Regional Selection Process

[waialua359]

Its too bad that for some teams, the home regional is the Most expensive, from a robot shipment expense standpoint.
I'm sure its a factor for those that do multiple regionals in a season.

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by Manoel

Here's our criteria for this year:

• We're going to two regionals.
• They have to be back-to-back - Maybe going home for two days and competing again is bad, but flying 6000 miles home then back in two weeks is just plain stupid.
• We drive from regional to regional. Less than 375 miles is doable, less than 600 miles is manageable, anything over that is stupid.
• We spend a lot on air tickets, so we have to go somewhere culturally relevant. Events in the middle of nowhere aren't really an option.
• We like tough competition.
• We're from a big city (~ 1.3 million people, 4 million metro area) and from a developing country. What most teams consider "big" or "violent" or "not suitable for students" isn't really much for us.

A personal criteria that some mentors share and that will have to be relayed to the school is that we'd like to go to Week 1-2 events this year.

Not Week 1 & Week 2, but consider Week 3-Chesapeake in Baltimore and Week 4-Washington DC. Lots of sightseeing opportunities in both locations. If you will have a vehicle and therefore can drive to the venues, you can save $$ on hotels by staying just outside of the city. (For example, lots of cheaper hotels near BWI airport, about 5 miles from Baltimore.)

Baltimore and DC are only about 35 miles apart.

[KathieK]

Some things to think about were outlined in the FIRST Senior Mentor call* held on 9/9/10 by Nate Knauss with Frank Merrick: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr....aspx?id=10124


We also have a NEMO white paper on this topic: http://www.firstnemo.org/resources.htm

* Very few people seem to be tuning into our calls. The schedule is sent out to team contacts in advance; if you have suggestions for topics you'd like to learn more about, contact your local Senior Mentor or Regional Director (or drop me a message).

[BillD in MD]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

Not Week 1 & Week 2, but consider Week 3-Chesapeake in Baltimore and Week 4-Washington DC. Lots of sightseeing opportunities in both locations. If you will have a vehicle and therefore can drive to the venues, you can save $$ on hotels by staying just outside of the city. (For example, lots of cheaper hotels near BWI airport, about 5 miles from Baltimore.)

Baltimore and DC are only about 35 miles apart.

On behalf of the Chesapeake Regional Planning Committee, we hope you will consider coming to our event in Baltimore on March 17-19. We are the week before the DC Regional, and less than an hour away by car or train. It would our pleasure to have your team join us. A number of our local teams do both events and we will do our best to simplify the transport of robots from one to the other. If you have any questions about the area or our event, please let me know. We hope to see you in March!