Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format

[Citrus Dad]

Since no one else has started a new thread to prepare for the discussion at Champs about the future of FRC, I have stepped up here. I am not advocating a particular position, nor will I be involved in the actual preparation and presentation. This thread is NOT about complaining about FIRST's announcement--it IS about constructing positive proposals.

I strongly urge that many of you who are concerned about this organize yourselves to make a set of coherent alternative proposals to present at the town meeting. Given the likelihood that the locations are contractually locked in, keep those sites in your proposal structures.

Use this thread to organize this presentation, and select specific presenters. Also prepare presentation materials, and even budget and manpower estimates. The more professional and complete, the more seriously it will be taken.

We should take Frank at his word (see below) and engage in constructive discussion.

To meet our lofty goals, though, we will need your help. As Don said in his video, we want to engage members of the community in coming up with the best solutions possible to the challenges presented to this two Championship approach. The concerns you’ve expressed are valid. Over the next several months you will see a number of initiatives intended to engage the community in helping shape what these Championships and activities surrounding them will look like. As an example, we are currently planning a town-hall style meeting at the 2015 FIRST Championship that will allow the community to engage directly with Senior FIRST Leadership on this important change. In all of this, we need your help in doing what you do best – solve problems. I’m personally very interested in hearing your ideas about how we may be able to arrange for final matches between the winners of FIRST Championship Houston and FIRST Championship St. Louis.

Let’s work together to make these future Championships great.

Frank