Newsletter 2: Tuesday, 11th July
Another sunny day is behind us in the beautiful capital of Slovenia and this is what our contestants were up to today.
After an early breakfast at 7:00 the teams took a twenty-minute walk to the Faculty of Computer and Information science, where the contestants were to begin their practice session. A short lecture on technical instructions was organized before the actual session to inform the contestants about the organization of the competition and its rules. The practice session was meant to let the individuals get familiar with the system on which the competition will operate and the types of tasks at hand. When the practice session was over, the contestants had lunch at the Faculty cafeteria to regain their strength after the intense brain workout.
The city hall in the center of Ljubljana was the contestants’ next destination, where an official opening ceremony for the CEOI 2017 was held. The ceremony started with a speech from the chair of the organizing committee prof. dr. Andrej “Andy” Brodnik, followed by other inspiring speeches from the vice president of ACM Slovenia prof. dr. Nikolaj Zimic, the dean of Faculty of Computer and Information science prof. dr. Bojan Orel, University in Ljubljana’s vice-rector prof. dr. Goran Turk and the mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Jankovič. To make the ceremony a little more exciting for the audience there were also a few musical numbers.
After the ceremony, the teams had the chance to take a tour around the center of Ljubljana to look at some of our famous sights like the triple bridge, designed by a world-renowned architect Jože Plečnik in the early 20th century, the Prešeren statue and its namesake square where the statue is erect and Ljubljana castle, though only from afar.
At the end of a long day the contestants were escorted back to the student dormitory Vič where they had dinner and then some free time to get ready for the next day. In the meantime, the leaders of each team had another meeting with the organizers to get the final approval of the tasks for the first competition day and to help with the translation of the approved tasks to their own language.
The first round of the competition will begin tomorrow at 9:00 and will last for 5 hours. Therefore, to all the contestants we wish you good luck, have fun and hope you’re ready to battle!
Lea & Rebeka
If you'd like to see some snapshots of this week, scroll below.