District System in Other Regions in 2010?

[Jared Russell]

Anyone interested in doing some hypothetical FIRST gerrymandering?

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Anyone interested in doing some hypothetical FIRST gerrymandering?

PA NYC and NJ? Too big?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Anyone interested in doing some hypothetical FIRST gerrymandering?

Well...

For now, leave out NZ, Israel, Europe, and Central/South America. (low team density).

Canada gets 1 area, which excludes BC.
The Pacific Northwest gets another, with BC, Washington, Oregon, Idaho.
CA gets its own, with NV and AZ.
The upper/mid Rockies get one with Montana, CO, Utah, Wyoming, and the western part of Nebraska and the Dakotas.
NM, TX, LA, AR, and OK get one.
MI's Lower Peninsula stays as is; it's dangerous enough already.
The upper Midwest gets one or two.
MN, WI, the UP of MI, and the eastern part of the Dakotas and Nebraska go into one.
New England gets one highly defensive one.
The Mid-Atlantic gets one.
The Southeast gets one.

Each area has at least one event that is open for teams from outside the area to compete in. HI has a standard regional or joins CA. Zones left out continue with the regional model until they get more teams.

[Mike Schreiber]

I've seen a significant amount of people complimenting the MI district structure on here and only about 1/4 of them actually experienced it...It's easy to say "yes districts would be great here," but it's not nearly that simple to implement and not everything about districts were positive. (Edit: Looking back this seems quite negative and wanted to clarify, I'm only pointing out the flaws because most of the thread has focused on the positives already.)

Yes having 4 events this year was nice (Kettering, Lansing, MSC, ATL), and getting a 2 for 1 deal on the districts was cool, but what does downsizing do to the quality of the event.

I've always liked "quality over quantity" and MSC was a perfect example of quality, but the fact that MI was dominated by 2 teams who won every event they attended in MI is slightly dissapointing to me. The pool of 40 teams does not provide a deep enough selection to hope to challenge such an alliance, and there 3rd pick could have been anyone (no offense to any teams who were there I'm sure you contributed). MI alone is strong in teams, but the midwest is amazing, and cutting out teams like 71 and 111 who are always welcome at WMR is somewhat saddening. I saw the same number of robots in the 2 districts and MSC that I would have at two regionals because teams that select the closest district just play their neighbors over again.

The event size was dissapointing, and space (especially at Kettering) was limited. There was not nearly the amount of excitement from teams that I'm used to at FIRST competitions, not to say it wasn't high, but 40 teams can't compare to 60...

Thursday RIP. You will be missed.

Increased event count also means extra school/work missed. Yes you gain back your Thursday, but the 8 hour bagtime from Sunday-Thursday sucks up the time you would have spent studying anyway. Overall it is better for adults, and about even per competition for students, but it is still an extra competition. I know spring break really messed me up this year. Thursday, Friday before break - MSC, 1 week break, come back on a Tuesday in time to get my homework, then Tuesday night get on a bus and miss 3 more days of school...I'm finally caught up as of today.


Overall I have to give FiM credit, they put together a great, different, but successful structure and the extra matches were well worth the exact same cost

As far as districts expanding (I figured I should cover the topic of the thread too), it has basically been said by all those who aren't in MI. If you want districts let someone know. FIRST is exceptional in feedback and helping students get out of the experience exactly what they want. The determinant of who the next victims will be is going to be based on numerous things that have already been mentioned. Team density, volunteer supply, enthusiam of both of the forementioned (without that the willingness to experiment you won't be the next target), venue availability (shouldn't be a problem), people willing to put it all together (thank God for them).

Good luck to whoever is next (if anyone), we'll just have to wait and see...

[fuzzy1718]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

The only intent of my post was to point out this will help teams improve.

I was refering to the post above yours sorry.

[NorviewsVeteran]

It looks like Virginia will have a district system for FTC for fall '09. Maybe the FRC will follow suit soon.

