Report for 2009 South Central USA Regional Programming Contest

Our region hosted 73 teams for a 2-day contest on November 6 - 7 from Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. Our distributed contest included sites at Abilene Christian University (ACU), East Central Oklahoma University (ECU), LeTourneau University (LETU), Louisiana State University (LSU) and Texas A & M University (TAMU).

We started on Friday afternoon with an open practice, starting at different times at each site as labs became available. After pizza and internship recruitment talks, the students had the option of competing in a Scripting Contest or practicing. Thirty-six teams submitted problems during the scripting contest/open practice sessions.

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 the 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 the scheduled five hours.

Overall, the contest worked out well with recruiters from IBM at TAMU and a talk on HPC System Administration and research given by an HPC system administrator from Argonne National Lab. William Scullin from Argonne announced a "take home" HPC Contest for students participating in the 2009 ACM ICPC South Central USA Regional Programming Contest.

Contest links:

• The problem set and judge data
• The scoreboard from the contest is at results
• The documentation presented to the teams during the contest is at localdoc
• Results for the scripting contest, practice contest and regional contest can be found http://acm2009.cct.lsu.edu/results

Thank You!

• 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)
  • Mary Kay Tarver (ECU)
  • Brent Baas (LETU)
  • John Keyser (TAMU
• 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 worked hard putting together our 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.
• Our judges:
  • Wojceich Stryjewski (IBM)- As Head Judge, he architected the problem set and lead the judging efforts during the contest.
  • James Goodwin (IBM)- Judge, helped design problem set and judge data
• Josh Abadie (CalTech) - For heading up the technical support for the contest.
• Ariel Martinez, Jr. (LSU) - Our PC^2 administrator and guru.
• IBM - For believing in this contest and supporting it with money and people.
• LSU for all of your cooperation and support.
• Center for Computation and Technology (CCT)
• HPC @ LSU
• Information Technology Support (ITS)
• Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI)
• University Networking and Infrastructure (UNI)
• User Support & Student IT Enablement (USS)
• LSU Computer Science
• LSU Student ACM Chapter - They provided competitors and volunteers that were essential to the success of the contest.
• Student Government Association/Tech Fee Committee (SGA)