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2004 Regional Contest Report |
| Site | University | Team Name | Coach | Team Members |
| SYDNEY | University of New South Wales | UNSW-D | Hossam ElGindy | Kim Cuong Pham |
| PERTH | University of Western Australia | The Peglegs | Luigi Barone | Steven Bradley Cameron Patrick James Russell |
BRISBANE |
Griffith University | Hash-mapped Harriers | Andrew Rock | Peter Klein Tim Eagles Tristan Verniquet |
| AUCKLAND | University of Auckland | *NULL | Michael J. Dinneen | Robert Donald Sam McCall Jsun Pe |
| DUNEDIN |
University of Otago | You Get What You Pay For | Andrew Trotman | Tim Jones Christopher Monteith Chris Pearce |
| ADELAIDE | University of Adelaide | The Cossack Union | Bradley Alexander | Alex Flint Dylan Owen Matthew Woolley |
| CANBERRA | Australian National University | ANU Atra | Eric McCreath | Warren Armstrong Michael Stevens Steven James Ring |
| HOBART | University of Tasmania | UTas A | Mike Cameron-Jones | Jarrah van Rijswijk Dmitry Kamenetsky Rowan Martin-Hughes |
| MELBOURNE | Monash University | Information Entropy MD | DavidSquire | Shamim Shahriar Hossain Justin Young Andrew Leigh Hester |
Site Reports
Adelaide from Paul Calder.
The competition at the Adelaide site continues to grow. This year we fielded 16 teams: 7 from Flinders, 4 from UniSA, and 5 from Adelaide. And it was pleasing to see several very competitive first and second year teams this year. Indeed, our eventual site winner was an all-first-year team, which bodes very well for next year's comp.
The contest started right on time and ran with no technical hitches, thanks to the hard work and thorough preparation of first-time Site Technician Darius Pfitzner and Technical Assistant Richard Leibbrandt. And thanks to the prompt and careful work of Site Judges Brad Alexander and Stewart Itzstein, with help from balloon runner Carol Calder, the judging also proceeded smoothly. In fact, apart from some mid-contest confusion about problem test data, all went very well indeed.
The contest got off to a flying start, with several teams submitting correct solutions to problem 1 inside the first 10 minutes and problem 2 inside the first 30 minutes. Teams found problems 1, 2 and 3 the easiest, with all teams solving problem 1 inside the first hour, and most getting problem 2 inside the first 90 minutes and problem 3 by the 2-hour mark. By the end, all teams had solved at least 1 problem.
The pace dropped off considerably after about the mid-way point, with teams tackling the more difficult problems. But the arrival of the pizzas provided some welcome relief and the teams went back to it with a vengeance. For a while we had 3 teams on 6 problems: "Bresenham's Children" from UniSA got there first, followed closely by "Adelaide A" and then "Adelaide B". It looked like a race to see who could get the 7th solution first. But then out of the blue came Adelaide University's "The Cossack Union", who had been working away steadily throughout the day and were lying in 4th place on 5 solutions. With a withering burst, they solved their 6th problem with 32 minutes to spare and then in the very last minute of the competition their 7th, thereby claiming undisputed first place. Their achievement is all the more notable in that the team is comprised solely of first year students. Congratulations to Alex Flint, Dylan Owen, and Matthew Wooley and their coach Brad Alexander for a truly outstanding effort; their recognition as Best First Year Team in the South Pacific Region is well deserved.
So despite the best efforts of the well-prepared and well-turned-out UniSA contingent (thanks again to coach Stewart Itzstein), and a concerted push from the local Flinders teams (thanks to contestant and mentor Takeshi Matsumoto), the University of Adelaide (coached by Brad Alexander) again took away the Golden Ukulele. And given that the Cossacks have declared their intention to return next year to defend their championship, it looks like the other universities are going to have a tough time taking it off them!
Overall, most people reported that they enjoyed the day,
found the contest
worthwhile and stimulating, and would be interested in competing
again in
future. And speaking of the future, the 3 Adelaide-based
universities
(Flinders, Adelaide, and UniSA) have agreed that the Adelaide
site will
circulate between the campuses; next year's competition will
be hosted by
Adelaide University, with Brad Alexander as Site Coordinator.
Auckland from Phil Robbins
I am pleased to report that the Auckland site ran extremely smoothly this year.
We had 18 teams from 6 different universities in Auckland, Albany, Palmerston North, Whitireia and Wellington.
The contest was opened by Steve Holley from IBM, New Zealand who spoke briefly about IBM's involvement with the contest. After the practice session, we started promptly at 2pm and submissions were arriving within minutes as teams solved the easier problems. We substituted coloured paper rectangles for helium filled balloons, and were kept busy supplying teams with these for the first 4 hours of the contest. We entered the final hour with 2 teams tied on 7 solutions and several on 6. In the end, 4 of our teams solved 7 problems, the fastest being team *NULL from the University of Auckland, a year 2 team who also won the recent New Zealand Programming Contest.
Thanks to the judges, Radu Nicolescu, Michael Dinneen, Bill Rogers and Perry Lorier, to our technical staff Art Brown and Brian Green, and to the AUT staff who helped out, Parma Nand, Gordon Grimsey and Petteri Kaskenpalo.