[IKE]

I would like to see events at less known Engineering Universities. I wish I had the stat mentioned at Kettering, but a huge percentage of students there come from first. I know a lot fo our kids consider and go to Grand Valley because of West Michigan.
Regionals are way too expensive for a university to pick up on their own tab (I commend Purdue's organizers for finding funds), but Districts are cheaper than sending out brochures to 100,000 students.

If FIRST wants a less painful way of rolling out the system, then loaning fields to Universities and High Schools to do off season events is a smart plan. Give them a chance to get a taste for an event.

If districts were prevalent, I hope they would be able to tear down borders and let teams go to whatever district or Regional Championship they choose.

Sorry, I just really like this one and don't get to use it often enough.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by NorviewsVeteran

It looks like Virginia will have a district system for FTC for fall '09. Maybe the FRC will follow suit soon.

[soapbox]

No offense, but it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE for Virginia to have a district system. There is simply no need.

In 2009, the state of Virginia had 59 teams registered for FRC. The NASA/VCU regional alone has hosted as many as 66 teams. That's not even counting the Washington DC and Chesapeake regionals (which can also host >60 teams), both of which are within very easy traveling distance for the largest portion of VA teams (Northern VA). Most NoVa teams don't even need hotels for the DC regional (just like RVA teams don't need hotels for VCU).
The logical choice for venue to host the state Championship is the Siegel Center (current venue for the VCU regional). The max capacity of the venue is greater than number of teams in Virginia, so literally EVERY team would qualify. The districts are then nothing more than practice events and qualifiers for the Chairman's award. The actual robot competitions would be completely meaningless.
With ~60 teams, you only need 3 districts (assuming 40 teams per) to get the 120 needed competition slots. If you hit the 61+ mark, you're bumped up to four (but have a very large number of "open slots" for 3+ district teams).
Where do you put the districts? Two are probably in NoVa. One is in/around Richmond. And one is somewhere in Southwest VA (Roanoke, Lynchburg, etc). Travel costs are ultimately not cut for anyone, as the NoVa teams already have the DC regional and the Richmond and Southwest VA teams now have to travel to their second district.
You might be able to fudge around with it a bit and move the Richmond district to Charlottesville and one of the NoVa districts to Southeast (Norfolk/Va Beach) Virginia. But then the Richmond teams suddenly have an even larger travel bill to foot (and they currently don't have any at all if they don't goto a 2nd event).
Beyond that, a number of NoVa teams routinely travel to the Chesapeake Regional (and now the DC regional), often skipping VCU entirely. This now makes it much more expensive for them to do that, as they essentially committed to a Virginia event (and likely the State Championship at VCU as well). And what about the North Carolina teams?

You could make a slightly more persuasive argument if you say include Maryland, DC, and North Carolina as well. You then jump from 59 teams to 111 teams in the region. The Championship event, regardless of which of the three venues, will then hold approximately 55-60% of the capacity, a much more reasonable number.
You then have 222 needed competition slots, or 6 districts (with 18 slots left over for 3rd events, assuming no more than 9 new teams are formed in this area). Placement then becomes even more tricky, with too few North Carolina teams (11) to truly mandate a district in NC (raising their travel costs) and almost all of the team density focused around the Washington DC area.
More importantly, this would "close off" three regionals that have traditionally had a good deal of out-of-state support, and flourished because of it.
Chesapeake had 26 teams, or 47% of it's attendees, from outside this proposed area (mostly from NJ, MA, NY, and NH).
DC had 17 teams, or 26% of it's attendees, from outside this area. Even more importantly are WHICH teams those were. 45, 234, 365, 118, 538, 1279 and others were instrumental in making DC the high quality regional it was. Five of those teams were in the finals, and 234 won the Chairman's Award. These were among the most gracious and outgoing teams at the event (especially 234 and 365), and helped many in "rookie row" make it out onto the field.
Even VCU, which has a smaller portion of out of state teams, has very significant impacts from those who do come from out of state. What would the regional be without appearances from teams like 383 (Brazil), 843 (Canada), 359 (Hawai'i), etc?
Beyond that, I honestly feel that VCU is the best regional out there, and is certainly the best I've been to (VCU, DC, Philadelphia, Chesapeake, New Jersey, Colorado, New York). There's a reason why some of these teams make return ventures (this was the 4th time 843 has ventured down from Ontario if memory serves). It's a terrific event, and I wouldn't want to do anything that could possibly harm it.

