Hi all,
Sorry I’m a tad late this week, but I’m forgetful and haven’t been paying as much attention to FIRST during the summer…I’ll do better next time, I promise! 
This weeks question was proposed by Bcahn836 of team 836…
**Question of the Week (8/4/04):
Where do you see FIRST ten years from now?**
As always, suggestions are welcome via PM, E-mail ([email protected]), or AIM (QuietRiverRage1)
I think the rapid expansion that has been seen the last few years will slow down and there will be anywhere from 1500 to 2500 teams in FIRST.
There will be 50+ regionals and Ragional finals held in the Northeast (NYC) Southeast (Atlanta) , Midwest (Chicago), Northwest (Seattle), West (Los Angles), Southwest (Houston), Canadian (Toronto) and South/Central America(Mexico City){There will be a substantial expansion of teams in Mexico, the West Indies and South America of at least 50 to 100 teams.
The actual championship will feature the eight winning allainces (no Chairman’s award winners, regional winners ect.) and the winners will be the actual national champ.
The Chairman’s award and other major awards will be held in the Summer at a massive weeklong FIRST fest that all teams will be allowed to attend.
In 10 years, I’d have to say there will be significantly more than 2500 teams. In the next few years, growth outside the US will pickup significantly. The competition will be in some way expanded to be much more year round wether (maybe several different games each year?)
I would say the greatest growth would have to be in Europe as most other countries probably will have trouble funding a significant number of teams. What do you think, our Brazilian friends? This might be remdied by having seperate competitions in certain regions with different robot requirements and such.
I think there will always be one central final competition. Even in sports where there are far more participants than in FIRST, sports generally still have a single, most important world competition.
There was a similar question like this before-to do with the expansion of Nationals. Ill go with the same idea as my previous post, that there will be over 3000 teams, especially with the way it is picking up at about 200 teams per year.
Regionals will contain around 60 teams and there will be around 55-60. Each alliance to win a regional, win chairmans, win engineering inspiration and other Major award winners, will then go onto a Super Regional. Also, if a team wins a 2nd regional, the 2nd place finisher-who was the top seed of the alliance will then go on. The SR is broken down into 8 regions; Northeast, SouthEast, Midwest, SouthCentral, Rockies Area, NorthWest, SouthWest, and then a Foreign/Canadian SR. The winners/2nd place of that will then go onto a very small national championship of 48-64 teams depending on the game.
Then National awards will be given out at some type of event like said above, or during Nationals themselves. The top 5 teams for each major award would then be invited to nationals, however, in order to play-they need to be at least above average during that years competition-just so the level of play would be high.
In ten years I think FIRST will be even bigger than it is now with more than 2,500 teams in several countries all over the world, with competitions being held all over the world. The competitions would be based around solving an everyday problem in our lives. While still upholding the values of what FIRST is all about, FIRST will unite high school students all over the world to solve common engineering problems.
FIRST in ten years???
Wow that’s hard to say…
I think if FIRST kept a steady pace we could easily reach 2500 teams…however, the tendency is to “accelerate” so I imagine it would be well over 3000…
There’s really no predicting, though. It all depends on how well this generation of students and teams can promote FIRST and spread the message…
I know that a lot has happened already in one year…there could possibly be a new FRC regional in Brazil in 2005, and that would definitely boost the process…
Well all we know for sure is that FIRST can only be heading one direction: forward. The question, really, is how quickly it will expand. Sooner or later there will be FIRST teams from nearly every country…and then robots will take over the world HAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH <> evil laugh <>
FIRST in 10 years is going to bigger than the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and all other sports organizations combined! Oh wait, it already is.
I see a more complex tournament structure (like that I explained in this link ), the regional competitions broadcasted locally and the nationals, well, broadcasted nationally. It’s going to be great, and hopefully, when I start my own company based on science and tech, I’ll be a sponsor. 
i really think that FIRST will be around in 10 years-- it’s a great thing and yeah tons of more teams and it’ll grow to have new stages how to get to the final final championship event-- it’ll be tougher but in the end rewarding to those teams that make it
FIRST really is like a sport-- gonna be seen all over and teams are gonna face even more challenges --and i do feel that we’ll get more teams later on from various more other countries–and then the countries might eventually perhaps not in 10 years but down the road have to battle it out against each other-- just image FIRST like the Olympics :ahh: kinda of crazy to think but def. would be way awesome
but def. a more complex way to get to the finals-and more interesting challenges so Dean Kamen can keep giving us the homework
I think that FIRST will be huge in ten years. The teams and everything. hopefuly in Ten years everyone will know about FIRST and will want to be apart of it.
In ten years I see FIRST being nearly twice as big as it is now, and having twice as many regionals. There would be more experienced teams out there due to FIRST alumni starting new teams where they live. More Corporate sponsorship will be given to more teams and there would be more of a TV audience. The matches would be shown live on a “big name” station so more people would watch them. Basically I am saying the public would care more about academic activities such as FIRST. Hopefully some of this stuff will happen in less then ten years. 
It isnt really possible for FIRST to become year round. I know running a FIRST team is a year round endeavour, but it’s been said many times before that companies involved do not have the time, or money, to support a year round system, and teachers and schools already have enough issues as it is with the six week build and the amount of class time being missed by students.
So as cool as it would be, I dont think it’s gonna happen.
I think I’m gonna agree with Koko Ed, but I think there’ll be a significantly larger number of teams.