Brisbane from Malcolm Corney
This year the Brisbane site had a total of 18 teams, well up on last year, with 6 each from University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technolgy and 3 each from Griffith University and Bond University. The contest kicked off at 12 noon and ran smoothly with no technical problems.
The Silicone Junkies from Griffith were the first team to submit a correct solution and they kept their noses in front until the final twenty exciting minutes of the competition. QUT's Triple A managed to get their 8th correct solution submitted at the 280 minute mark but were eventually pushed back to second place by Griffith's Hash Mapped Harriers who submitted their 8th solution with two minutes to spare. Special mention goes to QUT's pid0 who were the best team of first year students on the day at the Brisbane site.
Thanks to the QUT staff who helped out on with judging (John Vallickad), technical issues (Neil Muspratt) and general helpers (Ian Creighton and Diane Corney) for their efforts on the day. Thanks also to the competitors who enjoyed the challenge.
Canberra from Eric McCreath
This year the Canberra site had four teams competing from the Australian National University. These teams came from variety of backgrounds including : first year masters students (Team Fantasy), third year students (ANU Red, ANU Atra), and a mixed team of two of our brightest first years and a fourth year (ANU Blue). The contest began smoothly and we encountered few technical difficulties. ANU Blue quickly moved to the lead solving the easier problems. Their lead appeared unbeatable, however, Michael, James, and Warren of ANU Atra slowly clawed back the lead. In the end ANU Atra solved 6 out of 9 problems and took first place at the Canberra site.
Overall the contest ran very smoothly. Many thanks to Bob
Edwards for organizing and setting up the computers and their
environment (and for getting the pizza!). Overall everyone
concerned found this a challenging and enjoyable day.
Dunedin from Chris Handley
Numbers were well down this year -- 4 teams from Otago and one each from SIT and Canterbury. This meant that with the stability of the new installation of PC^2, a good set of problems, an homogenous environment and diligent checking of the data files (no more pc files on Linux machines!), the 5 officials sat around and chatted for most of the time. Thanks to Nick Meek for all the technical support, plus all the photos of the teams before, during and after the contest, to Cathy Chandra our (fortunately, largely unneeded) admin support person and to Ken Sutton and Andrew Trotman as coaches and judges.
Congratulations to You Get what You Pay For on a good effort and worthy site winners. Congratulations also to UNSW-D as Regional Champions, *null as NZ champions, and particularly to Adelaide's The Cossack Union who will probably be going somewhere exotic in 2006 (and 2007!).
Hobart from Mike Cameron-Jones
Although this was the first time that the Tasmanian site had been run in Hobart, having previously been in Launceston, the event went reasonably smoothly technically despite some minor PC^2 glitches and all teams solved at least a couple of problems. It was fortunate that as in previous years things went fairly well, as this was the first time that the regional contest director had visited the site, so a first disaster would have been especially awkward.
With none of last year's site champion team back to defend their title, it was no surprise when "UTas A", with the majority of last year's site second place team won the site. Congratulations are due to Dmitry Kamenetsky, Rowan Martin-Hughes and Jarrah van Rijswijk.
Thanks are due to the head judge for yet another well prepared problem set, to the ACM and IBM for organisation and sponsorship, and to those who helped out with the site both before and on the day: Tony Gray (Technical Director), Robyn Gibson (Judge) and Andrew Spilling (Technician). Thanks are also due to Christian McGee (Technician), David Herbert (Technician) and Julia Mollison (Travel Organiser) for help in advance, and to Raewyn Boersen (Regional Contest Director / Visiting Dignitary) and Zita Mitchell (Refreshment Organiser) for help on the day.
Melbourne from Mirka Borowska
Melbourne site ran with no problems. This year 4 universities participated in the contest: La Trobe University, Monash University, RMIT University and Swinburne University.
Our congratulations to all, especially to the Monash team "Information Entropy" (Andrew Hester, Justin Young and Shamim Hossain) and their coach David Squire.
Special thanks to Ed Harradine, Pablo Rossi, Rajesh Vasa, David Squire for the judging, Fab Iannarella for technical support and Kim Patton for help with organizing.
Sydney from Hossm El Gindy
The Sydney site had a total of 11 teams from 2 universities, MacQuarie University and University of New South Wales.
We started on time and ran smoothly without problems.
The team UNSW-D led the site from the beginning with Macquarie-A and UNSW-G hot on their heels for the best part of the contest.
The collective scoreboard for the region worked well, thanks to the technical staff across Australia and New Zealand, and provided the teams with regular updates of their placing.
It was good to see that each of the teams, barring one, successfully solved two or more problems and UNSW-D achieving a perfect score (That is, 9 solved problems with 9 submissions only).
The main meal of the day, PIZZZZZZZZZZZZZA that is, arrived a little late forcing some of the contestants to resort to the extreme measure of eating available healthy snacks.
In short it was a great success and a wonderful experience for everyone.
A success that I attribute to the magnificant system set-up by Simon Bowden, and the careful judging by Alexandre Mah (site chief judge), Vinh Nhu Lieu Le, and Keith So.
I would also like to thank the great effort by members of the ACM Student Chapter in the University of New South Wales for managing the day and helping the contestants.
Site Created By: Nick
Meek
Site Maintained By:Phil
Robbins
Last Updated: December 2004