NCPC Director HOWTO

NCPC-Site-HOWTO NCPC-Director-HOWTO

After NWERC

  • Let the next NCPC director take over from here.
  • Make sure you have a Head of Jury, and a Tecnical Director.
  • Add news clips from NWERC to #newsclips.
  • Go trough orgstatus.html, set a proper schedule, and update the document.
  • Go through the mailing lists ncpc-info, ncpc-directors, ncpc-problems and ncpc-tech. Send out an e-mail to each list, asking if anybody sees anybody on the list who should not be there. A trusted person from each site (typically the local head organiser), must vouch for each name from his site.
  • Send out a request for problems to ncpc-problems, and inform about the schedule.
  • Try to establish contact with universities not currently hosting NCPC.

During the spring

  • Give ncpc-problems friendly reminders about the schedule. These should be frequent enough to keep the problem set at the back of peoples heads, but not frequent enough to be annoying.
  • Keep on working with getting NCPC to new sites.

August

  • Make sure the NCPC-pages are up to date:
    • Go through the front page, and the page for this years contest, and make sure everything is up to date. Be sure to check that all non-static content is updated! (References to this years this and that.)
    • Check that the Rules (given an this years page) are up to date.
    • Add any media references to #newsclips
    • Update the NCPC-Director-HOWTO
    • Update the NCPC-Site-HOWTO
    • Update the NCPC-PC2-HOWTO
    • Update the orgstatus
  • Send out an e-mail to ncpc-info, give information about this years contest:
    • Verify that all sites are in.
    • Inform about how registration works.
    • Make sure everybody is up to date with the technical aspects of hosting a contest (strongly coupled vs. uncoupled etc). Refer to the NCPC-PC2-HOWTO.
    • Make sure everybody reads the Rules.
  • Ask the NWERC director to schedule an NCPC meeting at NWERC.
  • Ping ncpc-problems.
  • Settle how scoreboards and clarifications will be handled for non-coupled sites.

Before the contest

  • Send an e-mail to ncpc-info, letting people know the contest is up to speed.
  • Set up a communication channel to use during the contest. Preferrably an IRC channel on a server which is not in a network.

During the contest

    Kattis accounts for the contestants will be sent to you tomorrow. You will also receive 5 extra account for last minute teams or other unexpected events. Information about how to obtain a judge account for Kattis will be provided later. Here are some instructions regarding Saturday: 1. Make sure that each contestant account is reset and only contains the sample input and output for all problems (will be distributed with the problem set tomorrow). I suggest you create one directory for each problem. At each work station place three copies of the problem set in an envelop. 2. Read the rules and inform the contestants before the competition about what is allowed and what is not. For example, it is not allowed to use any other programming languages and code generation tools besides C/C++/Java. The teams are allowed to use those shells, editors and IDEs that you provide them with. However Python, Perl, lex, yacc and so on are not allowed. The contestants may use the documentation provided in Kattis (including STL and Java doc) as well as man pages if you have them. 3. Before the competition starts the contestants are allowed to log in, start a browser, start an editor if they want and log in on Kattis (https://ncpc12.contest.scrool.se/). Nothing else. No configuration files may be edited and the problem set is not to be touched. 4. All contest directors should report to me that they are ready to start the competition at the latest 10.50 Swedish time. If you have problems please report those as soon as possible. You can report on the IRC channel (irc.acc.umu.se#ncpc), through email (fredrik.heintz@liu.se), or by calling me (+46-70-207 43 88). Since there are many sites this year we will probably start the contest even if one or two sites are silent. Unless something unexpected happens KTH will make a countdown on the IRC channel and at 11.00.00 local KTH time the competition will start. 5. When the contest is started the contestants are allowed to open the problem set and start using the computer. Do your best to monitor that they do not use any illegal programs or surf the web. All the documentation that they are allowed to use is linked from their Kattis account. 6. All clarifications are handled through Kattis. The head judges Jon Marius Venstad and Tommy Färnqvist are responsible for answering all clarifications. They might be discussed on IRC if needed. If the answer is of general interest then an email will be sent to all directors. 7. When the competition is over and the final result is ready, I will announce it on IRC and to all directors by email. This is expected to be shortly after 16.00 unless something unexpected happens. ncpc2012/
  • ...

After the contest

  • Make sure the NCPC-pages are up to date again (see above).
  • Make sure coaches know how to get teams to NWERC.
  • Plan the NCPC meeting at NWERC. Announce it on ncpc-directors, with a preliminary list of topics.