Team "Excors" 2008, NM Winners
Ruben Spaans, Eirik Reksten og Espen Nielsen (2009 Excors team has Håkon Hitland join in place of Espen)

Nordic Collegiate Programming Contest 2009
Some Photos and Summary of Results

Faculty Advisor - Norway: Dr. Anne C. Elster

NTNU Organizer: Hallgeir Lien

Nordic judge, NTNU rep: Nils Grimsmo

One of the contesting labs with NTNU participants, Oct 3, 2009

Record number of 140 participants and 53 teans at NTNU for NCPC2009!

NTNU teams also claim the top three spot in the national competion, with the top team placing third (4th last year) in the NCPC (Nordic Collegiate Programming Contest) out of 138 student teams!

NCPC is part of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest .

Again, all the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) participated at the same time, making it a true Nordic event!

Fredrik Heiz, the Nordic Contest Director for NCPC summed the event up nicely in an e-mail (I highlit the NTNU part :-):

"Today was a truly amazing day. Together we arranged a competition with 192 teams competing in 12 different sites in 5 different countries in 3 different time zones. At the same time another 229 teams took part in the online version of NCPC through UVa Online Judge. In other words, more than 400 teams all over the world benefited from the excellent work we have done. THANK YOU for making NCPC 2009 a great event!

I'm especially happy that we have active sites in all Nordic countries and most major university cities. We also increased the number of teams with more than 40 teams compared to last year. Trondheim had an impressive 53 teams, that is more than half a world finals! How did you manage to order and serve 150 pizzas?

Again, the judges did an excellent job with the problem set and we achieved all our goals:

all teams solved at least one problem (hopefully the two teams that tried but failed have learned how to solve them now, so we can count them in as well);
all problems were solved by some team (the last one with 1 minute left of the competition), and
no team solved all problems (except for three teams on UVa, the fastest solving all 10 problems after 2 hours and 43 minutes...).

You are great. Let the feeling of a stunning achievement soak in and have a really nice Sunday. I hope to see many of you in Nürnberg in November otherwise I'll be in touch after NWERC about NCPC 2010. Until then, have a great time! .. "

Some photos from the NTNU 2008 event -- more from 2009 shortly

I appologize that the quality is not better, I turned off the flash to not interrupt contestants ...

NTNU's "Øldorado MK II" with
Ola Natvig, Ola Hovden and Håkon Hiland
Balloons indicating color of problems
solved were given out during the contest.

Lots of action at NTNU with
a record number of 37 teams!
These NCPC "old-boys" did not do
as well as previously ...

Intense focus was in order.
This years problems were rumored to be
especially tough ...
From Solution and prize ceremony.
NTNU/IDI's Associate Chair, Roger Midstraum,
handed out prize checks to student winners
on behalf of IDI, whereas Dr. Elster donated
umbrellas on behalf of her HPC-LAB
to the non-student Top 6 teams.

We had an exciting competition with many really good teams and it seems like all contestants were very happy. It is especially pleasing that we had some new sites, although no new ones from Norway. I hope some more Norwegian sites, like University of Tromsø and some of the Norwegian University Colleges will join us next year.

A big THANK YOU to the Norwegian sponsors, Tandberg and Yahoo for providing support for pizza, soda ++. Tandberg has also invited the winning team for a coaching session visit before NWERC

This page is maintained by : HPC-Lab leader Dr. Anne C. Elster, elster-at-idi.ntnu.no. All photos are done and copyrighted by her. Please contact her if you wish to use them.
It was last updated on Oct. 5, 2009. Comments welcome.

NTNU's "Øldorado MK II" with Ola Natvig, Ola Hovden and Håkon Hiland	Balloons indicating color of problems solved were given out during the contest.
Lots of action at NTNU with a record number of 37 teams!	These NCPC "old-boys" did not do as well as previously ...
Intense focus was in order. This years problems were rumored to be especially tough ...	From Solution and prize ceremony. NTNU/IDI's Associate Chair, Roger Midstraum, handed out prize checks to student winners on behalf of IDI, whereas Dr. Elster donated umbrellas on behalf of her HPC-LAB to the non-student Top 6 teams.