In future years (next)
nationals will be limited to the top ten individual scorers or a combo of top scoresrs and top 4 alliance from each regional
any plausibility of this???
Dahl
I think that FIRST will have to start limiting the nationals in some way, if not this year then the next year.
I still haven’t figured out what I think the best way to do this will be, but I think they should try to include as many teams in the nationals as possible. Since they were able to accomodate more than 300 teams this year, FIRST should aim to have at least 300 teams at the nationals.
I think you should include not only the top seeds from the regionals, but their alliance partners as well. I also think that teams that did well on the chairmans award should be able to go to nationals and get their award. I also think that the judges at each regional should have a certain number of slots to fill with what they beleive are the most deserving teams, using whatever criteria they want.
I hope that FIRST doesn’t decide to go to a small nationals that loses its luster.
I don’t think nationals can be limited based on preformance at regionals. The logistics of planning a trip to Florida in 3 weeks are horrendous. Plane tickets would cost 5x what they do when we can order them 6 months in advance. Hotel accomodations would be tough. If Disney tried to reserve rooms, they wouldn’t want to reserve extra rooms, as they want to fill all rooms. So larger teams would get their travel team size cut. Not to mention the planing of each individual student’s not knowing, and eventual let down of many.
I think that a change needs to be made in the way nationals are being run. I think that this year was horrible in that teams that wanted to come were not able to. I’m not sure of a solution. It seems we’ve reached the limit for 1 parking lot of Epcot. Is there a bigger parking lot? Are there 2 parking lots right next to each other?
…I know this sounds kinda cutthroat, but how about just first-come, first-serve? (pardon any puns I may have made). First 300 teams to sign up come, whether its rookie team 856-something or a multiple regional winner?
I agree that nationals may have to be limited in the very near future as to the number of teams allowed. But, as usual, I have an idea…
You know how the Olympics take place not just in one place (even sometimes for the same type of events) but in multiple locations? Maybe each division would compete during a different time. Like only one division at a time…then everyone would come together at Disney for the finals. Then again, that would make most people have to take multiple cross-country trips.
Oh well…I tired. As usual, I didn’t fully think about the idea before writing it. Hopefully I jump-started a good idea in someone else. 
~Angela who really needs to learn to think through things
I believe having multiple nationals can be one possible solution.
You all remember how last year there are 4 divisions, and each team only compete with other teams in their own division. Well, I am suggesting that FIRST have 4 different competitions at the same time after all the regionals ended.
The teams will be randomly split into the 4 divisions just like last time, and the location of the 4 divisions will be 4 separate places across the country. This way, teams will have to travel across the country for one of the randomly assigned divisional competitions, and teams base in Florida will actually have to get out of Florida some time to compete somewhere else. 
Well, one of the division can still be at Florida.
And, after the 4 divisional champions are decided, they will get together to compete at Epcot’s Einstein stage for the National champion. And all the teams will go to the finals and award ceremony for about 2 or 3 days, and won’t have to pay as much for expensive Disney hotels and food.
However, I am not exactly sure how this will work out, as some teams might not want to go to Florida just for the finals and award ceremony. And, it will also mean teams will have to travel one more time instead of just going to a regional and national.
Well, I have a slightly different opinion as to what FIRST will do for nationals in the future. We had four divisions this year. There are four Parks at Walt Disney World. That means that each division could compete at a different park. Then just move everybody over to Epcot for the finals. That way everyone’s at the same place but there’s more room to spread out.
Matt
I agree that FIRST will have to do something in the near future to accomodate the growing number of teams nationwide & at nationals.
In theory, I love the idea of growing the number of teams that compete at Nats by making Einstein larger, but this has its own problems. Before returning to Nats for the first time in 5 years, adults on the team told me that the national competition wasn’t as fun as the regionals. I was skeptical because it was a blast in '96, but unfortunately they were right. The regionals this year and '96 Nats were more fun because they were more intimate. At these competitions, all the teams actually stuck around and watched the elims. When the DJ played good songs people got out of their seats and danced; I even danced on the park benches in '96. Contrast that with Nats now where the only teams watching the elims are those in them, probably because it’s nearly impossible to see anything from the stands. I spent most of the competition in the Archimedes stands and I rarely saw people get up to dance.
I’m not saying that Nats is too big, just that something has to be done to make Nats feel like a smaller competition. I think divisions was an attempt at doing this, but something has to be done to the venue itself in order to completely fix the problems. It’s fine to have 500+ teams there, just as long as FIRST does something to address this issue.
Mike, who didn’t like the 5 minute walk from the pits & Archimedes to the washroom
I have long been an advocate of limiting the size of the Nationals.
The 4 divisions this year went a long way toward putting the fun back in the Nationals (imho), but they are only a stopgap measure when you consider the real implicationions of 40% compound growth.
I believe that limiting the teams that qualify for the Nationals is in the long-term best interest of FIRST.
There are a number of reasons for this but I believe the best two reasons are that #1 it will increase the prestige of the event if the club is somewhat of an invitation only affair and #2 it will make the Nationals a more TV friendly event. I know I sound like a broken record to most folks who are regulars on these forums, but I believe that TV coverage of FIRST is (or should be) a major major part of FIRST’s plan to succeed.
I don’t know if or when FIRST will limit the size of the Nationals, but the sooner they can find a way to address the roadblocks to implementation, the better.
Joe J.
Well, if FIRST wants to postpone limiting the number of teams at nationals, having multiple sites would work but would probabaly be too expensive.
