Countries which don't have FTC

[DCA Fan]

Originally Posted by Erik Huang

with all due respect to the GDC and FIRST, they seem to try and spread FIRST worldwide, yet they forget to keep in mind the other countries when doing these kinds of things;

although this is quite trivial, i think (during the webcast) they should have showed the FRC regionals taking place across the globe, not only in the US, especially since there are several Canadian regionals, among other places.

I agree. I feel like while this goal of showing off all of FIRST's programs on it's 20th anniversary is nice, it is proving logistically challenging, especially to programs overseas or in rural areas. While having a minibot is not necessary (as only 2 of 3 robots will need to deploy minibots), it seems to me that a majority of the teams will want to attempt this, and the fact that it is logistically more difficult for them than better connected teams is an unfair disadvantage.

[JoshD]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I do sort of understand the disadvantage. 422 has been mentoring plenty of local JrFLL/FLL teams since before I was a twinkle in the Dragon's eye. And although Virginia does hold FTC competitions, I am currently unaware of any deep involvement of FTC in our area.

I guess the intention is for these "dynastic teams" to go into deeper relationship with the rookie/budget teams to build (multiple?) minibots that can be shared across each of their hostbots.

There are a good amount of FRC teams that either have a FTC team or mentor FTC teams in Virginia, and there are quite a few in the Richmond area.

[goffchris]

To be fair, FIRST has gotten a LOT better in this regard in recent years. They hired an International Teams Coordinator, Carla Proulx, who has been great. She has been very responsive to our issues, though it seems that they must not have consulted her on some of these things. For example, we used to get our KOP more than a week late (2 weeks one year!). We now get them just a couple of days after kickoff.

There are also special rules to help us. For example, we can't get the regulation pool noodles for the bumpers, but are able to get a waiver to use the UK versions (similar anyway). They provide us with batteries at the regional, since it is illegal to ship the batteries. They also pay an ungodly amount of money shipping the kit to us, and transporting our robot crate.

That said, they need to do much better, for the reasons I laid out and more. I am sure it is much easier in the UK than some other countries, so perhaps others have it even worse.

[kilo96]

i know who u r