FIRST Festival of Champions Update

Dear FIRST� Community,

What makes a champion? In FIRST�, it means truly embracing our mission and our core values of Gracious Professionalism^�and Coopertition^�. It means pursuing the spirit of innovation. It means having a passion for using technology and engineering to make the world a better place.

As many of you know, in 2017 we expanded FIRST Championship to two locations. Our primary intent was to make the life-changing excitement and inspiration of the FIRST Championship more accessible and affordable to more kids and teams. I�m proud to say we�re moving in that direction: 1,400 teams attended the 2017 FIRST Championship, 500 more than in 2016.  Of course, that�s out of more than 50,000 FIRST teams worldwide, so we�re doing this while still providing a very selective level of competition. 

When we announced the dual FIRST Championship structure, we did not plan to host a culminating event for winning teams from both events. However, based on feedback from the FIRST community, we decided to pilot the FIRST Festival of Champions here in New Hampshire this past summer. The event included the winning FIRST� Tech Challenge and FIRST� Robotics Competition Alliances and Chairman�s and Inspire Award-winning teams from the FIRST Championship 2017 events in Houston and St. Louis.

We learned a lot at our pilot Festival event. One item of note was that teams already felt like world-class champions at the conclusion of the FIRST Championship events, just as they had in past years. Another was that the additional resources required to travel and compete at another official FIRST event created a hardship for many teams. For those and other reasons, we have decided to discontinue the FIRST Festival of Champions event.

After Championship last year, we designated members of the winning Alliances and Chairman�s and Inspire Award winners at both FIRST Championship events as members of the FIRST Class of Champions. This special distinction will continue to be given in recognition for reaching the highest level of achievement in our community. To all current and future members of the FIRST Class of Champions: You should be incredibly proud to achieve this honor and to share it with other world-class members of the FIRST Community.

To all teams competing this season: Good luck! I look forward to meeting some of you at the 2018 FIRST Championship in Houston and Detroit this April and celebrating all the champions.

Sincerely,

Donald E. Bossi

President, FIRST