Temirulan's blog

ICPC Alumni Event in Sillicon Valley 2024
By Temirulan, history, 5 months ago, In English

We invite you to first ICPC alumni event in Silicon Valley on June 4 at 6pm.

This is a unique event that will bring together top ICPC alumni and friends. The event will be attended by ICPC President Bill Poucher, Freedom Holding CEO Timur Turlov and Bagdat Mussin, President of the Kazakh Federation of Competitive Programming.

Register here: https://lu.ma/ICPC_Meetup

P.S: wdyt about some small entertainy contest?

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5 months ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +170 Vote: I do not like it

I said it in a different post, but please ask Bill why ICPC allows for such discrimination in ACPC (high participation fees, visa issues, etc.).

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    5 months ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +16 Vote: I do not like it

    Tell me more, for sure will ask

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      5 months ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +20 Vote: I do not like it

      e.g. https://codeforces.net/blog/entry/87603

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        5 months ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +56 Vote: I do not like it

        Me myself I hate too much my country for the corruption and I kinda liked that our ICPC communnity in Kazakhstan are less affected by corruptions.

        It is very sad to hear such stories, I will deep dive into the case little bit and ask whether he knows or what about that.

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    5 months ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +109 Vote: I do not like it

    I actually asked Bill Poucher about ACPC costs.

    During the World Finals in Luxor, there was a coach meeting and Bill basically gave a motivational speech for 30 minutes. He talked about ICPC values and he said multiple times that everybody can participate and there are no borders. After the meeting, I came up to him and suggested a cap for fees for regionals. I said that there's a regional with 500+ USD fees per person and every year there are students who can't afford to participate, which contradicts many slides from his presentation. He said that it's impossible and maybe I'm talking about a superregional or some other event. I told him that it's ACPC. Here's his response:

    1. ICPC can help in finding local sponsors to pay the fees.
    2. They plan to introduce a system of volunteering. You would organize a class in your region, and teach other students or kids. This will cover part of your fees, or maybe even the whole amount.
    3. [When I questioned the need to pay for a 5-star hotel] ICPC can get a good deal for a 5-star hotel, which makes it cheaper than some 3- or 4-star hotels. And some sponsors require a 5-star hotel or otherwise they wouldn't be a sponsor. (The event needs to be prestigious.)

    I hate the response except for the idea (2). I respected Bill until that conversation. But when the topic of ACPC comes up, where a lot of money is involved, the attitude changes and we don't care about ICPC values anymore. Bill clearly doesn't consider a possibility of making ACPC cheaper.

    Also, he understandably didn't have a lot of time to talk during the finals. Please ask him about ACPC during the Alumni Event.

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      5 months ago, # ^ |
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      ACPC introduced this volunteering system for a couple of years (they called it points system) where you can prepare problems/contests for other national contests in the region, but it was very useless for a couple of reasons:

      • They set a minimum-maximum points for everything and always gave the minimum.
      • This only covers the 1500USD registration fee, where you would only get ~750 discount.
      • In the same time they increased Visa + internal travel fees, visa is 200 USD that you must pay (the embassy gives it for free), 200 USD to travel by the worst bus service from Cairo to Luxor in 12h journey (A plane ticket is about 140USD).
      • In Syria for example, we can't prepare our national contest and someone else must prepare it for us, meaning they would deduct points from us.
      • Finally, this whole points thing is a step down, because everyone used to propose old/standard easy to prepare problems, this made our teams even worse!
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      5 months ago, # ^ |
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      Also regarding point 3, you would actually get a lower price if you book the same hotel room yourself, I remember that Deathly_Hallows once investigated about this point.

      P.S: The hotel is a sponsor for the event.

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      5 months ago, # ^ |
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      Re 3: Why the organizers have to choose hotel for everyone? In NERC you can stay wherever you want and nevertheless it still feels like a prestigious event.

      My mind doesn't understand how this is even up for discussion. If most students can't afford to go to competition, the competition shouldn't exist until they find a form in which it works for everyone or at least most people.

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        5 months ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +10 Vote: I do not like it

        This only happened in 2012 when the contest was held in Jordan, not Egypt.

        Accommodation: Hotel is offered at a reduced price, still optional though.

        Fee: $200 per team + hotel fees if enrolled in housing

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        5 months ago, # ^ |
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        Well, it does exist. It means that the majority of participants do find out a way to participate, to the extens sufficient for ACPC to be comfortable keeping things the way they are. And it, indeed, is not up for discussion, judging by how the discussion was shut down when Errichto brought the issue up to Bill. That being said, things seem unlikely to change, unless external pressure is applied...

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      5 months ago, # ^ |
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      Hey Errichto have you stopped giving contests??

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      4 months ago, # ^ |
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      Quick point about this, back when I was competing, we collected signatures from almost every university taking part in ACPC and sent an email to Bill Poucher to complain and ask him to do anything to solve the issue. What he did ?

      • He forwarded the mail to Fouad "the head of ACPC" and some people got disqualified because they signed this email.

      So yeah,I don't think the idea that he is a good guy and doesn't know what is happening is very realistic.

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    5 months ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +34 Vote: I do not like it

    I think that Bill is even more corrupted than Fouad, everyone is complaining about Fouad and ACPC and then he decides to make Fouad host the joint biggest ICPC event.

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5 months ago, # |
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Wish you a nice meeting

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5 months ago, # |
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uh what? the time and place are absurd. if I ever want to go to America I have to prepare like 3 months in advance

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    5 months ago, # ^ |
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    It’s more about spontaneous social fun event

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5 months ago, # |
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will there be a live telecast?

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5 months ago, # |
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any free food?

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5 months ago, # |
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Wish you nice meeting

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5 months ago, # |
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Say hi to participants from me.

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5 months ago, # |
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I feel like it would be cool to host an alumni watch party during World Finals, if this one goes successfully.

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5 months ago, # |
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Hey who’s coming btw?

Let’s do some quick competition like HackSussex or smh like that. What do you think? I can do some small organization for that

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    5 months ago, # ^ |
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    I would be interested if it was announced a couple of months ago

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