South Central USA Regional Programming Contest

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Our goal is to host a contest that will be the ultimate warm-up for the ACM International Programming Contest. The winner from this contest will advance to the 2002 International Programming Contest (and maybe other teams depending on the number of schools that participate, the number of teams that compete, and the number of teams that solve at least one problem).

This regional contest consists of a lot of different groups. Officially it includes three complete states and a part of another. On Saturday, three state champions will be crowned. We have schools that have graduate programs and schools that don't. We have males and females here. We have numerous nationalities. We have students who are majoring in a number of different areas. Some have practiced for a long time to get here - others much less. But we all are interested in computing, in working together, in transcending differences and furthering the future that computing can bring to all of us.

This contest is a chance for each of the contestants to test their skills at comprehension, analysis, problem solving, coding, debugging, resource management, self control, and communication. This is also a chance for coaches to measure the effectiveness of their teaching and leadership.

The measurement will not be how many problems you solve. It will not be where you finish in the final standings. I am sure many will point at these, but success will be best measured by how much of your potential you achieve and how effective you function as a team. Remember - you will go home with your team members.

Along with being a host for this contest, I am also a coach, and now I am going to tell you what I have told the LSU students who have worked hard for the chance to compete in this contest: You should all stop and realize that you are already winners. You have already been chosen to represent your school. This means that you have shown ability, a willingness to work for an important goal, and a desire to do your best. Just being here means that you have made it to the semi-finals!

Now for some details:

We have tried to make this contest less of a hassle for the teams and the coaches by providing systems for each team. This solves many problems:

• Teams don't have to borrow systems to use for the contest
• No fear over loss or damage of school equipment
• No time spent building the system for the contest
• No all nighter on Friday while getting your system certified
• Almost equal systems (performance and software)

With any luck, the contestants will have a good night's sleep before the contest (one of the reasons that practice ends at 10:00 PM). By the way, the labs that we will be using are all public access student labs (normally) or computerized classrooms. Each system you will use will be 500 MHz (or faster) pentium computer. You will have plenty of room in C:\temp to do your work (that is where you should do all of your work).

We hope that you also agree that the many advantages of this environment outweigh the few disadvantages (if you don't agree yet, think about gathering all your stuff up after the contest :).

This year we are planning to have a Cajun Band for entertainment on Friday night to go along with the official welcome and the covering of the rules.

Each team member and coach will receive a t-shirt (team members must wear their shirts during the contest on Saturday). We will have prizes for the top spots and we hope to continue the tradition of a prize for each team that is the first to solve a problem.

Once again, welcome! If we can do anything for you, please ask.

Thanks to:

• IBM
  • Clearlake Division for developing the problem set and providing judges
  • Extreme Blue for talking to these students and coaches
  • Entire company for supporting the ACM Programming Contest
• Louisiana State University
  • Office of Computing Services
    • High Performance Computing
    • Office of Telecommunications
    • Technology Support Center
    • LOUIS - Louisiana Library Network
  • Computer Science Department
  • LSU Library
• Bob Schwartz at Games Unlimited
• All the volunteers who have worked so hard to make this happen
• You - for being here

LSU

ACM

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