DVT is hosting an open day for students on 20 July, 09:00. There will be presentations by industry experts, a tech race, prizes, and a braai. Attending the open day will give you exposure to a big software development company. If interested, RSVP to rallen@jhb.dvt.co.za. See the poster for details:

https://cs.up.ac.za/files/ACM101/Download/5141/

For those of you who registered, please remember that the Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge takes place tomorrow.

Venue: SIT 1 lab, Informatorium, IT Building
Date: 11 May 2019
Time: 9:30 - 14:00 (the first 30 minutes will be used for setup and introduction)
Not Allowed: use of internet during the competition, own laptop, tablets, phones, electronic material on the lab PCs (eg book in PDF format), memory sticks, etc. 
Please read the full rules available under https://cs.up.ac.za/files/ACM101/Download/4833/
Catering: snacks and drinks will be provided by Standard Bank.

For those of you who registered, please remember that the Catalysts Coding Contest (CCC) takes place tomorrow.

Venue: Maroon lab, Informatorium, IT Building
Date: 10 May 2019
Time: 14:40 - 19:00 (the first 20 minutes will be used for setup and introduction)
Equipment: Use the lab computers, or bring your own laptop.
Internet Access: Yes, you can google as much as you like. You can bring any books or other resources.
Submission: Make sure you have registered with CCC, you will need the user/pass to login, get the problems and submit the solutions. 
Catering: A small amount of snacks and cool drinks will be provided. Please consider to bring something extra for the four hours.

The registration for the Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge 2019 is closed. Please see below the updated list of participants:

Marco Oosthuizen
Nicolaas Johannes Hermanus Kirsten
Ruan Bieldt
Caleb Daniel Johnstone
Claudio Teixeira
Byron Alexander Topham
Adrian Rae
Dylan whiteford
Anna-Marié Helberg
Connor Armand du Plooy
Ulrik de Muelenaere
Duncan Tilley
Kyle Pretorius
Vusumuzi Dube
Tebogo Selahle
Phumudzo Vhulenda Ndou
Pako Diale
Orifha Mbedzi
Jabulani Shili
Lindo Mlambo
Philippa Mary Zizipho Dufana
Egor Kharatyan
Zachariah Idiculla
Ethan Coryndon-Baker
Donavan Roux
Waldi(W.R.) van der Lingen
Cornelis Petrus van der Lingen
Matthew Townsend

See you all next Saturday!

The Catalysts Coding Contest (CCC) 2019 is fully booked. I received the following list of team registrations from the CCC organisers:

team name 	       No. of members

58008	               2
Block G	               3
Codex	               3
int elligence	       1
JSON	               2
Runtime Terror 	       2       
Team Barefoot	       3
the_real_joke.exe      3
TheRustySpoons	       1
Winning Pointers       2
Stuey61296	       1
sthenyandeni	       1
GH057	               1
u18034332	       1
Koki	               1
alexwhuman	       1
ulrikdem	       1
Blank	               1

See you all next Friday!

So far, we received the following registrations for the Standard Bank Challenge: 

Participant:            Team:

Marco Oosthuizen	Runtime Terror
Nicolaas Kirsten	Runtime Terror
Ruan Bieldt	        Runtime Terror
Caleb Daniel Johnstone	Block G
Claudio Teixeira	ByteMe
Byron Alexander Topham	ByteMe
Adrian Rae	        ByteMe
Dylan whiteford	        ByteMe
Anna-Marié Helberg	TheRustySpoons
Connor Armand du Plooy	TheRustySpoons

Please send your details to ntimm@cs.up.ac.za if you or your team members are missing on the list, or if you want to participate as a new team.

1. Team name (be creative)
2. Full name
3. Degree (eg: BSc CS)
4. Year (eg: 2nd year)
5. Cellphone number
6. Email address
7. ID number
8. A short summary (2-3 sentences) of your plans for next year (eg: continue studying, finding a job, etc)

The annual Standard Bank competition will be held on Saturday the 11th of May 2019. During this contest teams from different universities compete against each other. The best team from each university will go through to the final round where you are booked into a hotel and have a weekend to solve a problem. The questions during the pre-rounds/heats are general CS-related problems to be solved by a small program. Your code will be marked by a system similar to Fitchfork, and the team that solves the most problems wins. 

Just like the CCC competition, UP also won the Standard Bank competition in the past. For this competition you have to work in teams. We encourage teams to get members from other departments or faculties to join. Please refer to the uploaded documents with regards to the rules and the way teams have to be put together.

