Final of the programming championship of the Russian Code Cup: how it was

    We continue the tradition of detailed reports on the RCC finals (last year's similar post here ). So, on September 23, 2013, the third sports programming championship, the Russian Code Cup 2013, ended. Peter Mitrichev won the first place, repeating his own achievement in 2011, the second - Gennady Korotkevich, who won this year with the ITMO team in the ACM ICPC finals in St. Petersburg Petersburg. The third was Dmitry Dzhulgakov, who participated in the final of the championship for the third time, but for the first time won a prize.



    In addition to the three main awards, which this year amounted to $ 10,000, $ 5,000 and $ 3,000 for the first, second and third places respectively, two more special prizes were awarded in the final:
    • Pavel Kunyavsky (fifth place in the final) received the nomination “Brevity is the sister of t.” in the nomination “Brevity is the sister of t.”
    • In the nomination “The fastest (and correct) decision”, the prize to Dmitry Zhukov (twentieth place in the final) was presented by the Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Nikolai Nikiforov.






    According to the tradition laid down in the two previous Russian Code Cups, all finalists received such drones as a gift. A master class in managing them took place right before the award ceremony. Not without emergency situations - one drone could not stay on a steep turn and crashed. :( Be careful with piloting!





    We congratulate the finalists and participants of the third championship. And now - a little about the championship itself and the organization of the final.

    Figures and facts

    • 50 people participated in the final, 26 of which were finalists of the Russian Code Cup and in 2012
    • A little more than half of the finalists from Russia - 58%, 18% from Ukraine, 10% from Belarus, the same number came to us from the USA, one person from Bulgaria and one from Switzerland
    • Finalists age 18 to 29


    In fact, the event lasted two days: it began on Sunday evening with a meeting of finalists in our office, and on Monday morning the championship started. During Saturday and Sunday, the guys gathered in Moscow. Finalists came from almost all of Russia, from the CIS countries, from Europe and America. By the way, in order to meet and take to the hotel the finalists arriving on different flights and different groups, I had to very creatively organize the logistics. Since we planned to hold the whole event this year in our new office, we decided to settle the finalists nearby at the Renaissance Monarch Center Hotel.

    On Sunday evening, all the guys gathered at the hotel and from there they arrived at the office of Mail.Ru Group, where they were waiting for dinner and a meeting with our technical experts.

    Before the final, we decided to show the participants the place where the decisive stage of the competition will take place. After dinner, Mail.Ru Group employees conducted an excursion around the office for the guys, showed their jobs, talked about the development services and technologies that they use daily. The tour ended on the 26th floor. Here, the finalists met with Dmitry Grishin and in an informal atmosphere talked with each other and with Mail.Ru Group employees.





    On the same evening, the guys got acquainted with their places where the next day they will solve the problems of the RCC 2013 final, met with the chairman of the jury Andrei Stankevich and the project manager of Codeforces Mikhail Mirzayanov. We made sure that all places have Internet access and their own laptops connect seamlessly. And Mikhail Mirzayanov also managed to interview several finalists. We planned to show these interviews the next day during the broadcast.



    The contest began on Monday, September 23rd, at 10:45. Finalists settled down at their workplaces on the 23rd floor, and Mikhail Mirzayanov and Andrei Kravchenko settled in the column of commentators. The live broadcast has begun. By the way, how stubbornly during the previous weeks we prepared and polished the broadcast script! How many unexpected and difficult moments had to be taken into account, corrected, rewritten. We really wanted to make the broadcast interesting for other sports programmers, and for viewers who are far from this topic.
    During the contest, Mikhail and Andrey invited guests to their cabin. Among them were the founder of RCC Dmitry Zevelev, the author of the project SnarkNews Oleg Khristenko, the chairman of the jury of RCC 2013 Andrei Stankevich.