Too Long, Didn't Read:
Bottom line, it doesn't make sense to implement the district system in Virginia currently. The team distribution just isn't right, nor is their the appropriate quantity. Even if combined with Md, NC, and DC it still would be very flawed. There are some very definite advantages to it, but those don't automatically require the district system as a whole.

Please read, consider, and discuss individual features of the district system here. You might be surprised to see that some of them might not need entire overhauls.

[/soapbox]

[Jared Russell]

Assume FRC has ~1500 teams in 2010. The Michigan model would suggest regions of 100-150 teams. I looked at every 2009 event and grouped them geographically, and the result actually makes a lot of logistical sense (regions are fairly compact and roughly equal in team distribution). Obviously, anywhere there is a border you're going to make somebody unhappy. Then again, who says each team can't just pick which "region" it would like to be a member of each season?

So here is how my take on regions breaks down, with the respective 2009 regionals in parentheses. Each regional would be split into 2+ district events. Or, some could double fields/throughput and be a "double district" event. This is one of many, many ways the FiM model could be applied...

MICHIGAN (Essentially 3 regionals from 2008 and prior)

MID ATLANTIC (Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City)

CAPITAL (Chesapeake, DC, VCU)

NEW ENGLAND (New Hampshire, Boston, UTC, Long Island)

GREAT LAKES (Waterloo, GTR, Finger Lakes)

RUST BELT (Buckeye, Pittsburgh, Boilermaker)

MIDWEST (Midwest, Wisconsin, North Star, 10000 Lakes)

GREAT PLAINS (St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Kansas City)

TEXAS (Dallas, Lone Star)

PACIFIC NORTHWEST (Oregon, Washington)

SOUTHWEST (San Diego, Las Vegas, Arizona, LA)

WEST COAST (Hawaii, SVR, Sacramento)

SOUTHEAST (New Orleans, Florida, Palmetto, Peachtree)


The next two really don't fit with anyone else...

Denver
Israel

(Disclaimer: The reason I post this is not because I necessarily think the FiM model is the best fit for all of FRC right now. But I do believe that some of its aspects make it a *good* fit for much of FIRST, especially as new rookie teams start to fill in the gaps. So I might as well fulfill my Friday night boredom.)

[smurfgirl]

I agree that somewhere in the Northeast would be very conducive to the district system- it's not too geographically large but there are a lot of teams and events which would be able to support the district system. New England or the tri-state area would both be a good place to expand to if FIRST decides that the 2009 pilot was effective and is worth spreading.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Jared341

RUST BELT (Buckeye, Pittsburgh, Boilermaker)

I think we can come up with a more respectful designation than that.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I think we can come up with a more respectful designation than that.

THE Rust Belt.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

THE Rust Belt.

Steel is so 1970's. If we want to be current in depressing descriptions of where I live, how about the Bankrupt Automotive Industry Belt?

I'd prefer NORTH COAST (Pittsburgh, Buckeye, Boilermaker)

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Steel is so 1970's. If we want to be current in depressing descriptions of where I live, how about the Bankrupt Automotive Industry Belt?

I'd prefer NORTH COAST (Pittsburgh, Buckeye, Boilermaker)

I looked at what I was calling IKIO (Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio). I don't have all of the data with me at the moment, but something like 80-85% of the teams at Buckeye, Midwest, and Purdue came from these four states.

Implementing six districts in these areas (2 in IL, IN, and OH), seems fairly realistic.

Work would definitely need to be done and it is probably a two-year project...but I think it can happen.

The planning resources/team support/FIRST experience is definitely there.

[Alex Cormier]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Steel is so 1970's. If we want to be current in depressing descriptions of where I live, how about the Bankrupt Automotive Industry Belt?

I'd prefer NORTH COAST (Pittsburgh, Buckeye, Boilermaker)

Don't you dare take our "North" name and disgrace it... Maybe the Rust bucket car in the front yard region?