Report for 2008 South Central USA Regional Programming Contest
Our region hosted 68 teams for a 2 day contest on October 17-18 from Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. Our distributed contest included sites at Abilene Christian University (ACU), Baylor University (BU), East Central Oklahoma University (ECU), and Louisiana State University (LSU).
We started on Friday afternoon with an open practice. After pizza, the students had the option of competing in a Scripting Contest or practicing. While the participation in the Scripting Contest was lower than desired, several of the teams have emailed us to let us know they are looking forward to competing next year.
Saturday morning we ran a 45 minute practice contest to provide all the competitors a final chance to become famaliar with the systems and the PC^2 judging system. Following this practice, we reviewed the rules and ate a lunch of sandwiches and wraps. Promptly at noon, we started the actual contest. The contest ran for five hours. Thanks to having used version 9 of PC^2 the judges were able to utilize slack periods to rejudge all submissions to make sure that no mistakes were made.
Overall, the contest worked out well with recruiters from IBM at Baylor and a talk on HPC System Administration and research given by an HPC system administrator from Argonne National Lab.
Many of the coaches and some of the contestants have emailed us to let us know they enjoyed the contest. The site directors all feel that things went well and we are all looking forward to the 2009 contest.
The problem set used for the contest is at the problem set. The results (scoreboard) from the contest is at the scoreboard. The documentation presented to the teams during the contest is at the localdoc.
[problem set] [scoreboard]
[localdoc]
Thank You!
As Regional Contest Directors, we would like to thank the following people and groups:
- The Contestants - You are the reason we do this.
- Each Site Director - In a distributed contest, the success depends on reliable, capable people making sure that
all the details are handled at their site.
- Dwayne Towell (ACU)
- Patrick Hynan (Baylor)
- Mary Kay Tarver (ECU)
- Site Support Staff - Each site depends on various staff. In particular, the technical staff at each site were extremely capable and quick to help resolve issues.
- Our judges - They put together an excellent problem set.
- ICPC - Thanks for being there and providing the chance for the competitors to compete.
- PC^2 Development Team - Thanks for the years of development.
- LSU - Thanks for all the support you provide to the contest.
- Phil Bordelon - As Head Judge, he architected the problem set and lead the judging efforts during the contest.
- Wojciech Stryjewski - Judge, helped design problem set and judge data
- Josh Abadie - For heading up the technical support for the contest.
- Ariel Martinez, Jr. - Our PC^2 administrator and guru.
- IBM - For believing in this contest and supporting it with money and people.
- LSU Student ACM Chapter - They provided competitors and volunteers that were essential to the success of the contest.
At LSU, we would like to thank the following groups for their support:
- Center for Computation and Technology (CCT)
- Information Technology Support (ITS)
- HPC @ LSU
- Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI)
- Networking and Infrastructure (NI)
- User Support & Student IT Enablement (USS)
- Research Enablement (RE)
- LSU Computer Science
- Student Government Associateion (SGA)