One of the things I’m interested to see is how the transition will happen. My biggest concern is how they will deal with teams in areas where districts don’t make sense, in the interim before they have a standardized model with cross-travel and a way to incorporate teams that don’t fit into district regions. For example, PNW and NE are going to districts for 2014, and the Ontario region is likely to change to districts at some point as well. Depending on how the district borders are defined, this could leave teams in Montreal, BC, Alberta and other parts of Canada with at most one “local” event. As more regions move to districts, more pockets will appear where teams exist, but aren’t populous enough for their own region, but don’t fit well into neighboring regions.
I’m sure some of the people that emailed Frank asked about this, and I’m sure FIRST has a plan for how to accommodate, but I’m curious to see what that plan is. I’m guessing a lot more of these details will emerge after the 2014 season, which they have had time to evaluate the PNW and NE district pilots and make some decisions on a standardized district model.
What are some of the other factors at play? Based on the Where in the World is FIRST map, it looks like there are teams clustered around the Twin Cities and then scattered fairly evenly though the rest of the state. Is that one of the problems? Unless there’s something pretty major that I’m missing it seems like you would benefit from adopting districts.
I think the plan is to make sure those teams have a regional that is accessible to them as a local event. I say this because in New England, we have several teams that have almost always come to New England regionals from the Albany, NY area. From discussion in another thread, I heard that these teams were not invited to join the district, but that an Albany regional has been confirmed for 2014.
Volunteers, Key Volunteers and event planners. With 180 teams we would need 10 events minimum, that means pretty much 2 events every week plus a championship. We need more people running these events.
In Jim Zondag’s FiM FAQ White Paper he said that in FiM teams are required to supply two volunteers to each tournament that they attend. Assuming district events have around 40 teams in attendance, that’s an additional 80 volunteers per event. That still doesn’t necessarily fill the Key Volunteer and event planner positions, but FiM, MAR, PNW and NEF must have run into that issue as well and overcome it.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is that, as a member of a Wisconsin team, I really want to see more cool semi-local action.
People forget that the growth in Minnesota is a result of having a series of programs available for schools and organizations to start teams and keep them relatively sustainable, but the teams themselves across the entire state are rather inexperienced in comparison to the entirety of FRC, much less the two areas that currently support a district. The teams and the representatives that came together to support the districts in Michigan and NJ/PA/DE represent some of the “old guard” of FIRST as a whole.
Minnesota reached 180 teams 7 years after the foundation of their first team. Michigan reached 180 teams 16 years after the foundation of their first team.
It isn’t as easy as this community thinks, myself occasionally included, to pick a series of boundaries with a certain number of teams within it and at a certain team density, and declare as armchair directors “You there! Build a district system!” The entire Minnesota program has existed exclusively in the modern 3v3 era. Imagine that! The state also exists almost entirely as an FRC island: there isn’t the massive interstate cooperation and competition that exists on pockets of both coasts of the states or between the provinces of Canada.
Minnesota is a relatively dense location and is representative of the success teams can generate to support more teams, but a lot of teams in the state, in addition to the organization as a whole is like bread that hasn’t fully risen yet. The ingredients are already in place and the environment is right, but it takes time and care.
I find it surprising the PNW area is jumping on so quickly because of the regions relative novelty as a fully developed area of competition. That will be an area to watch not only for its oft-unnoticed teams, but for their bold push to the new competitive structure.
I want to see increased local action as well, just we have a ways to go yet before we get there. I think by 2017 we will be in a better position to go to districts but that requires a lot of dedication from teams. Soon Minnesota will have a plethora of FIRST alumni graduating from college, I just hope we can find some way to keep them involved and keep them in MN.
You have it exactly right - I first learned about FIRST in its second year of existence in Minnesota. I am going to be graduating from college next year in which case I plan to increase my role with FIRST in Minnesota. There are other people exactly like me throughout the state that want to do more for FIRST but haven’t graduated yet or are simply too busy with school.
Having talked with volunteers, Key Volunteers, and Volunteer Coordinators from district areas, it isn’t as easy as that. When a team is required to supply volunteers, you never know what you’re going to get. Further, those required volunteers aren’t really dedicated to the event - as a result, you end up with people signing up then dropping out, and a lot more work for the Volunteer Coordinator. Then you also get people who just don’t show up to the event… how do you deal with that? What about small teams with a few kids and 1 mentor? How do you require them to supply volunteers?
The simple fact is that MN has 4 events, and just slightly more volunteers than we need to run 2 of them. Fortunately, almost everyone who lives in the Cities, and thus volunteers for their “home” regional in Minneapolis, also drives up to Duluth - you end up seeing all the same people at both double regionals (In all fairness, there are some volunteers from the Duluth area… but I doubt it’s enough to put on even a single regional). That model simply won’t work for Districts. We’ll have 5 in the Cities, and everyone will volunteer there… all of the out-state events in places like Rochester, Fargo, Duluth, St. Cloud, and wherever else they end up would be horrible to try to run.
Add to that difficulties with Key Volunteers… we have 4 events in the state, but only 2 LRI’s, for example. On top of that, we have a single Volunteer Coordinator that handles all 4 events. I wouldn’t want to put the pressure of managing 10 events all on her shoulders!
These are all problems that will take time (years) to fix, as we need our local FRC teams and population to mature.
Much of that describes us in the PNW, except that the OR event had it’s own volunteer coordinator and the 3 in WA were handled by the same person. Yet we are pushing forward in hopes of making the district model work this year after working to that goal since last season when FIRST wanted us to go to the district model.
