New FIRST competition structure in Michigan

[NEMentor470]

Originally Posted by dlavery

What do you think?

-dave
.

First, I think that the announcement should have been made much earlier, like last year, or the changes should be put off until 2010. Plans have been made. Grants have been written. We are going to have to scramble to accommodate the changes.

Second, although FIRST is knocking $1,000 off of the registration fees, this could end up costing our team a bit more than the traditional system. Our team is struggling financially. We will not be able to pay the fee to attend the State Championship which will be in our own back yard, but we will (apparently) have to travel to two other cities for district competitions.

• No one on our team owns a vehicle that can carry a crated robot, so we are going to incur expense to either ship it or rent something to carry it or pay someone to drive it.
• We will have to pay for a school bus to transport the team to and from events or parents will have to drive. (our school system does not give us free use of buses) The bus ride to Kettering Kick-off in 2007 cost us over $400 for one day.
• We definitely can't afford to stay overnight in whatever city it is, so we will have to drive back at night and return in the morning.

Two weekends of this will more than eat up the $1000 break in the entry fee.

I think the idea of smaller localized competitions has merit, but needs more work.

The idea of a team in every school is great too, if there are resources: There are now three FRC teams in Ypsilanti. I can't speak for the other two, but my team (on the eve of it's 10th season) is in totally desperate need of mentors and money. We have not had a major corporate sponsor since 2004 (not for lack of trying) and are only surviving by our own fundraising efforts and the kindness of ITT Tech and more recently Hyundai America, and mentoring by talented parents of former members. As others have said, it would be good if FIRST could help to strengthen the teams that exist.