This weekend is the 2006 ACM Southeast USA Programming Contest. The winner (or, possibly, the top two teams) will advance to the world finals in Tokyo. The ACM contest is the biggest competition of its kind. FAU has been competing since 2001. I was fortunate to be a member of that team. For the first time since competing as an undergraduate I will again be involved in the contest, but in a very different role. I was asked to recruit, train, and coach FAU’s teams this year.

About seventy teams are participating in the Southeast regional (out of over 5500 worldwide). It is being split between two sites; the University of South Alabama (USA) and Georgia Southern University (GSU). We’re sending three teams (three students per team) to the GSU site – our largest representation ever. It is a twelve hour drive (including stops) from Boca Raton, FL to Statesboro, GA. Our teams were chosen based on the results of the FAU programming contest held in September.

The questions range in difficulty and are scored based on how quickly and in how few attempts they were solved. The foundation of a successful strategy is to be able to quickly identify which problems are easiest to solve. Because three people share one workstation it’s also important to have a strategy for dividing the time at the computer. Of course, practice and experience are also critical to success.