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Last Sunday marked the conclusion of the fourth Osijek Competitive Programming Camp (OCPC). In this camp, 54 teams solved at least one problem, of which 10 teams participated onsite. Congratulations to the top-3 teams by overall rating:

1. Singapore Legged Forces: first place cheated 🤙 (Wailydest, errorgorn, 244mhq)
2. Kyiv National University: 0_GB_RAM (KostasKostil, kostia244, VladProg)
3. Competitive programmers sometimes hide their feelings in the code (Savior-of-Cross, tfg, Sana)

QuantCo Challenge

For this camp, QuantCo joined us as a platinum sponsor. As a part of the sponsorship, we organized a fun CTF-style event with prizes for the camp. Camp participants were allowed to join in teams of up to 4 people and participate in the CTF challenge virtually in a 3 hour window within 24 hours of the second day-off. Congratulations to the winners:

1. bimbimbambam (244mhq, Wailydest, errorgorn, kostia244).
   Prize: WEEFUN Upgraded Tina2 3D Printers!
2. KIVI_GB_RAM (VladProg, KostasKostil, Denisov).
   Prize: QuantCo branded headphones.
3. 4inaz3s (Valera_Grinenko, Barichek, Mustang98, BigBag).
   Prize: Digital planners.

Thank you, QuantCo, for the event! I think it was very fun, and I hope that we can do something similar in the future :)

Day-off activities

As usual, we had social outings during camp day-offs: Our participants played paintball on Monday, and bowling on Friday.

I like to think that our far ancestors played ping pong on such stone tables... :)

Also this time I noticed a ping pong table in the courtyard, and got some spare ping pong net, rackets and a ball to play it with some of the camp participants. The experience was somewhat unusual, as the ball movement were less predictable due to wind and stone table material, but nevertheless fun. I jokingly called it playing ping pong on hard mode 😁

Overall, the whether in Osijek in Summer is pretty hot (up to 35℃), which make it somewhat difficulty to run some outdoors activities during the day, but on the other hand Osijek also has a very nice river beach in 15 minutes walking distance from the camp site, and I had some great time swimming there when not being busy with the camp stuff!

Retrospective

Overall, this camp had fewer participants than some previous camps, which we attribute to a combination of factors:

1. Tight scheduling: Due to ICPC WF being early, and the Osijek university being on holidays in August, we had no choice but to schedule for the first week of September, leading to an unfortunate intersection with IOI 2024;
2. University holidays: Many people have internships/exams/personal holidays in Summer;
3. Abundance of training opportunities: Many teams were overwhelmed by 3 distinct training camps hosted in Europe, and many were too exhausted to join all of them;
4. Complicated commute: Most places require 1-2 layovers when going to Osijek by a plane.

Unfortunately, not all of these factors are within our control. For example, while I was often granted an official leave from my studies or internships to attend training camps, I understand that not all participants are comfortable asking for this (or might not want to spend personal leave days on this), and not all companies/institutions would actually grant them even when asked.

However, we still want to mitigate these issues to the best of our ability! That being said:

• Location: We are exploring options of opening mirror sites and possibly moving the main site. If you are connected with a place that may be interested in hosting an OCPC event, please reach out to me!
• Schedule: We will reach out to potential participants in advance, and consult them about best dates to arrange the camp.
• General: We will try our best to make participation in the onsite camp more attractive to potential participants. While it is still too early to talk about any specific arrangements, I really hope that it will work out, so stay tuned!

And, of course, feedback is very important to us, both from people who participate and from people who would potentially like to participate, but for some reasons can not. If you hesitate about participating, but in principle it is something of interest to you, I'd really appreciate it if you reached out to me, so that we can discuss the issue and try to improve in a way that will resolve your doubts.

Other than that, thank you everyone for your attention, and hopefully see you this winter :)