The Official Blog of the 2008 TopCoder Open
We're Underway - Meet the Studio Finalists
Posted May 12th 2008 12:15PM by Denis Horgan
The first round of the Studio finals began this morning at about 8:03a.m. Las Vegas time. After a slight delay, our 12 Studio finalists took the stage for the announcements, looks like they got a little behind the announcer before catching up at the end :) - here's the video.
Studio Finalists Arrive!
Posted May 12th 2008 12:30AM by jwlms
It's the night before the first round of the Studio competition and I just got to meet with nine of the twelve finalists during our casual dinner. I'm always so excited to see everyone. Maraqja came in earlier today with Psyho and it was great to see her again. Tonight I got to meet foxyhu, Elizabethhee, djackmania and sweetpea for the very first time. And of course, it was great to see oton, vlad_D, Tricia_Tjia and abedavera again! I think I saw oninkxronda coming in later as I was leaving, but I was off to my room to finish last minute scheduling for tomorrow. The rest of the Studio competitors did not make it to dinner, so I am really hoping they will remember to be in the arena 30 minutes before the round begins tomorrow for an overview of the rules and their announcements on the stage.
The last two days have been great. spectorbrain and I both arrived Saturday to find the arena almost completely set up. We had a great dinner at Samba's and then I was off to bed to sleep off the last two weeks of working day and night. I have one of the new rooms here at the Mirage and the bed is truly heaven. invisiblepilot came in today and the three of us kicked off our shoes (maybe that was just me), pulled up the floor and balanced the Mac on a chair to go over some ideas for Studio. I would have stolen some of Jessie's bean bags, but then I read her post below. :) It's a bittersweet reunion for the three of us since we're missing the rest of the Studio team (hi guys!).
Tomorrow's round is the longest -- but it's still a fast and furious design pace. The finalists have just 3 hours to complete and submit a design. They will get the project details when they get to their stations tomorrow, so I can't spoil the surprise by telling you what it is here. I'll post a recap after the round and hopefully show some screenshots and photos of the competitors hard at work. This one may be one of the toughest rounds, as many of the competitors had 20+ hour flights and looked very tired this evening. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone conceptualizes tomorrow.
TC Channel from the TCO
Posted May 12th 2008 12:12AM by Denis Horgan
Sarah Ramkissoon [polgara] gives us the first of many TC Channel reports this week from the TopCoder Open in Las Vegas.
Sunday
Posted May 11th 2008 10:50PM by jmpld40
We are done with the set up and competitors have started to arrive! Yay! Things are really getting exciting here now. We have the competition arena set and wow, it's amazing. The sponsor's are here and ready to go. They have been terrific so far.
Make sure you take a look at the time lapse video for today because I spent a good five minutes dancing in front of the camera. That ought to be a laugh and I'm sure ntrefz can't wait to see it. He's been trying to show me up all weekend with his clubbing moves but I think I win hands down.
Today was a great day. We got to perfect the competition arena since we got finished with set up on time. A lot of cleaning, organizing and last minute details were how most of the day went. However the best part of the day is when the competitors started to arrive. This is my seventh TopCoder event (holy cow!). It's so great to see the same smiling faces at each event and even better to meet new smiling faces. Enthusiastically I hug each one I've seen so many times before and I feel like we're old friends.
Best arrival award goes to Jan_Kuipers, krijgertje, and Soultaker. They showed up at the registration desk in their swimsuits (with shirts and shoes too though) all disappointed that the pool had already closed. They looked really cute and were happy to see, their old buddy ;)
Today, OlexiyO taught me how to say thank you in Ukrainian but I already forgot (he'll have to remind me again!). But I really tried to learn a bit of Russian before this event so I could look cool in front of all our Russian competitors. However it is such a hard language to learn so I failed miserably. I'm so impressed how well all of the competitors know English and I'll have to try harder next time.
It's a wonderful treat to have the job I have. Sometimes organizing these events gets really stressful and it's a lot of hard work. But the end result of having all these great people being so happy and excited to be here is so worth all the effort. I hope I get to meet all 120 of you! Please come find me (I'm the crazy girl always talking, moving and trying to make people laugh). I can't wait to meet you!
Feelin' like Sunday morning...
Posted May 11th 2008 11:22AM by leadhyena_inran
As you can see from Jessie's last post, the setup for the TCO has been a lot of fun, and Samba could have fed me for about a month. :D I'm typing this from the stage, in front of the three scoreboards we will have running at the event, performing some dress rehearsal tests. These last steps of preparation are always the most hectic. I'm still amazed that we're at where we are in a time span of 2 days. Granted, these were long days, but honestly I've never had this much fun preparing for an event.
