District/Regional Format

[Nawaid Ladak]

#1: I've heard talks for New York State, but that's about it. everybody seems to want it in Minnesota, California, the Southeast etc. though.

To answer #2 Honestly, I'm not at all a fan of FIRST imposing the District system across the world. I would rather, create a 4 system approach

District System: same as the Michigan system but in different area's, ie: California, Texas and New England.

The "Super" Regional system: just like GTR in 2004 and 2006. 2 fields, more competition, and more spots to the Championship handed out at these events than at normal regional competitions. Count this as a State Championship without the process of going through he districts. This would work in a area where a VERY high concentration of teams are located in a small area, ie Minnesota, New York, The Baltimore/DC area, or areas where a District model doesn't fit the needs because there aren't enough teams to impose the system... ie: locations listed above, and Pacific Northwest. This would also benefit the outliers that fall into the system, for example teams that are located in Kennewick WA would only have to attend one event instead of going to Portland and Seattle for district events

The "Normal" Regional system: The normal setup for a regional. for places like Georgia, Florida, Arizona etc. who bring 40+ teams to their regional.

The "short" regional system: a setup just like Pittsburgh or Sacramento used a regional with 35 or fewer teams. ie: Pittsburgh, Palmetto, Hawaii etc.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

#1: I've heard talks for New York State, but that's about it. everybody seems to want it in Minnesota, California, the Southeast etc. though.

I've heard a lot for New York State, and something about a Capital Region "district size event" in the distant future. New York isn't a bad region for districts, but there's a lot of separation between Rochester-area teams, Albany-area teams, and NYC-area teams, so I wonder how it would work in practice. Next year...

I want a District system that allows teams from other areas to come to us, unlike Michigan. Otherwise, I think I'm fine with it.

[Nawaid Ladak]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I want a District system that allows teams from other areas to come to us, unlike Michigan. Otherwise, I think I'm fine with it.

Thats one of my major gripes with the district system: teams are discouraged to from traveling outside the state to compete. The real answer to this thread can be found here.

[BrendanB]

I don't think that each state will become a district, but some are large enough to do so. I believe that instead FIRST will split up "sections" into districts. Like Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut could all probably wind up creating a New England District culminating to a huge championship. Although it would kind of look like a lot of the small off-seasons around which are pretty awesome!

But I do hope that FIRST works a way out for teams to travel. Our team traveled to another regional for the first time this weekend and had an amazing time at North Carolina. I would be very sad if others would not have the same opportunity. Yes there will still be travel with districts, but it is not the same when you are meeting/competing with a whole group of teams you have never played with before!

I really like the district set up and how Michigan game play has dramatically increased over the past 2 years. I really hope that by 2012 there will be more in place if not sooner!

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

I really like the district set up and how Michigan game play has dramatically increased over the past 2 years. I really hope that by 2012 there will be more in place if not sooner! But I am sure that there will be an allowance for travel, but possibly limited, such as one travel regional per team and possibly (but hopefully not) once every other year.

This would be more restrictive than the Michigan system.

[EricH]

I don't think it's going to work in CA the same way it does in MI for a couple of years yet.

CA has: 0 regionals in the north geographic half of the state, 2 in the central portion, and 2 in the south. The team distribution (and the population distribution) follow this, so that doesn't really factor in.

What does factor in is that we've got two clusters of teams that are perpetually in the middle. The central coast teams like 973 have to go either up the coast and stay a few days or down the coast and do the same. The desert teams like 399 (Lancaster) and 1641 (Mojave) have to choose: California (typically L.A.), or Vegas/Arizona? It's not an easy question. It's like the MI UP teams, especially in the west end. I have yet to hear of a "good" solution for them (i.e., one that doesn't involve traveling a full day down and a full day back twice).

We've also got 4 main clusters, all around existing regionals.

But what really made FiM work well was the fact that there is one organization that assists the entire state. CA has no fewer than 3 (Team San Diego, SCRRF, and WRRF). They'd have to either coordinate or combine, and when you're separated by 2-9 hours between pockets of teams, and therefore organizations, it's a lot harder to do that.

For CA, a better short-term option might be to put a regional in the middle or expand one of the existing regionals to a double regional. If another regional was added, I'd suggest Bakersfield or Fresno--they're about in the middle, and could act as a meeting point for most of the teams. Long-term, yes, hopefully go district. But short-term, we don't have anywhere near the density MI does, and would want to build up more (and more sustainable) teams before going that route.


You can't just say, "You're going to use this model", because in this case, "this model" was developed in one area with one kind of needs, and those needs aren't necessarily the same in the rest of the country. You have to adapt the model to the area it's being adopted in. I've got some ideas how to adapt it to CA, but they'd need improvement, and you'd want another event or so.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by EricH

I don't think it's going to work in CA the same way it does in MI for a couple of years yet.

