So, Michigan regionals: hate them or love them they are here.
I’ll say this right now: it is not my intention for this to turn into yet another rant about why you do or do not think this is a good idea. There is a very simple reason for this: the time for conjecture is past when there are hard facts present that you could work from instead.
That said? I obviously won’t be the only one writing here and so I’m pretty prepared to accept that this topic might get rapidly swept away. I’m just asking you guys, out of politeness, to respect these intentions and take the hypothetical stuff elsewhere.
FIRST has called the regionals in Michigan a test. I trust that any sort of remotely educated or intelligent mind understands the meaning of the word “test” in the scientific sense. It would mean that they are running an experiment, that they have defined clear and measurable definitions of success and failure in various categories, and that they will now take and study copious amounts of data to make an informed choice as to what their further action (if any) should be. FIRST hasn’t published any such criteria to my knowledge to the public: but as the public will not be the ones making the decision I guess that is defendable. I am always one for freedom of knowledge and transparency, but I am trying to respect the fact that that belief is not always shared.
Some people go as far as to accuse FIRST of not treating this as a test at all but as a cultural introduction for the rest of us of an inevitable future. Others take FIRST at their word and believe this is a test. I do not want to go into who is right because in this case it does not matter: if you believe this is the inevitable future you should logically want to know about it and study it so you are properly prepared for it. If you think this is a test you want to know the results and study them so you can have an educated opinion on what the conclusion of the test should be (and also want this data in case they do decide to implement it). Either way you cut it: if you are anything short of entirely apathetic about this situation the logical response to do would be to study it scientifically…
…and to be honest with you I don’t see a lot of scientific study going on about this topic. I see raging, I see whining, I see a lot of people patting themselves on the back, and I see a lot of mindless yes-men who agree without a lot of thought. I think that’s awful.
So lets change it. Lets start asking the hard questions about this new system and going about scientifically determining the answers. Lets collect the information and begin going through it to reach some meaningful conclusions. Maybe somebody at FIRST will read it, maybe they won’t. I think the data will be very useful to us if they do choose to roll this system out across the entire league in helping local areas avoid pitfalls and shortcomings: especially since FIRST does not seem to have much expressed intention of making whatever volume of study data they are gathering public.
I’d be a hypocrite now if I didn’t contribute so I’ll start it off.
The new regional system indicates a sharp increase in the number of regionals per square area. This would mean for the regionals to remain the same size you need more teams per square area. Are they getting enough new teams to make the regionals feel reasonably sized? I know there are many new rookie teams…the question is are there enough?
Are the new rookie teams full teams? I understand they have most of their funding out of the way but you can not just give a non-existent team funding and expect them to become a team magically. Do they seem to have reasonable mentorship? Do they look like they will be getting sponsors? Is the number of students on the team to a critical mass where the team is likely to continue even after a few graduating classes? In short: do the majority of these new teams look sustainable?
Do the new teams flood out the regionals and lower the level of competition? Are there enough vets around so that the spirit of “gracious professionalism” (man I hate using that term) is getting through? Gracious professionalism is difficult to qualify so I’m going to simplify some qualifiable indicators for the purpose of this talk: cheering for opponents, limited off-field destructive/hostile behavior towards other teams, cooperative behavior in pits (tool, materials, manpower, and expertise lending), and positive inter-team social interactions. These would probably be a few reasonable starting indicators that this mentality is getting through (and I am totally not claiming that those things alone would constitute gracious professionalism).
Are there sufficient volunteers to staff the regionals?
That’s all I have for now: I figured I would post up my questions and then begin crunching whatever numbers are available for the new Michigan teams on the FIRST website. That might answer a few of the numbers-based questions.
If anybody else has any questions: please ask them. If you have available data from the Michigan regionals: please post it.
Reasonably, by the end of this, I would like the answer to this thread topic’s question to be “Everybody.”
