Errichto's blog

Huawei ICPC Challenge Championship 2024
By Errichto, 5 weeks ago, In English

Hi, in 30 minutes starts Huawei ICPC Challenge Championship 2024. It's a 5-hour onsite competition in Shenzhen with a 8000 EUR prize for the winner. There are around 75 participants, mostly prize winners of online CF challenges from past few years. Good luck to all of us! (I'm one of the participants.)

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Btw. if you're a UK or EU student, there's an ongoing online competition with 20k GPB in prizes, Tech Arena https://huawei.agorize.com/en/challenges/techarena-uk2024?t=FM5eOG69To5aRGqbjmN8EA

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5 weeks ago, # |
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The standings: https://mirror.codeforces.com/spectator/ranklist/bf00cd56cfaf4f9264b1321e6a845f48

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5 weeks ago, # |
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No long challenge for this time?

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5 weeks ago, # |
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I became the champion!

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5 weeks ago, # |
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International onsite contests are very rare these days so this is surprising that information about this event was not widely communicated.

Was there any separate qualification to this onsite event? What were the formal rules to qualify from the previous Huawei challenges? Like, top-20 from each contest or something like that?

What was the format of the onsite round and what was the problem? Are there any photos from the event?

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    5 weeks ago, # ^ |
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    I don't think you will get an official answer from the organizers. Here's what I know/guess instead.

    This is a second such onsite event (the previous one was a year ago). Huawei invited some of the prize winners of CF Online Challenges from the past few years, and some coaches of icpc teams. I thought that I'm invited because I was 5th recently, but turns out it's because I was a coach of the Harbour.Space University in ICPC World Finals. There were a lot of (mostly boring) talks, lectures, ceremonies. In particular, most people got a medal award — participants for CF Online Challenges performance, coaches for being an icpc coach (sth similar to the ICPC WF).

    What were the formal rules to qualify from the previous Huawei challenges?

    No formal rules. It's possible that they preferred people from countries that have a Huawei branch nearby. Most invitees were from Europe and Russia. Basically this is mostly a trip/conference to advertise Huawei as an employer and a partner for universities — and there happens to be a contest in the middle of this trip. Note that prizes are smaller than in online challenges.

    What was the format of the onsite round and what was the problem?

    5 hours, 1 optimization problem, partially public tests. It was about nearest vectors in n-dimensional space, and something extra about subsequences and inversions. I doubt that the statement will become public.

    Are there any photos from the event?

    Yes, shared internally with the attendees. Maybe you will find some in the social media pages of Huawei or ICPC, idk.

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      5 weeks ago, # ^ |
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      Thank you, makes sense.

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      5 weeks ago, # ^ |
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      Regarding the event last year, there's an article and a video, as well as a lot more pictures that were shared with participants privately. Participants were mostly those achieving a "2nd prize" (3000€) or higher one of the optimization contests here on codeforces, but also some who ranked a bit lower than that.

      I think this time they focused on inviting those, who did not participate last year. Even dbdr (winner of the optimization contest in November) did not get invited a second time.

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