So my suggestion is to start scouting places for district events and double down on your volunteer recruitment and get key volunteer people trained this year by shadowing the existing people in those positions this season. FIRST has made it clear that the way forward is the district model better to get ahead of the curve than getting the word that all of the US will be using the district system and be left scrambling.
It would be extremely helpful if you were able to document your process for accomplishing this!
I would really like to the see the Minnesota FIRST website adopt more of a firstwa.org look. We do not have to worry about FLL, as that is run by High Tech Kids in MN and FTC is a little complicated at the moment but I really like the volunteer signups you guys have as well as the alumni portal you have.
If you (or anyone!) has any specific suggestions for changes, improvements, or new features for the http://mnfirst.org/ website, please let me know! I just recently took over managing the site (last week, actually), and am open to suggestions!
Im surprised by the little to no talk of a Canada becoming a district (wouls likely be Ontario and Quebec). I have been told that we can expect a district in 2015, likely not earlier. I’m not sure how much closer or competitive we would become as we are already extremely competitive, and are already close (bonding and social wise).
I will be very happy to see cross districts, as we are 20 minutes away from the Detroit District but arent able to go there. The closest event for us (currently) is 3 hours away (waterloo and buckeye). If we were to get a regional or district here in Windsor I think it would be REALLY cool to see half the team Americans, coming here from mostly Ohio and Michigan.
I really like the idea soneone posted of having sone districts be closed for only that district and sone open for any district teams. That would probably make the open districts more diverse and have an even ratio of dostrict to non-district teams.
Sorry for amy bad spelling I’m on my ipod right now.
It’s tough because 20 has been competing in New England for 22 years- occasionally competing with NY teams (Finger Lakes '08, etc.), but now we can’t.
Yes- there’s going to be an Albany-area regional, but we won’t be competing with most of our good friends from NE anymore, and we have to travel (actually even further than any NE regional we went to) to the Finger Lakes or somewhere else for our second competition.
Inter-district play can’t come soon enough. I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens when NY goes to districts (i.e. a bunch of districts on Long Island, one in Albany, and one or two in Rochester?)
What doesn’t work well for NY is that teams aren’t evenly spread across the state, they’re tucked into little pockets. There are a TON of teams in the city and on Long Island, a large number near Rochester, and 10 or so in the capital regional near Albany. The rest of the state is sparsely populated with FIRST teams, those teams usually being near a college (i.e 229/4124, 639, etc.)
This spread of teams doesn’t lend itself well toward district events.
I actually think having some districts in the CNY areas will greatly help FIRST in NY. There are toooonnnns of school just waiting for FIRST teams, but don’t have the support that Rochester/NYC/Albany have.
I’m guessing: 2 in Rochester, 1 in Buffalo, 2 in/around Albany, 2 in/around NYC, 1 in Ithica, 2 in/around up north and the champs at the Carrier Dome at Syracuse University. (wishful thinking at least.)
Syracuse IS nicely situated between Albany and Rochester. ANd for most of the state, it’s rather centrally located. However, it’s a hike for NYC teams. I also know that many NYC teams don’t have much funding, and going to three events (2 districts and the state champs) might be a lot for them.
The same can be said as an argument FOR districts, though- reducing the cost of doing events.
As it is, Long Island has a regional, and so does NYC. Replacing 2 regionals with 2 districts doesn’t really work. I’d expect 4 or 5 districts there, 1/2 in/around Albany, 2 in Rochester, then one or two elsewhere in the state (Ithaca/Oneonta maybe?)
I don’t know what’s best for New York FIRST, but the way it is right now doesn’t seem conducive to district play. The population center of NY First is still in the city, but having teams from Rochester travel to the city for the state championship wouldn’t make sense. Traveling from the city up to Syracuse wouldn’t make too much sense either. I suspect (and dread) that NY will be left out of districts for a number of years, and when they finally do come, either NY will have a greater FRC population density, or we’ll be split into two districts- Upstate NY and Downstate NY. Downstate would include the city, long island, and the surrounding areas, and upstate would include the rest of the state.
4.5 hours isn’t that bad of a hike but I know what you mean. However you cant please all the people all the time. Considering that Rochester folks travel a lot out of state (cleveland, boston, DC) I would think they are more willing to make a trek to NYC or Albany for a Champs than a NYC team would be willing to make a trek to Syracuse. Then again, I assure you we can fit Pits and seating for 70-80 teams at the Dome - all comfortably, and I’m not sure where in Albany you could find a venue (though admittedly I haven’t looked) I’m sure it would be sweet to put the Champs in NYC, cause it is NYC after all, and having the Champs at, say, Madison Square Garden would be the biggest FIRST venue location since EPCOT (plus it could be televised on MSG). However I’m going to assume that College Basketball will boot us out of MSG, haha.
I wouldn’t think splitting up NY would happen, even if it was a possibility. Unlike other states like California or Texas, New York is relatively speaking a short drive, and I think having The Empire State Regional sounds a lot more powerful than The Upstate New York Regional/New York City Regional.
If we were splitting up, and this is again wishful thinking that the logistics were simple, that there was a Niagara Region, with the Western/Central NY teams sharing some Districts with lower Ontario Canada teams. And the Eastern/Northren/City NY teams would side with the New England Region.
But having all of that back and fourth across the boarder would be a pain for teams.
