How we organized the Ural rehearsal of ACM ICPC WORLD FINALS
Good day to all habster.
In this article, I will talk about what can be obtained if you infect several IT students from the Urals with a cool idea about an international championship.
It all started on a hot summer day somewhere in July 2012. Several students and Leonid Volkov were sitting in the kitchen of a local IT company (the same head of the electoral commission of the opposition and the author of democracy 2.0, in the past - the winner of ACM ICPC WORLD FINALS 2001). By chance, we talked about sports programming, about its problems in Yekaterinburg, that over the past 9 years the team from Yekaterinburg has never missed the world championship final (and also whether it is useful for developers at all or not and similar holivars, but The article is not about that).
Now, none of us remember exactly what Leonid said, but the words “Cool competition”, “Russia-China”, “To face the strongest teams of the world face to face” clearly sounded there.
It sounds a bit scattered, especially for the uninitiated, so there is little explanation.
About the fact that ACM ICPC can be read in detail here , but if in brief, this is a team competition for solving algorithmic speed puzzles. There is a clear hierarchy of competitions from university championships to the World Cup (World Finals), which, by the way, will be held in St. Petersburg in 2013.
So in these same world championships over the past 15 years , teams from Russia and China have most often won (there is still Poland, but more on that later).
And the idea born was to push these teams against each other in battle: the best Russian teams against the best Chinese.
How to determine the best? Take the top five teams from both countries, passing on the World Finals and call them to fight.
Yes, it has so coincided here that two months before the World Championships in Yekaterinburg, the annual Ural Open Championship in sports programming is taking place. Why not take it for the main site?
( Ural Championship 2012 )
')
Looking ahead, I will say that we, too, pumped the Ural Championship itself: almost all the strongest teams of Russia, as well as teams of undefeated veterans who graduated from universities, which is called, years ago, will gather there.
No sooner said than done. Boil work. Search for sponsors, contractors, organizers, volunteers, communication with Chinese teams (their sports programming was raised to a very high rank, which we never dreamed of), preparation of tasks ... You know, all this endless work invisible to participants.
Special mention deserves the search for a steep site, capable of accepting international competition. Fortunately, they didn’t look for a long time: we have the Ural Federal University in the city, and it has a multi-level platform, codenamed “Parquet”.
In the photo you can see the parquet itself, on which participants will be accommodated, and the balconies from which spectators, trainers, and, of course, countless headhunters will be able to watch the event.
Another subtle question: who will prepare the tasks for the competition? Russia? China? And if they merge? And if they do not merge, then how will they prove that they have not merged? After all, helping your own is a holy cause! What to do?
If you remember, I mentioned that Poland has also become the absolute world champion in the last 10 years. We invited their team to prepare the tasks.
While we were doing all this, Ekaterinburg EXTREMELY became a possible city for holding ACM ICPC World Finals 2014.
Here the Great Ones paid attention to us :)
From this point on, our event became doubly important: we had to prove that Ekaterinburg is ready to receive the World Programming Championship, not to shame honor, etc. etc. This situation had its advantages and disadvantages, but most importantly: the event acquired a format and scale that the ACM ICPC did not have in the world before in Russia (the World Cup in St. Petersburg, of course, will be steeper, but we will be 3 months earlier).
A detailed description of our work, passing through barriers and jumping over obstacles will be described in detail (the article will be titled “One Thousand and One Reason Why Nobody Wants to Organize an International Level Programming Championship”), but for now I’ll tell you what we have in “Total ".
First, two days of competition:
On the 1st of May, the Battle of the Giants between Russia and China (everything will be on Feng Shui, we will hang the flags of the countries, we will plant five teams opposite each other, we will do a common test for each country).
On May 3rd, the Urals Open Championship on sports programming, where 73 (!!) teams come together, including 20 teams participating in the World Championships in St. Petersburg, including the “giants” of Russia, China and Poland, as well as 11 veteran teams from Russia who participated in finals and departed undefeated.
Secondly, the organization of semi-local competitions at the World Cup level, on one steep platform.
Thirdly, video broadcasting for everyone in two languages ​​at once ( Russian and English ), with presenters, interviews and real sports commentators. The broadcast will take place only on May 3rd, but we will definitely show in it the most interesting fragments of the Match of Giants.
We have made every effort to turn the non-spectacular competition of minds into a real show, and we very much hope that everything will work out for us. In the end, we are not cool enough to afford to fail :)
PS: Today is April 29, the day after tomorrow is the first day of the Championship, we hardly sleep, and time is running out. Therefore, we will describe the details of the processes and difficulties in the article after we finish, and in the meantime we invite everyone to watch the broadcast of the championship and wish us good luck.