CA has: 0 regionals in the north geographic half of the state, 2 in the central portion, and 2 in the south. The team distribution (and the population distribution) follow this, so that doesn't really factor in.

What does factor in is that we've got two clusters of teams that are perpetually in the middle. The central coast teams like 973 have to go either up the coast and stay a few days or down the coast and do the same. The desert teams like 399 (Lancaster) and 1641 (Mojave) have to choose: California (typically L.A.), or Vegas/Arizona? It's not an easy question. It's like the MI UP teams, especially in the west end. I have yet to hear of a "good" solution for them (i.e., one that doesn't involve traveling a full day down and a full day back twice).

We've also got 4 main clusters, all around existing regionals.

But what really made FiM work well was the fact that there is one organization that assists the entire state. CA has no fewer than 3 (Team San Diego, SCRRF, and WRRF). They'd have to either coordinate or combine, and when you're separated by 2-9 hours between pockets of teams, and therefore organizations, it's a lot harder to do that.

For CA, a better short-term option might be to put a regional in the middle or expand one of the existing regionals to a double regional. If another regional was added, I'd suggest Bakersfield or Fresno--they're about in the middle, and could act as a meeting point for most of the teams. Long-term, yes, hopefully go district. But short-term, we don't have anywhere near the density MI does, and would want to build up more (and more sustainable) teams before going that route.


You can't just say, "You're going to use this model", because in this case, "this model" was developed in one area with one kind of needs, and those needs aren't necessarily the same in the rest of the country. You have to adapt the model to the area it's being adopted in. I've got some ideas how to adapt it to CA, but they'd need improvement, and you'd want another event or so.

Eric,
I would add HI as part of it. I'm sure a bunch here would participate as well.

[rwood359]

Are the MI competitions less expensive to produce?
Can two MI events be produced for the cost of one "standard" regional?

[SavtaKenneth]

Me and a couple of friends discussed this a few days ago and we thought the district system would be good to implement in Israel. One of the main characteristics of FIRST Israel is that the nearest regional for us, except for the Israeli one is a 10 hour flight away.

That means no Israeli team competes in more than one event per season because of the prohibitive cost of airfare. Also Israel is quite a small country (six hour drive from the southern most point to the northern most point) so doing bag&tag events shouldn't be too hard. Our thought was that it'd be a way to make the Israeli competition better because It'd give teams more matches to play and more of the FIRST experience.

The main problem we saw with this is that there are too few teams in Israel (55 or so) for the model to actually work. What do you think is the minimum amount of teams to implement the district system?

[Foster]

I'm a big fan of getting more for my money, but I'm a bigger fan of getting more robot competition time for the robot team.

We do 2 regionals (one away like FLR, CT, Pittsburgh, Chesapeake, etc. Some place thats a few hour drive for us) and one "home" event, Philadelphia (45 min drive so the families can all come and watch). Cost $10K+overnight stays

We also do 5 'off-season' events. Three in the spring (PARC, Monty, BR-BR) and two in the fall (Ramp Riot and Duel). Cost $1250+gas money

From what I see the 5 off season events (one day) are just as much fun as the big regionals. In our area (NJ, Eastern PA, DE) there seems to be enough teams to fill all the off season events. Which is a long way to say I think that smaller one /two day events would work and that bag and tag would also work in our area.

At a regional it appears that "most" teams spend the first day completing their robot and passing inspection. (First regional that they attend in a year, and no disrespect meant to your team). So I'd like to suggest that the teams that hold pre-ship scrimmages also have inspectors. If you pass inspection at one of the pre-events all you need to do is pass weight/dimensions at the regional. Inspectors could make spot/random checks if wanted. But it would cut down on the inspection process and be more of an inducement to be ready to play at the event.

One of the things that pops out in this thread is where teams are and how far they need to travel. For teams in Philly events in Rochester, Pittsburgh, Richmond and Boston (and all the places in between) are all a ~5 hour drive. So we have a huge range of choices. That makes it easier here to do regionals vs CA where there is 5-9 hour drive times.

One of the neat things is being able to see other teams at other places (like going to FLR this year and seeing Simbiotics and GRR in action). While it's fun to play with Chuck, Moe and Miss Daisy (which we do 6 times a year) playing with others is also very cool. So It would be nice to be able to pick which "district" event we go to.

[Jared Russell]

I think that districts would work well in Philly/South Jersey/Delaware, but I don't see them working as well in many other areas. Michigan has an unparalleled density of veteran teams and experienced volunteers that only a few other areas can touch - I think that a cost effective but disorganized district system would be less preferable than the current regional system in many areas.

Leaving the choice of what is best for each region - districts, regionals, super-regionals, mini-regionals - up to the teams and leadership in each region is what is best for everyone.

[sircedric4]

Originally Posted by Foster

I'm a big fan of getting more for my money, but I'm a bigger fan of getting more robot competition time for the robot team.

