Hi Codeforces community!
I am currently a member of a team that aspires to compete in the upcoming ICPC World Final 2024. As we gear up for this exciting journey, we encounter a significant hurdle that we'd like to share with you all.
As part of the qualification process, we must first participate in the national marathon in Colombia, which is a crucial step towards earning a spot in the Latin American regional and, ultimately, the world finals. However, here's where the difficultie lies – the scheduled date for the national marathon (2nd September) coincides with the prestigious International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), taking place from 28th August to 4th September. Several team members, including myself as a coach and one of my teammates as participant, have qualified to represent Colombia in Hungary at the IOI, making it seemingly impossible to be at both events simultaneously (as far as we know).
Upon realizing this conflict, we immediately attempted to contact ICPC Colombia to discuss possible alternatives. We proposed the option of either rescheduling the national marathon or allowing incomplete team participation with the commitment to complete the team in subsequent stages. However, to our dismay, ICPC Colombia remained inflexible and denied us the possibility of participating without relinquishing the IOI.
Their reasons for this decision were not entirely convincing. Regarding the date, they stated that it is a global arrangement. But we wonder, shouldn't they consider the IOI dates? After all, who schedules the Champions League on the same day as the FIFA World Cup? We believe that each country should be able to adjust their national marathon date, at least to some extent. Moreover, allowing incomplete team participation would not affect anyone else but the team itself, and this has happened in our national marathon before, and it have happened in higher stages as well, including World Finals.
Looking beyond this specific issue, we've experienced other difficulties with the organization in Colombia. This year, two training camps were organized in different cities – one by competitors in Medellin and another coordinated by ICPC Colombia in Bogota. While ICPC Colombia claims that the dates were announced first by Bogota, we recall that Medellin announced them earlier. Consequently, the dates overlapped, creating unnecessary conflicts for participants. Our organization seems to hinder our experience as competitors rather than enhancing it. We understand that coordinating such events is complex and may not cater to specific needs, but we believe the IOI competition is a valid reason to seek some flexibility.
If you've made it this far, leave a like (just kidding)! We'd love to hear about how similar situations are managed in your country and how you have dealt with them. Is there a feedback system or complaint box for ICPC in your country? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you, Codeforces community, for your support and input. Let's continue striving for a better competitive programming experience for everyone worldwide.
Share your thoughts below! How are similar conflicts handled in your country? Have you encountered a situation similar to ours, and how did you resolve it? Do you have a feedback system or complaint box for ICPC? Let's foster a constructive discussion!
Looking forward to your comments and experiences!
Auto comment: topic has been updated by mcqueencin (previous revision, new revision, compare).
I think you give them too much credit, their bigger priority is to have little work and risk, host the competition and get some sponsorship money.
Obviously they should avoid having conflicting dates, but it would require more diligence from them, which is more work.
So your options are to insist let them allow you to compete with incomplete team. Mention that in most recent WF incomplete teams were allowed. It would increase significantly the chances of them accepting your request if you know personally an involved professor that might agree with you and having them make the request.
The other option is just not having the IOI team member. He can participate in the next year :)
thank you! we will insist.
Auto comment: topic has been updated by mcqueencin (previous revision, new revision, compare).
Sadly, these issues exist even for international competitions such as ICPC WF. I remember someone mentioning that the first time a team from Israel qualified to ICPC WF, the organizers made a mess out of the whole situation by asking for ridiculous things every few weeks for some visa related procedures, up until a couple of weeks until the contest.
Also, not really organization related, but I do remember one funny incident where a team from a top uni in India cheated during ICPC prelims, and their uni decided to disqualify all of its teams for that year (I don't understand why that team cheated even if they didn't have a conscience [not condoning cheating in any way] — that team comprised of people who were candidates for Indian IMO selection and one of Indian IPhO/IChO selection when they were in school, and one of them ranked first in JEE, so they were definitely pretty strong at thinking). In that very contest, I also remember there being a problem with a wrong intended solution — those were one of the darkest days of Indian ICPC that I know of.
Currently we are in the darkest days i guess :(, jajaj problems with wrong intended solutions are frequent in our nacional marathon.
It has also happened in Colombia several times during National Competitions that there were problems with incorrect intended solutions or faulty test cases. As a result, they decided not to show the test cases or publish the contests for upsolving. This leads us to the question: are they hiding something?
Logistics of hosting a national competition are huge. But I think it should be better for everyone if they are more open to implement some improvements and involve more people :)
Upsolving of the competition, opening problem setting for more people (also for testing ideas & solutions), official tutorials/codes and test cases, being able to retrieve the codes submitted during the competition.
These are jus ideas, of course it's an open discussion
I'm sorry to hear about this--my experience is that while ICPC generally does a good job organizing the live components of the higher-level events (I thought NAC20, NAC22, and WF21 were all very well-run in terms of the on-site experience), the rest of the logistical planning leaves much to be desired (see: the many issues with ACPC, NAC21 being moved online a week before the start date, etc).
For what it's worth, the date of your national marathon definitely isn't fixed globally. The North America regionals (our third-tier competition, which I think is equivalent to your national marathon), for example, aren't happening until February, and there is no requirement for all of those regionals to happen on the same day unless they share problems. (Are there perhaps nearby regional/national contests using the same problemset on that day?)
My advice: if you don't get permission from your national organizers to compete at the national marathon with an incomplete team, keep moving up the food chain (e.g. contact the organizers of the Latin America contest, then the global ICPC officials). The worst they can say is no, and there is definitely a precedent for allowing incomplete teams to compete (one year a two-person team from my college did well at regionals and was allowed to add a third team member before the next stage). The higher up you go, the more likely it is that contest officials will be aware of this precedent.
It is fixed for latin america as a whole, as many countries use the same contest at the same time. In that case, it must be at the same time as discussion starts immediately after the contest ends and it's unrealistic to stop it.
I see, thanks for clarifying!
I don't know how it's going to be this year, but Colombia has previously held its own contest in order of team classification to the Latin American regional. So, as far as I know, the problemset for Colombian National Contest is not shared with other countries.
You're right I was imprecise. It's not fixed for latin america as a whole, but for some countries.
Dah!
its Duh, Duh!