It has always seemed a kind of waste to spend a month setting up the area and then using it for only three days; why not use it twice. Reusing the same site would double the number of teams; half of the teams one week and the other half the next week. This would work for another two or three seasons.
Frank (who loves to see FIRST grow)
I spent most of the competition in the Archimedes stands and I rarely saw people get up to dance.
thats probably mostly because the rambots were in curie
*Originally posted by Joe Johnson *
**I have long been an advocate of limiting the size of the Nationals.I believe that limiting the teams that qualify for the Nationals is in the long-term best interest of FIRST.
There are a number of reasons for this but I believe the best two reasons are that #1 it will increase the prestige of the event if the club is somewhat of an invitation only affair and #2 it will make the Nationals a more TV friendly event. I know I sound like a broken record to most folks who are regulars on these forums, but I believe that TV coverage of FIRST is (or should be) a major major part of FIRST’s plan to succeed.
I don’t know if or when FIRST will limit the size of the Nationals, but the sooner they can find a way to address the roadblocks to implementation, the better.
Joe J. **
One of the reasons I was against having limited teams going to National is that one of the best experiences going to National is meeting everyone around the country. I got to see robots from different regionals I heard from, and most of the people I met in the forum.
However, National seems to have grown so big that it is really hard visiting every pit and looking at all the robots. And as other people said, there are other problems with the Nats getting too large.
An idea I came up with is that why don’t we make the size of the “regionals” larger, every teams going to a “super-size” regional will feel like they are playing in the divisional competition. Then we limit the number of going to Nationals with some method…
This way, people will still be able to meet a lot of teams from all over the place, and the size of National can become smaller without taking away a big part of experience for teams not going to Nats… Teams who can¡¦t afford to go to regionals AND Nationals will be able to attend a super-size regional without feeling too left out from not going to the actual national¡K
Before I actually went to the first large regional, I thought that a large regional would be great.
After having been to a number of them, I have come to the conclusion that smaller is better (up to a point – 30 is perhaps too small).
Unless FIRST would add 2 stages to these “super regionals” I would be against the idea.
Joe J.
I have only been to the last two nationals, so I do not know what the smaller nationals were like, but I think that it is far better for the entire FIRST community that FIRST allow as many teams as possible. In my opinion, the size of nationals is one of the things that makes it so great – there are so many teams to meet from so many places, so many robots to see and so many different ways of accomplishing a goal. However, let’s put my personal opinion aside and assume that large nationals somehow decreases the quality of the event. In this case, each person at nationals may not have quite as positive as an experience. However, even with this small change, there would be twice as many people at a larger nationals. Therefore, a large event generates more net energy and enthusiasm than a smaller nationals would.
That’s just my opinion, and FIRST and/or Disney may not be able to handle any more teams. On a slightly different topic, I think FIRST should use the same system next year as this year for deciding who gets a spot at nats: first-come-first-serve. As others have mentioned, you simply need to know well in advance in order to plan a trip to Orlando for an entire team.
Patrick
I don’t believe in limitation. The nationals was created so all FIRST team’s who could afford to attend, could come together and enjoy the game, together.
If the FIRST Nationals become too large for that parking lot, then the venue could always be re-located.
*Originally posted by jOelster *
**I don’t believe in limitation. The nationals was created so all FIRST team’s who could afford to attend, could come together and enjoy the game, together.If the FIRST Nationals become too large for that parking lot, then the venue could always be re-located. **
…well put. my thoughts exactly
I don’t think it’s the parking lot size we’re maxing out. Now, this is just my opinion, but I don’t think they can get larger portable stands. And simply putting more seats on the floor won’t work either because there’s a limit to how far out seats on the floor can go. I think that’s the real problem. And we need all those seats for opening/closing ceremonies. I also think the pit size is getting a tad ridiculous but that could easily be solved by multiple pit tents (where does Disney rent this stuff from anyway or do they own it?).
Matt
*Originally posted by Matt Leese *
(where does Disney rent this stuff from anyway or do they own it?).
Why, are you throwing a big party? 
I cringe at the thought of merely expanding the seating at Einstein without some drastic changes to its layout. Trying to watch matches from the stands was impossible because the robots looked like matchbox cars. The floor seating wasn’t much better. About the only good place to watch matches in Einstein was the pit in front. Even there, it was difficult to see unless you were in the front.
If FIRST wants people to watch the elims & finals, they need to fix the seating & viewing problems on Einstein. They may have to switch to seating that resembles a stadium instead of a theater. From the stands on Einstein, it was difficult to discern the robots, but from the upper sections in a good stadium, it’s possible to see a hockey puck on the ice.
btw, I heard that Disney is basically maxed out at ~300 teams.
Mike
I feel that teams should only go to the Nats if they participated in a regional. We were hurt in Fla. by teams that had no idea what their robot could do and wanted to try out ideas. I don’t feel that was fair.
*Originally posted by ws6666 *
**I feel that teams should only go to the Nats if they participated in a regional. **
I’m not trying to offend you but…
There are some teams out there that can’t afford to go to a regional if they go to the nationals. Although we’re not one of those teams, teams with low resources should be able to chose to go to the Nationals or a Regional. Other teams may choose to go to just a Regional and not the Nationals. It should be their choice.
**We were hurt in Fla. by teams that had no idea what their robot could do and wanted to try out ideas. I don’t feel that was fair. **
Teams with little experience may choose to do stuff that vetrans don’t agree with. It’s all part of learning.