We do 2 regionals (one away like FLR, CT, Pittsburgh, Chesapeake, etc. Some place thats a few hour drive for us) and one "home" event, Philadelphia (45 min drive so the families can all come and watch). Cost $10K+overnight stays

...

At a regional it appears that "most" teams spend the first day completing their robot and passing inspection. (First regional that they attend in a year, and no disrespect meant to your team). So I'd like to suggest that the teams that hold pre-ship scrimmages also have inspectors. If you pass inspection at one of the pre-events all you need to do is pass weight/dimensions at the regional. Inspectors could make spot/random checks if wanted. But it would cut down on the inspection process and be more of an inducement to be ready to play at the event.

This is the one thing that I like about the district model over the regional model and that is that you get twice as many games over two separate weekends for the same cost. When you add in the State Championship for those that win, the Michigan System participants have a huge advantage over other Regional winners when they get to Atlanta.

We're a poor team that can only afford 1 regional and so we have 15 games under our belt going into Atlanta this year, where the Michigan teams going into Atlanta have 3 times that many. Practice makes perfect, and also they have had the whole competition period to mature their robot in the pits. We were a first week regional and didn't even get a chance to show our ball looper because all our potential alliance partner were trying to get working robots. We haven't seen our poor lonely robot in 5 weeks now.

Like you said, the first event for a team is usually about finishing up your robot to compete, and by the time there's a state championship the teams there are in their fighting configuration, battle tested. Add in that most of the Michigan teams know each other after seeing each other for so many games and it only takes one of them to seed high enough in a division at Atlanta to lock in alliance partners. Human nature being what it is, I myself would probably pick a team I know and have played with consistently over another robot I have maybe seen in one game at Atlanta. I hear tell that scouting doesn't work that way, but 2 trips to nationals and seeing who gets picked on Saturday tells me different.

So I like the district system for the opportunities and value it brings the teams for the money they pay, but I don't like having to play against those well practiced, pre-set alliances come Nationals time. :-) I would love more games for the same money.

[rees2001]

I have been thinking a lot about this lately for NY. Right now we have team density in NYC, Long Island, and Rochester (FLR). There are small groupings in Albany, Syracuse, and Buffalo. If NY had a grant program to start new teams much like Michigan had a few years back, and we went to the district model we could have a much larger impact. We could have district events in Rochester, Albany, NYC, Long Island, and Buffalo or Syracuse. The NY championship could rotate between NYC and Rochester. For those not too familiar with New York State, it is a 6.5 hour drive from Rochester to NYC. It would be sad to not see many of the out-of-state teams we see every year but it may have a trickle-down effect on helping improve attendance at other regionals. Many of the teams that come to FLR would now travel to Waterloo, Pittsburgh or Cleveland.
I would be happy to help get the ball rolling here in NY if there is enough interest. If there is anyone else here in NY that wants to get this going send me a PM and we can start talking.

[Joe Johnson]

Just to keep the balls in the air, let me toss this out there.

Mixing matters. Both at the CMP and at the lesser events. There is value to FIRST to have the cross pollenization between regions.

What do you think of the idea of an Ambassador System where the Winners of a regional championship as well as the Chairman's Award winners (and perhaps even the Finalists) are invited to compete in a different district/regional the following year. It would not be mandatory and I think it would be best if the Ambassador teams were financially subsidized for the extra travel/shipping/etc expenses. I am thinking that of those 9 teams (3 winners, 3 Chairman's & 3 finalists) perhaps 3 become ambassadors.

In this way, teams from various regions would still mix and the culture of FIRST could be spread around but the costs are still kept reasonable and the Ambassadors would be charged specifically with spreading the culture. We could leave it to the creativity of those teams to define what that means, but I think that by charging them with the goal, you will see 1000's flowers bloom.

keep the thoughts and ideas coming.

Joe J.

[The Lucas]

I think New England should be the next region to go to District system because it already has the elements in place. ~ 100 teams in an area (NH VT MA CT RI & ME) with less area than MI (and most of that is ME). 4 Regionals currently and loads of experienced volunteers and FIRST HQ (which will get a chance to closely study district model first hand). CT regional is big enough and late enough in the season to be the the championship. Other 3 regional GSR, WPI, Boston become districts and you need 2 more districts (RI and maybe a second Boston district).

I am in favour of the district system for my area, Mid Atlantic, but drawing lines though the middle of states (and established regionals) is a difficult task to get correct and needs further study. You pretty much have to make multiple districts at once and split states. They to need make a proposal to teams, get feedback and adjust. I agree there needs to be line separating east/west NY, PA, and maybe MD & VA and that is the line to start with (I'll miss FLR ).

I hope they bring the Bag & Tag system to all regionals next (which looks like the way it is going). They could adjust the B&T hours for 3 day events because it would be difficult for larger events to be 2 days. The 3 day events should try to start qualifiers on Thurs like MSC and CMP.