The atmosphere here is electric. It's also stressful; I have some big shoes to fill, and I'm filling them as they land upon the ground running. There are a ton of systems that are in place behind the scenes for this event, and I'll be talking about each of them in turn. The scoreboards will be getting extra attention, being one of our more "unique" pieces of code. Later today I'll be giving you a tour of this part of the tournament architecture. But first, Qi and I are running a test algorithm round to confirm the working of the three scoreboards.
Saturday
Posted May 10th 2008 11:05PM by jmpld40
Day 2 of set up is done. Yay!! We have made really good progress on set up and I'm happy to report that the arena looks amazing! I gotta say we did a great job ;). I really hope that everyone enjoys all the effort and hard work the TC events staff put into setting up this great competition arena.
I'm also thrilled to say we set up the first-ever TC lounge. It all started with this idea of having a place to hang out in the arena, have internet access and power for lap tops. bettylee74 and I got crafty and decided to have a big rug, some sofas and cool chairs. We got the rug today in Vegas, well to be honest, we sent out our pregnant cjoakes22 and JThody07 to pick up the large carpet. They arrived at the Home Depot with their rental mini van and had to some how fit this enormous rolled up rug in the back of it. Four Home Depot employees later, the rug was tied up in the back, sticking out of the trunk and the ladies were driving down Las Vegas Blvd looking ever so cool in their fire-engine red mini van with the carpet sticking out the back. Of course they stopped at In & Out Burger on their way back to feed the events staff crew. There is nothing better than a big, juicy, greasy burger during a hard day's work.
So all in all, the lounge looks amazing. But that's all the details I'm giving until you can see it for yourself in the pictures. Oh and by the way, all you competitors that move my bean bags on a daily basis, I've arranged them so nicely, don't move them this time!!
We have this staffing schedule that I make up each event so our staff know where to be and when, etc. We then print it up on our huge printer so the schedule is super-sized. bettylee74 and I stuck it on the wall (you see, the schedule was printed on sticky paper so it would stick to the wall). However, the schedule wasn't seeming to stick too well. We figured we'd let it sit for a while. FYI: this schedule is about 15 feet long. Meanwhile, I just finished yelling at OlexiyO for not having a picture of his girlfriend to show me (I'm nosey, what can I say) and I wandered back into the competition arena to meet with the hotel staff. Then visualage comes running in calling my name. Here I think, yay, OlexiyO found a picture of his girlfriend. Yay! Then I see visualage yelling "mayday" "mayday" so then I realize no, it's not a picture, it's the staffing schedule that we just put up! It has fallen to the ground and the guys are hopelessly trying to salvage it. Well it was pretty funny the way visualage was freaking out. He was so cute.
We're having a large staff dinner tonight at Samba (at the Mirage) which ought to be fun. Then we have one day left before some of the competitors show up. I'm looking forward to a successful event and the way things are going so far, I'm very pleased.
Welcome to Las Vegas!
Posted May 10th 2008 4:02PM by Denis Horgan
Friday
Posted May 9th 2008 9:48PM by jmpld40
I'm here at the TCO and it's the end of day 1. It's been a long 12 hours of set up time and I'm exhausted! Thankfully I have all the big, burly TopCoder men to help me lift all the heavy stuff. Set up is a lot of fun but it's also a lot of hard work. I spend the morning sorting through the hundreds of boxes that have been sent to the hotel from our sponsors and from our office. We get all the audio visual needs from the hotel as well as all the other banquet needs we'll be needing.
Our movers show up in the late morning with all our stuff. I mean, a lot of stuff! Everything you see at our events, is ours. We have it stored and put it all together ourselves. There are many boxes and things to go through, organize and put together. After a days work, we've got a lot accomplished so far.
Funny tidbits for the day:
- cjoakes22 and bettylee74 went to get some supplies and came back with some lunch for the crew. We had chicken sandwiches from Chinatown, Las Vegas where they speak Spanish. Who would've thought!
- We got a megaphone! It's so fun to play with and bettylee74 was having way too much fun with it.
- I set up the time lapse video to show all the set up progress and am so proud that the first visual is my smiling face ready for the hard day at work!
Preparations for the TCO
Posted May 7th 2008 7:42PM by leadhyena_inran
Hi there! This is leadhyena_inran, and its my first TCO. I've been in over 100 competitions but never made the trip; it seems the only way I could manage to go was to work for the company. :D
Needless to say, my excitement level is high! Learning the ropes in my new position has been quite challenging in the last few months, especially when hitting the ground running during tournament season at TopCoder. Activity at the Glastonbury office has been hectic; box upon bag upon box has been packed up, the images for the workstations are ready, problems are just about ready, flights planned and rearranged, scoreboard is prepared. The inner workings of the planning and administration of one of these tournaments is amazing.
In my posts for this blog, I'll try to show you as much of the "inner workings" of the competition that I can. My hope is that seeing some of the "man behind the curtain" activity will give you an appreciation of the contest that I only achieved after working there. For now, I must get back to work on final preparations and calming of my nerves. In less than 48 hours I'll be in Sin City.