In this article, I will talk about what can be obtained if you infect several IT students from the Urals with a cool idea about an international championship.
It all started on a hot summer day somewhere in July 2012. Several students and Leonid Volkov were sitting in the kitchen of a local IT company (the same head of the electoral commission of the opposition and the author of democracy 2.0, in the past - the winner of ACM ICPC WORLD FINALS 2001). By chance, we talked about sports programming, about its problems in Yekaterinburg, that over the past 9 years the team from Yekaterinburg has never missed the world championship final (and also whether it is useful for developers at all or not and similar holivars, but The article is not about that).
Now, none of us remember exactly what Leonid said, but the words “Cool competition”, “Russia-China”, “To face the strongest teams of the world face to face” clearly sounded there.
It sounds a bit scattered, especially for the uninitiated, so there is little explanation.
About the fact that ACM ICPC can be read in detail here , but if in brief, this is a team competition for solving algorithmic speed puzzles. There is a clear hierarchy of competitions from university championships to the World Cup (World Finals), which, by the way, will be held in St. Petersburg in 2013.
So in these same world championships over the past 15 years , teams from Russia and China have most often won (there is still Poland, but more on that later).
And the idea born was to push these teams against each other in battle: the best Russian teams against the best Chinese.
How to determine the best? Take the top five teams from both countries, passing on the World Finals and call them to fight.
Yes, it has so coincided here that two months before the World Championships in Yekaterinburg, the annual Ural Open Championship in sports programming is taking place. Why not take it for the main site?
( Ural Championship 2012 )
')
Looking ahead, I will say that we, too, pumped the Ural Championship itself: almost all the strongest teams of Russia, as well as teams of undefeated veterans who graduated from universities, which is called, years ago, will gather there.
No sooner said than done. Boil work. Search for sponsors, contractors, organizers, volunteers, communication with Chinese teams (their sports programming was raised to a very high rank, which we never dreamed of), preparation of tasks ... You know, all this endless work invisible to participants.
Special mention deserves the search for a steep site, capable of accepting international competition. Fortunately, they didn’t look for a long time: we have the Ural Federal University in the city, and it has a multi-level platform, codenamed “Parquet”.
In the photo you can see the parquet itself, on which participants will be accommodated, and the balconies from which spectators, trainers, and, of course, countless headhunters will be able to watch the event.
Another subtle question: who will prepare the tasks for the competition? Russia? China? And if they merge? And if they do not merge, then how will they prove that they have not merged? After all, helping your own is a holy cause! What to do?
If you remember, I mentioned that Poland has also become the absolute world champion in the last 10 years. We invited their team to prepare the tasks.
While we were doing all this, Ekaterinburg EXTREMELY became a possible city for holding ACM ICPC World Finals 2014.
Here the Great Ones paid attention to us :)
From this point on, our event became doubly important: we had to prove that Ekaterinburg is ready to receive the World Programming Championship, not to shame honor, etc. etc. This situation had its advantages and disadvantages, but most importantly: the event acquired a format and scale that the ACM ICPC did not have in the world before in Russia (the World Cup in St. Petersburg, of course, will be steeper, but we will be 3 months earlier).
A detailed description of our work, passing through barriers and jumping over obstacles will be described in detail (the article will be titled “One Thousand and One Reason Why Nobody Wants to Organize an International Level Programming Championship”), but for now I’ll tell you what we have in “Total ".
First, two days of competition:
On the 1st of May, the Battle of the Giants between Russia and China (everything will be on Feng Shui, we will hang the flags of the countries, we will plant five teams opposite each other, we will do a common test for each country).
On May 3rd, the Urals Open Championship on sports programming, where 73 (!!) teams come together, including 20 teams participating in the World Championships in St. Petersburg, including the “giants” of Russia, China and Poland, as well as 11 veteran teams from Russia who participated in finals and departed undefeated.
Secondly, the organization of semi-local competitions at the World Cup level, on one steep platform.
Thirdly, video broadcasting for everyone in two languages ​​at once ( Russian and English ), with presenters, interviews and real sports commentators. The broadcast will take place only on May 3rd, but we will definitely show in it the most interesting fragments of the Match of Giants.
We have made every effort to turn the non-spectacular competition of minds into a real show, and we very much hope that everything will work out for us. In the end, we are not cool enough to afford to fail :)
PS: Today is April 29, the day after tomorrow is the first day of the Championship, we hardly sleep, and time is running out. Therefore, we will describe the details of the processes and difficulties in the article after we finish, and in the meantime we invite everyone to watch the broadcast of the championship and wish us good luck.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/178269/
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