Sponsored by MICROSOFT

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPEAN REGION

Bucharest, October 19th, 1996

The Romanian Society for Informatics and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, "POLITEHNICA« University of Bucharest, had the honour to organise the 1996-1997 ACM South-Eastern European Regional Programming Contest.

A number of 24 programming teams from Bulgaria, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and Yugoslavia.

The first place was taken by:

from Bucharest University with 6 problems solved and a score of 954 points.

The second place was taken by:

from the "Politehnica« University of Bucharest, Romania, with 5 problems solved and a score of 737 points.

The third place was taken by:

from the Computer Science and Engineering, Romania with 5 problems solved and a score of 833 points.

The fourth, the fifth and the sixth place were taken, in the same order, by:

The South-Eastern Region was assigned 2 places for the final contest that will be held in San Jose, California USA. Accordingly the first two teams will participate to the finals.

Teams' task was to solve 7 problems in 5 hours using C or Pascal programming languages. At the end of the contest, none of the teams solved correctly all 7 problems. There were 1 team with 6 solved problems, 5 teams with 5 solved problems, 3 teams with 4 solved problems, 5 teams with 3 solved problems, 5 teams with 2 solved problems, 3 teams with 1 solved problem and 2 teams with no solved problems.

The contest computers were IBM-PC compatible Pentium 133 Mhz, 16 Mb RAM, 1 Gb HDD, linked by a network running Novell Netware 3.11. They were provided by Forte Computers Ltd., Romanian authorised distributor of Microsoft products. The site of the contest was the main hall of the "Rectorat" building, Politehnica University.

The evaluation of the results and scoring was based on the Personal Computer Programming Contest program (PC²) v4.3, developed at the Computer Science Department, Sacramento, California State University. The use of PC² permitted a smooth run of the contest and facilitated the activity of judges and runners.

The 24 teams totalled a number of 71 member students , among which only two girl students : Ana Lubenova Milanova from the American University in Bulgaria and Neagoe Ana-Maria from the "Politehnica« University of Timisoara, and 30 faculty advisors and team coaches. There were more than 80 staff members and volunteers who contributed to the organisation and run of the contest.

Each member of the participating teams received prizes consisting of software kits of Visual Java++. Also the first three teams received a Windows 95 and a Visual Basic kit. The prizes were offered by Microsoft.

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The contest budget was raised using funds from the Romanian Society for Informatics, ACM, Politehnica University and local contributors ( FORTE COMPUTERS Ltd., Ministry of Youth and Sports, AGNOR, DIGITAL, ALGORITMA, AMERILEX, SOWAH, SPRINT). Participation in the contest was free of charge and so were buffets, banquet and tour of Bucharest supported by the local contributors..

Upon registration, each participant received a contest folder containing: contest badge, contest rules, contestant's guide for PC², Certificate of Participation, sample problem sets, timetable, list of local contributors, ACM membership application form. During the stay in Bucharest, the team had an associated guide (student volunteer) to show them around.

During the award ceremony Certificates of Participation or Recognition were given to all participants and volunteers. Everybody seemed very excited about receiving the certificates, especially the volunteers, showing that the ACM idea of offering certificates was very welcomed.

Two press releases were issued: one before and one after the contest. Important Romanian TV channels, as TVR1 and Antena1, attended either the award ceremony or the competition and disseminated the event. Several newspapers published announcements or presentations of the event.

We want to express our thanks to Chief Judge Dr. Nikolay Ivanov, for his activity and constant help during the contest.

We would like also to express our thanks to the ACM and Microsoft Corporation, the Romanian Society for Informatics, "Politehnica« University and local contributors for their generous support for the ACM South-Eastern European Regional Programming Contest. And last, but not least, we thank all the volunteers who helped run the contest. Without all these people and organisations, it would have been hardly possible to make this event happen.