What do you feel about the growth of FIRST?

[Ken Leung]

Not sure if this topic have been discussed already (and if so, please point out the link). But I've been reading about new request for new regionals, and more and more students graduating and starting teams of their own, and started thinking about the growth of FIRST, and the future.

A few things came into my mind when I thought about this... The economy getting worse and worse, more sponsors are pulling out from both teams and regionals, and number of FIRST staff is going to remain relatively the same.

Mean while, one of the biggest goal of FIRST is to have a team in every high school across the country, so many more students will be exposed to this competition.

So... Realistically, with the growth rate right now and the condition of the economy, is it even possible to reach that goal? Well, I am not sure, because even with a health economy, I can't see a team in every high school across the country within 2 to 4 years. So, a short term goal is to get a decent growth rate every year. But, is that even resonable under the current circumstances?

In the bay area, there are relatively a lot of teams around here, Almost one team in every city on average, and there will be more rookie teams starting up. There will be less sponsors per team at this rate, and the Silicon Valley Regional is at its maximum capacity. So, some how, all those teams are going to need $9000 for two events, plus 5000 to 10,000 dollars to build a robot. Then we will need Sacramento regional to be bigger, and eventually another regional near the Bay Area. Same thing is happening at LA with lots of veteran and coming rookie teams.

So, I don't know what to think right now. I have a weird feeling that sooner or later we will reach a limit where we just can't fit more teams around here anymore, without something being done. When I say something, I mean things like: 1. Economy go back to normal, 2. some sort of laws passed to help teams out finanically, 3. more regional FIRST staffs supporting teams out there and running the new regionals.

Well, without going into deeper thoughts, I just want to know what everyone else think about this. Is FIRST growing too big for its own good? Do you honestly see a much bigger future for FIRST? What are some of the things that could potentially stop FIRST in its growth?

Feel free to put your thoughts into this topic... But I do ask you to think a little bit before you post.