I am trying to update our team calendar for next year. I know that Kickoff is January 8 and Championship is April 27-30. That gave us an extra week than normal and two extra weeks comparing to last year.
Does anybody know whether we are going to have 7 weeks to build and 6 weeks of district/regional or 6 weeks to build and 7 weeks of competition before World Championship? Or we will just have an idle week to get some sleep. I will vote for that.
I don’t “KNOW”, but I can speculate that we will have 6 weeks of build. I can also speculate that there will be 6 weeks of regionals, but that’s highly speculative
usually most regionals that are on university campuses are held during that school’s spring break, that might give you an idea on some dates for regionals.
Autodesk Oregon is March 24th-26th. This was confirmed by our FIRST regional contact. We’re also pretty sure that it’s a week 4 regional this year, although this was not confirmed.
This is a departure, as historically, Oregon has been a week 1 or 2 event.
This is what I’d speculate as well, but it’s not like my speculations make any difference. I just have to wait for the surprise and hope my home regionals come at times when I can actually attend them. 
Considering that RITs spring break falls between February 28th to March 7th it looks like FLR will most likely happen March 3rd thru the 5th which means week 1 (ARGH!) since FLR has always went on during Spring break.
Ugh.
Double Ugh.
Triple UGH!
See you guys say, “Ugh” and I say “Awesome” because it means that Finger Lakes is the likely place the ThunderChickens will compete since it may be week 1. I really like FLR.
I’m not so sure about that. FIRST asked the Hall of Fame teams if we would prefer a 7 week build season. I believe other research was being done to evaluate a 7 week build season as well.
I hope it’s 6.
My problem is FLR is a great regional and I hate to see it dragged down by the plague of bugs that seem to happen to all the week one events.
Well, yeah, of course. :rolleyes:
You guys are wimps! 
NJ has been week 1 for 6 years at least, and I’m still alive.
This year, P’tree was a first week regional, and I have to be honest, we came out of the regional with a bad taste in our mouths, but the bottom line is that the experience was worth while. We took the experience to our second regional (about 3 weeks buffer), and we did well.
But I guess it is troublesome for teams who attend only one regional, especially with this year’s week 1 regionals resulting in large changes.
We went to San Diego this year, and it was the first week 1 regional for any of us on the team. I’m sure almost the whole team would say it was the longest, hardest and most stressful regional we’ve ever been to: close to nothing worked on our robot; there were field problems; the rules weren’t in their best shape of the season, as it seemed like every other match was a 0-0 tie.
BUT, if there’s one thing it taught us was teamwork. I don’t think I’ve seen our team work together the way it did those 3 days. Instead of complaining and arguing, we came together and decided to bank on what was working well: our drive system. We took a completely defensive approach to the rest of the competition, and found our way into the semifinals.
While week 1 regionals have their problems, I think it’s worth it. The adversity really brings a team together.
Just my $0.02 on the subject
looking at the academic schedules for universities where regional events are held, this is what we come up with
Week 1 (3/3/11-3/5/11)
+Finger Lakes Regional
Week 2 (3/10/11-3/12/11)
+Florida Regional
+WPI Regional
Week 3 (3/17/11-3/19/11)
+Boilermaker Regional
+Las Vegas Regional
Week 4 (3/24/11-3/26/11)
+Autodesk Oregon Regional
+Palmetto Regional
+Philadelphia Regional
+VCU Regional
Week 5 (3/31/11-4/2/11)
+Silicone Valley Regional
UC Davis has a break from 3/19-3/24 so they might do a Tuesday/Wednesday thing again, possibly on 3/22-3/23. The University of Minnesota does not host their regional events during their spring break therefore they are excluded from this list. If anyone has any extra events to add to this list, please let me know and i’ll make the changes ASAP
What’s wrong with a 45-day build season? It’s long enough, and the teams who are extremely successful keep the engineering process going after that 45 days as it is.
Has anybody heard about any new regionals, usually Dean gives some sort of hint at the end of champs. What about the North Carolina Regional - this was a great regional.
SVR and Oregon are wrong, barring dramatic changes. SVR is almost always week 3 and Oregon week 1/2.