From Champaign to Vegas
05.02.06


By omgrace
TopCoder Member

Today I flew from dreary Champaign, Illinois, to sunny Las Vegas for the start of the 2006 TopCoder Open! It's my first time in Las Vegas and everything is so amazing and BIG. Here's a shot from the plane (you can kind of see the strip behind the airport):



Before coming to the TopCoder Open, I kept seeing advertisements for Las Vegas and how there are lots of things to do besides gamble; shopping, sightseeing, touristy attractions... but when I got off my plane at the airport, this is the FIRST thing I see:



There are SLOT MACHINES IN THE AIRPORT! It's quite ingenious, actually - I wouldn't mind winning money while I waited for my plane to arrive.

I arrived at the hotel a little early (I'm staying at Bally's instead of the Aladdin, but all of the tournaments are in the Aladdin) so I walked around the strip and checked out some of the cool hotels. I thought the strip was just a block of hotels/casinos -- VH1's Fabulous Life of Las Vegas did not inform me that the "strip" is actually HUUUUGE! There's a lot of construction going on (lots of condos are being built) but all of the hotels are pretty amazing to go into (even though there aren't any WINDOWS inside!).

The opening reception was tonight and I was a little nervous to go at first; I don't know any TopCoders and this was my first event, but everyone was really welcoming and I met a lot of the competitors. Here's the arena they're going to be competing in:



The arena is really cool - it's an elevated space and each competitor has their own desk. To give you an in-depth scoop, I've decided to put myself in the coder's shoes and try some of the algorithms for myself:



Spectators (yes, there are spectators) can watch the competitors from the screens in the conference room from the monitors provided by AMD:



If you look at the top right of the monitor, you can see that there is a handle (sign-on name for those new to TopCoder) for each computer screen. That way you can see what each competitor is writing in real-time! Technology is so coo1!

Speaking of grotmol (that's the handle on this monitor, in case you can't see) - I met him today! He's from Medallia, a company in Silicon Valley (Menlo Park, specifically). Forty percent of their company's engineers are competing at the TopCoder Open (there are four people of them competing, by the way).

They made awesome shirts for the Open:



That's Mootz, Im2Good, Cintia Gloier (she works for Medallia and came for support and recruiting), and grotmol. Medallia is actually opening an office in Oslo next week (Cintia refers to the team as the Viking invasion since they're all from Norway). All of these guys from Medallia have competed in tournaments before, and after talking with grotmol, I think he's more psyched for tomorrow's poker tournament than the algorithm competition! :-)

I also met some people from China (I've nicknamed them the Asian Invasion - I can be their groupie):



Ying, zjq, WishingBone, and oodinary. It's funny because when I first walked in, people were talking to each other by handles, not by their names. I guess it's easier because the majority of the TopCoder Open's competitors are from all over the world, so some of their names are difficult to pronounce.

Here are some of the sponsors for this year's TopCoder Open:



Amelia Merrill and Kim Felch from VeriSign's MountainView office,



Valerie Tyler and Jim Burtt from NSA,



AMD's booth, and



UBS's booth. This is UBS's first time sponsoring the TopCoder Open.

Tomorrow, there are two algorithm semifinals (one at 9AM and one at 4PM) and one component design and development session (3PM). For the algorithm semifinals, the finalists have 85 minutes to code, a 5 minute break, then a 10 minute challenge. You can refer to davidyang to learn more about the challenge. Also, everyone was REALLY excited because the unused code rule is not in effect for tomorrow's competition (YAAAY!). If you want to know more of the technical stuff, you can refer to dplass and Kawigi 's blogs.

I asked everyone if they had any routines they follow while competing (I used to wear my retainer before every speech tournament in high school but I'll save that story for another time) - but everyone basically said they just get enough sleep....except ploh ! Here's a picture of him with Rustyoldman (he's one of the spectators I mentioned earlier):



ploh is competing on Thursday and for every competition, he wears the first TopCoder shirt he ever received! It's a blue shirt - the color of the shirt you received corresponds to your level on TopCoder. Maybe this is his lucky year!

Finally, to give you a little background information about me (so you're not just reading a random blog), I'm a senior at the University of Illinois and I'm a management information systems major. I'm graduating in a couple weeks (May 13th) and then I'm headed to New York City. I'll be back tomorrow with updates on the algorithm competition and what's going on in Las Vegas. Let me know if there's anything you guys want to know more about and be sure to check back for updates!