pic: Districts in Minnesota Flyer

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

This flyer, which presents everything as benefits and fails to mention either costs or roadblocks, qualifies as propaganda.

What costs or roadblocks do the average team, who is not involved in their local FIRST community outside attending their regional event(s), face when an area transitions to districts?

I can name a few...

• Potential volunteering requirements
• Increased travel costs for rural teams who won't feasibly have an event within driving distance
• Less "flashy" venue options
• Lack of out-of-state teams

...and I agree these could have been better addressed in the flyer. However, since they were already printed, I resorted to communicating this information verbally.

Originally Posted by gblake

Let's get real.

Why didn't you reverse what you did?

The stuff you told teams could have been put onto the flyers that were handed out, and were posted; and the info on the flyer could have been what you told them.

I think that Alan and I made valid points.

Blake

I'm not going to argue that the flyer doesn't have a positive bias. However, the accusation that we were spreading "propaganda" or attempting to hide information is insulting.

Frankly, most teams don't really care for things like the required number of events or which organization is taking financial risk for events. For teams that only attend one event and struggle to field functional robots, I believe their primary concern is how much they're benefiting their students for the amount of resources (time, money, materials) they're putting in, so that's what the flyer focuses on. Even to these teams, I did mention the increased number of events in an attempt to plant some thoughts of volunteering in them. I also made sure to express several times that everything I was saying was of my own opinion and experiences.

To more established teams, I did speak at length about some of the behind the scene changes that they might not have been aware about, such as the need for a 501c3, and the big shift of responsibility from HQ to the local organization. Frankly, the flyer was not meant for these teams; most of them already knew about the district system.

Also, several people reviewed this flyer prior to print, including a member of GOFIRST and a member of the RPC. If any of them saw this as propaganda, I'm sure they would have mentioned it.