Hi everybody

I hope you have all had a good summer but now is when the real fun
begins!

On Saturday 5th of October the Danish Championships in Programming (DM)
takes place. The event is organized by Netcompany and the Computer
Science department. During the competition there will be lunch, snacks,
cake, soda, fruit, etc sponsored by Netcompany. And for those wondering:
the cake is not a lie. After the competition we will have an award
ceremony and then we go through the exercises from the contest. While we
go through the exercises there will be pizza, sodas and beer. More about
the contest below.

There will be some practice sessions on 11th and 18th of September from
16.00-18.00 in Zuse, read below for more details.

For those interested in trying out for NWERC, we will have a
qualification competition in Zuse on Sunday the 29th of September from
11-16, these details can also be found below. Everyone is of course
welcome to participate for the practice 

** What is a programming competition? **
You participate as a team with 2-3 people. Your team has one computer
where you collaborate to solve exercises/problems. Solving a problem
mean writing a program that reads input (from standard in), then it does
some computation and produces and output it writes to standard out. Your
source code is then uploaded to a judge which will either accept or
reject based on the correctness of your program. The problems are
usually algorithmic in nature and the allowed programming languages are
Java, C and C++. The contest takes 5 hours during which time you are
only allowed to access the internet for submitting your code to the
judge and reading the documentation for your programming language. 

** Pratical info about DM **
The contest takes place at several locations, in particular we have a
local site which is the Zuse building. The event starts at approximately
10.00 in Zuse, where you show up and find a computer (there will be one
set up for your team). At 10.30 Netcompany will give you a warm welcome
and some tips & tricks for the contest will follow. The contest starts
at 11.00 and ends at 16.00.

** How do you sign up for DM? **
On this page: http://www.netcompany.com/dm
There is a link to 
http://ncpc.idi.ntnu.no/ncpc2013/reg.html
Where you can sign up. *Remember* also sending an email to jasn@cs.au.dk
saying how many people are on your team.

If you would like to participate, but you do not have a team, send me an
email and I will try to match you up with others in the same situation.

** Important $$$ profit! ** 
The winning team of the danish championships wins a check for 10.000 kr,
but remember there is also a site in Copenhagen. Let's see if we can
keep the check on the mainland! After all, we did win it last year...

Usually the money is spent on the trip to NWERC, which is another
programming competition for the Northwestern European region
(http://2013.nwerc.eu/en/) in November. It is, however, entirely up to
the team how to spend their prize.

** NWERC and qualification **
The University usually sends one/two team(s) to NWERC. To decide who
gets to go, we arrange a qualification round where you participate
alone. The top 3-6 people gets to go, sponsored by the university. The
qualification round takes place in Zuse the 29th of September from
11-16. During the contest there will be pizza and sodas. This is also an
opportunity to practice before the Danish Championships, and
particpation for this event is highly recommended . How do you sign
up? You send me an email saying you would like to participate

** Practice Session **
If this has peeked your interest, then on wednesday the 11th and 18th of
September from 16.00-18.00 there will be practice sessions in Zuse.
During a practice session we solve some problems and talk about them.
This is a beginner friendly environment and everyone is very welcome to
join! 

** Questions **
Feel free to contact me ( jasn@cs.au.dk ) with any questions you have
regarding these topics.

More info on programming competitions can also be found on 
www.cs.au.dk/~mgreve/algocomp/
www.cs.au.dk/~jasn/algocomp/

Best,
Jesper