. I think FIRST offers some idea by making Chairman's Award and Engineering Inspiration prestigious awards. You can't compete for these awards without spending a least a little bit of money (not necessarily a lot) and a lot of time. But people aren't forced to try to win these awards or some can afford multiple regionals and compete for these awards also.

What it comes down to is that the team and their sponsor(s) have control over how the money is spent. If that means going to four regionals, the only thing that will stop them is running out of spots.

[nobrakes8]

With the amount of money it costs, I wish FIRST would include two regionals with their registration fee. Like this year it cost $6,000 to register for the KOP and 1 regional, I bet a lot of people would rather pay $8,000 for the KOP and 2 regionals, then $4,000 for every regional after those.

Obviosuly it's expensive to run these events, but you need to wonder how much money FIRST is really going to lose by offering a 2 regional package to every team. Plus this year several regionals had open spots, I'm sure FIRST would rather gain $2,000 on those open spots than have them remain empty. A lot teams that attened 2 regionals this year, would maybe attend three next year and I'm sure moneywise it might balance and work out.

(When I say FIRST gains money, I don't mean make a profit because FIRST is legit organization that puts the money back into the students and the compeition)