(Lack of) Value in the Regional Model

[Koko Ed]

While it would be nice to do six minute turn around times and give people more matches you also have to realize that there is little margin for error with such a tight window. Often the events will suffer death by a thousand paper cuts. A minute lost here, a minute lost there and next thing you know you are a half hour behind. God forbid something serious happens to the field or a team comes out that is just not connecting at all. It is really hard to make an event run smoothly without losing time. In my personal opinion I think they should at least do seven minute turnaround times for the championships but Ii know they are going to push for six minute turn around times. That's gonna be a tall order to pull off.

[Sperkowsky]

I think we overpay for things in Frc but it comes down to me with regional presentation. For instance take sbpli regional vs the NYC regional. The NYC regional is hosted in the huge javits center. There are teams from all over the world. There are Ftc, fll, and Jr fll to tournaments going on at the same time and there are even major companies like Goldman sachs, and google there. Everyone has 10x10 pits and overall the presentation is great. Then you go to the sbpli regional. You get a homy effect being in the small University. Your lucky to get 8x8 pits and everything feels kind of dark. It's still a great regional don't get me wrong. But what I don't understand is how you pay the same for both the events.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

I think we overpay for things in Frc but it comes down to me with regional presentation. For instance take sbpli regional vs the NYC regional. The NYC regional is hosted in the huge javits center. There are teams from all over the world. There are Ftc, fll, and Jr fll to tournaments going on at the same time and there are even major companies like Goldman sachs, and google there. Everyone has 10x10 pits and overall the presentation is great. Then you go to the sbpli regional. You get a homy effect being in the small University. Your lucky to get 8x8 pits and everything feels kind of dark. It's still a great regional don't get me wrong. But what I don't understand is how you pay the same for both the events.

The disparities are crazy, especially considering how expensive I've heard the NYC Regional/tournaments are to host.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

The disparities are crazy, especially considering how expensive I've heard the NYC Regional/tournaments are to host.

I can imagine. Im at the javits center all the time (once a month at least) one event I go to every year is the 3d printing expo. When I was in the press lounge I noticed the event coordinator. Being it was in the same room the Frc competition was hosted I asked him how much it costs to rent this for the weekend. He told me it cost them 300,000 for the 3 days during the week but if it was a weekend it would cost. 400,000! Now I imagine first does get some discount. But it still is crazy expensive. Let alone them renting bleachers, cherry pickers, light systems, and trucks to transport all their things. It most cost close to 600,000 so I see why you would pay 5k to enter it. Where as the hofstra competition probably costs like 150,000 - 200,000 at most. The difference is though sbpli is a small company compared to the companies who sponsor the NYC competition.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

I can imagine. Im at the javits center all the time (once a month at least) one event I go to every year is the 3d printing expo. When I was in the press lounge I noticed the event coordinator. Being it was in the same room the Frc competition was hosted I asked him how much it costs to rent this for the weekend. He told me it cost them 300,000 for the 3 days during the week but if it was a weekend it would cost. 400,000! Now I imagine first does get some discount. But it still is crazy expensive. Let alone them renting bleachers, cherry pickers, light systems, and trucks to transport all their things. It most cost close to 600,000 so I see why you would pay 5k to enter it. Where as the hofstra competition probably costs like 150,000 - 200,000 at most. The difference is though sbpli is a small company compared to the companies who sponsor the NYC competition.

Did you know that none of your registration money goes to the regional?

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Did you know that none of your registration money goes to the regional?

Seriously. Then what are we paying for. The kop and first choice are half donated and the gdc can only have so many paid employees.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Seriously. Then what are we paying for. The kop and first choice are half donated and the gdc can only have so many paid employees.

Fields. Did you know that each field has to be refitted for each and every game, every year? Did you know that each field travels in a semitruck, for 6 weeks, plus a championship run for some of them? (District fields excluded from the HQ fields assessment here--some of this comes out of the district, I think.) And did you know that the field's road cases have to be refitted, too? Not counting the whole "repair" sort of thing. They've only got what, well over a dozen fields on the road, including the spare?

Training. HQ brings in the key volunteer positions, every year, and helps pay for their travel. Plus makes training materials for everybody else. I suspect travel for key employees to events takes some change as well.

Overhead. Gotta keep the lights on at HQ, along with the A/C, FIRST Place and its summer programs, and other stuff that needs to be taken care of.

Salaries. I think there are more people than you think working at HQ.

Promotion. All them videos and brochures gotta come from somewhere.


There's a lot of stuff that you don't necessarily see, year-to-year--you only see the effects. And all that stuff costs money. I suspect I only touched on a few of the items...

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Seriously. Then what are we paying for. The kop and first choice are half donated and the gdc can only have so many paid employees.

There are a lot of other expenses about running a regional that HQ takes care of.

Originally Posted by JonA

Clearly, it does not cost $5000 for a kit of parts and one fractional slice of a competition. It costs way more than that, especially in more expensive markets. These fees go to support all aspects of supporting the teams and competitions. It costs $4000 to go to a second regional because a second regional is a luxury and it costs a lot to support the infrastructure of the FRC system so the $4000 (from those that can afford it) subsidies the cost of all competitions that you attend, kit of parts, and the entire infrastructure. True, the money does not go to the Regional Planning Committee to put on the events...but it does go to things like creating the field, supporting the field, transporting the field, paying the engineers and support staff at FIRST, sending that staff to run and support your regional, your local Senior Mentor, and other costs of running FRC. So, it confuses the trees for the forest when it comes to saying that the registration money doesn't go to the regional...in my opinion.

Just think about the field, for example. There are 16 trucks, minimum (11 in the US, Canada, Australia, Hawaii, Israel, and at least one spare on standby). This doesn't even include the district fields (which aren't owned by FIRST, but that's another 10). Each field consists of ~20 road cases that have to get shipped (in a truck) to each event. Most of the US fields do 5 or 6 events, then go to St. Louis, and the others are crossing international boarders. Then the carpet has to be shipped separately to each events. Multiply that by the >60 regionals, and that adds up to a lot of money. Then add in the costs for all the field elements and game pieces - a portion of the field needs to get redone every year x20, parts go bad and need to be replaced (and some of the field hardware is not cheap), and game pieces (each event is budged 100 noodles this year, and each truck has at least a full extra set of totes. Then add in all the trophies, medals, banners, 100,000+ volunteer shirts, small mountain of gaff tape, and all the other disposables an event goes through.

These things add up - all that money is not sitting being used as a swimming pool somewhere in Manchester.

[346CADmen]

Originally Posted by Kevin Kolodziej

Looking through the results for the first four weeks of competition, for regional events only, I see a lot of variation in the number of matches. In general, the more teams there are at an event, the fewer matches each team will get. That's a given. But that's not always the case this year. Virginia had 64 teams and they only played 86 matches, giving each team only 8 matches. Orlando also had 64 teams but played 107 matches giving each team 10 matches. According to the public agendas available for each event, they had the same time allotted for qualifying matches (11 hours total). I was not at either of these events, so I cannot say for sure if the schedule was adhered to or not, but how can FIRST justify a difference of 21 matches between two similarly sized events?

I would point most following this back to the initial question. Forget districts versus regional events that should be a different thread. However the initial question actually comes to play in district events as well. How does FIRST justify the disparity in similar events when looking at matches played?