tl;dr Please sign a petition to change the venue of the World Finals and organize them as soon as possible.
Dear fellow ICPC World Finals contestants and supporters,
As you all know, the ICPC WF event is being rescheduled. It will happen very late, as they plan to announce the date in January, half a year later than when it would happen in pre-pandemic times. Happening in late Q1, it will most probably collide with next year's regional contests, making it difficult both for people who want to take part again with a new team and for people who finished competing and often have jobs or other responsibilities.
In the mail, ICPC organizers claimed they work with AASTMT to reschedule, which suggests they want to keep it in Egypt. As we all know, conflicts like the one in Gaza often last way longer than predicted, so we are at risk of even longer delays than stated by ICPC. If ICPC would instead find a new, safe venue, they could organize the World Finals event way faster without any risk of a subsequent reschedule. Our team created a petition to do that, hoping that if we get enough signatures, ICPC would take our opinion into account.
Here is the petition Please sign and share with your team/friends (it will take a minute of your time), as without your support the ICPC committee will simply disregard the idea (no guarantee they won't ignore it anyway, but it will look way worse if they do so).
Thank you all for your support!
UPDATE: We still need around 20 more signatures for the petition to look good, then my team will send it to the ICPC committee!
UPDATE 2: I forgot to update this post, but we sent the petition over a week ago. We still did not get any response, I'll let you know once we hear back from the organizers.
It is always difficult to find a venue such that (1) won't cause significant visa troubles for teams (2) have the capacity to handle an event with >=1000 participants, coaches, volunteers, and other people (3) is stable enough to host a large event (4) won't have special climate or geographical features that create troubles for contestants (some examples coming to my mind is ICPC World Finals Harbin, which was held during winter months there; or the upcoming IOI 2025, which is going to happen at a city at 3,600 meters high)
There are only a few regions where all the points are true. Hosting it in Europe or North America might mean Russian teams will have a hard time making it, hosting it in India makes teams with significant Chinese and Canadian participants difficult, to name a few. I do feel that Central Asia (minus Turkmenistan) or Southeast Asia is generally the most reasonable choice, and there are indeed many contests planned there (ICPC World Finals 2024, IOI 2026, etc.)
I think (most of) Europe would be ok for Russian teams. But it takes a lot of commitment on the host (including finances) to organize such an event, so I don't think we as attendands or contestants get to whine too much about what region to host in
They can halve the number of participants by separating the 46th WF and 47th WF. In the current circumstance, it still affects a lot of people, though.
We would love to see you guys in Tashkent.
ICPC World Tashkent Finals, or better ICPC WTF
Wtf, IOI held at 3600m? At this level pilots need supplemental oxygen or their mental performance decreases substantially and crash risk goes up... Would not be surprised if nobody scores more than 400.
what anime charachter is in your dp?
keep the ICPC finalists safe
Strongly support the petition, noone would really want to have three world finals at Kazakhstan (or four anywhere else).
Great idea. ICPC is very well known for listening to participant's opinion and making quick decisions.
What about Qatar they already have the hotels
If a new venue is not possible, some detailed plan detailing what action they would take for range of circumstances. Just some hopeful wait and watch from their side is not acceptable. They should keep multiple plans A, B, C ready
Can't they move to Kazakhstan this time? Looks stable enough.
i think afghanistan would be the best location
I agree, but we still need more signatures.