Our team was interested in looking into hosting a competition but we have no idea where to start. We have hosted other non-FIRST competitions in the past but we have never hosted a FIRST Competition.
We are in California and know there are many teams but not many competitions in FTC and FLL. What do we need? What competition is better to look into hosting?
How many volunteers will be needed to effectively run the competition, and what roles will they fulfill? How will we recruit and train volunteers, and what support systems will be in place during the event?
What technical equipment and resources will be necessary for the competition?
I have seen past discussions about this but no current.
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We are in SoCal, and run our competition with the SoCal FLL Program Delivery Partners. I’m sure that you could reach out to them, or a similar group in your area.
We usually have ~30-50 volunteers, depending on recruitment, but i’m sure that you could run a comp with less. Training for skilled volunteers (judges, refs) happens during meetings with the PDP’s, and later with our head ref and judge.
During the event, we use our school as a venue. We’ve run the comp both outside and indoors before. At a minimum, I’d recommend having at least a practice table and four competition tables, a way to display scores to the teams, enough rooms for judging pods, and some sort of food plan/provision.
I’m positive that I haven’t quite covered everything in this, so let me know if you have any questions.
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The best recommendation is to reach out to your local FIRST contacts. FIRST decides who can and can’t host official events. I know previously when we wanted to start an FLL event we needed 10 FLL teams to be guaranteed to attend our event. And remember with FLL attending a second event doesn’t count, only the first.
You’d need to be able to financially support it (can be upwards of $10K depending on circumstances), need to form a committee to organize, need a volunteer coordinator… honestly you need adults to run the event, and play the main roles (Refs, Judges) who are at arms length from all the teams, and the students on the team play roles of helpers, field reset etc.
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