    The culmination of the broadcast from the competition hall was the television bridge of Mikhail Mirzayanov with the host of the event, Anton Komolov. At the end of the teleconference, after Anton’s sacramental phrase: “Michael, freeze the scoreboard!” The standings were frozen, and only the judges knew about the further course of the competition.

    By the way, it was not by chance that Anton was chosen to be the leading RCC - he studied at the physics and mathematics school and graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University, so we thought that the IT topic should be close to him, and we were not mistaken. In addition, he had an excellent manner of conducting, he joked a lot, and from time to time the whole room was blown up with laughter. I would like to say a special thanks to Anton - it was great.





    The guests began to gather in a large hall on the second floor of the office at 11:30. A few weeks before the final, when we sent out invitations to guests, we decided to invite not only IT experts, programmers, IT project managers, but also students, pupils and school teachers of computer science and mathematics to the event. The idea was for the sports programming championship to gather around itself both professionals who had already taken place and guys who had not yet decided on their future path: this helps to maximize the popularity of the programmer's profession.

    While the contest was in progress, in the large hall on the ground floor of the office, guests watched technological installations, and from 13:20, speakers in turn spoke to the audience - Dmitry Sklyarov, Ken Goldberg and Edward Yordon. By inviting speakers, we tried to make the reports interesting to the maximum number of guests and from different angles to cover the main topic - speeches were about the future of development, and about robotics, and about applied aspects of analysis and programming.

    Between the master classes of the speakers, the famous illusionists Marco Tempest and Simon Pierrot addressed the guests. The idea to invite the illusionists arose not by chance, we wanted to dilute the speeches of the speakers of the show component.











    After completing the contest and lunch, the finalists joined the guests in the large hall, which met them with thunderous applause. And soon the award ceremony began.

    In past years, at RCC, all three winners received small cups, in the same year we decided to make the one and only big cup for the winner - the most powerful sports programmer! It turned out even more honorable.



    Simultaneously with the buffet table, an autograph session of Edward Yordon began. In half an hour, more than 200 books, The Kamikaze Path, signed by the author, were taken apart.



    During the buffet, guests talked and took pictures with speakers and distinguished guests. Our special guest, Anatoly Wasserman, attracted special attention.



    After the reception, the finalists were taken on a trip along the Moscow River that had already become a RCC tradition in three years. There, to the songs of "Adventures of Electronics", accompanying dinner with board games, we ended this long and busy day!



    PS: The day after the event, we conducted a survey among the guests, and here are the feedback we received:
    —Perform the event better on weekends or in the afternoon.
    - Some of the speakers ’speeches were very long.
    - In my opinion, the main thing in an intellectual competition is tasks: you need to imagine exactly what the participants are competing in. Therefore, the tasks should be more actively popularized, for example, to put leaflets with conditions in bags that were issued to guests. If I understand correctly, there are no obstacles to this - the conditions of the tasks cease to be secret at the time of the start of the competition. Now I look at them at Habrahabr , I like it very much ...
    - The only minus is holding on a working day, everything else was at its best.

    Anatoly Wasserman: “This reminded me very much of the atmosphere of those competitions of young programmers in which I myself once participated. The tasks have since become more complicated, the tools are much more convenient, but the atmosphere has remained the same. ”

    Alexander Dyachenko, Upgrade Magazine: “President and founder of Mail.Ru Group Dmitry Grishin is such a simple dude. Like him and the whole event. ”

    Sergey Bobrovsky, PC Week:“This year this is only the second programmer’s organization (out of a couple of dozen that I visited), where they treat people like a human being and don’t try to cram into stuffy rooms shoulder to shoulder / nose to nose under the pretext of lack of space ... Organization of an event show five plus. By the way, the availability of plenty of food throughout the event is a sure sign of the professional organization of the process and respect for visitors. ”

    The opinion of the guests is very important to us, and next time we will organize the RCC according to your wishes.

    If you haven’t been to the event, watch the video to feel the atmosphere:



    Dmitry Voloshin,
    Director of Research and Education, Mail.Ru Group

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