Date: Saturday, 11 May
Time: 10h00 - 14h00 (Please be there 30 minutes before the start of the competition.)
Venue: SIT 1 Lab, Informatorium, IT Building, UP Hatfield Campus
Food: snacks and drinks will be provided

If you are interested, please get a team (1 to 4 students) together and email the following details (for each of the members) to: ntimm@cs.up.ac.za

1. Team name (be creative)
2. Full name
3. Degree (eg: BSc CS)
4. Year (eg: 2nd year)
5. Cellphone number
6. Email address
7. ID number
8. A short summary (2-3 sentences) of your plans for next year (eg: continue studying, finding a job, etc)

The next Catalysts Coding Contest (CCC) will take place on Friday the 10th of May 2019. This competition is hosted across the world, but mainly in Europe and North America. UP won the competition twice in the past. 
The competition consists of a number of CS-related problems that have to be solved. Unlike other competitions, CCC typically does not require you to submit the code, but only the answer. The team with the most solved problems wins. 

Date: Friday, 10 May
Time: 15h00 - 19h00 (Please be there 30 minutes before the start of the competition.)
Venue: Maroon Lab, Informatorium, IT Building, UP Hatfield Campus
Food: snacks and drinks will be provided

If you are interested to participate individually or as part of a team, please register under:

https://register.codingcontest.org/listing/83-2019-05-10

Please also send an email to ntimm@cs.up.ac.za in order to confirm your participation to the CS Department.

For those of you who registered, remember that the CCC takes place today. It will start at 16h00 in the SIT lab.

If you are still interested in the CCC competition on the 16th of November, please register asap so that we know if it's worth the effort to get a lab for this.

https://register.codingcontest.org/

The ACM ICPC takes place tomorrow. Registration is from 8h30 to 9h00. The venue is the SIT lab.

1. Teams are only allowed to use a single machine (lab computers, not your own laptop).
2. No internet connection.
3. No electronic devices (laptops, tables, phones, USB flash drives, etc).
4. You are not allowed to put any files on the lab PCs beforehand.
5. You are allowed to bring in printed/hard-copy material, such as books and notes. No electronic notes (eg PDFs), you have to print them beforehand.
6. Food and drinks will be served. You are not allowed to take food/drinks into the lab. You have to stay outside the lab for this.

I uploaded the notes we used for the ICPC finals this year. This is a nice summary of important algorithms, data structures, and math equations. If you want to use them, print them, don't bring the PDF on a flash disk. I also uploaded the Latex source files for that document, in case you want to edit it according to your preferences.

And again, if you have not completed the registration on the ACM website, DO SO NOW!!!!!

The rules and times of the ACM ICPC can be found here:

http://acm.cs.up.ac.za/

Please make sure to complete your ACM profile no later than tonight. I registered your team on the ACM website and you should have received an automated email to complete your profile on the website. It is very important that you complete your profile, otherwise we cannot change your team status from "pending" to "active" (and then you won't be able to login during the competition). Shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

If you want to participate but didn't send me your details yet, please do so before the end of the day.

I've created a few empty teams, so if you didn't email me yesterday, you can still do so before Thursday.

Also, if you don't have a team, still email me your details and I can put together a new team from all the team-less people.

Seems like the ACM registration closes today (15 October). So please send me your team details asap (team name, name and email address for all 3 members). If I don't register you today, you will have to participate as an anonymous team and that might be sub-optimal for you (eg: T-Shirt allocations, team name, food, etc).

Wits is bringing in a lot of teams (18 at the moment) and they will be here on UP's campus. We should at least meat their numbers. There will snacks, drinks, lunch, T-shirts, and other goodies. So it will be worth your while.

CodeChef's SnackDown competition starts today. This is a "take-home" competition with multiple rounds. $20000 is up for grabs. If you are interested, register here:

https://www.codechef.com/snackdown

9 students voted on the poll below, indicating that they want to participate in the CCC on the 16th of November. If you want to participate, please register for this on the CCC website (https://register.codingcontest.org/). We need an exact count.

The ACM competition is around the corner. We won the competition last year. We encourage as many teams as possible to join so that we can get the title a second time.

Teams consist of 3 contestants. Please send me your team details asap via email (cstallmann@cs.up.ac.za). I need a team name and the first & surname for each participant. Please try to get the details to me by next week Thursday (18 October).

The event details are as follows:

Date: Saturday, 20 October
Time: 9h00 - 15h00 (try to be there 30 minutes beforehand)
Venue: SIT lab, Informatorium, UP Hatfield Campus
Food: Snacks, drinks, and lunch will be served
Computer: You have to use the lab computers, no own electronic devices allowed

The 2nd CCC (https://register.codingcontest.org/) event is scheduled for 16 November. Since this is exam time, I'm not sure how many of you want to attend. Please cast your vote on the poll if you are interested.

ACM will take place in October, I will post the details once everything is finalized.

We have confirmed the venue. Like always, it will be in SIT. There are cool prizes (check below). Here are some additional details:

 
The University Cup will be held on Saturday 4 August between 08:00 and 16:00 at all participating universities. This is a one-day challenge where students form teams and compete to solve an optimisation problem. The problem statement will be published online at challenge.entelect.co.za and students will upload their solutions via the same portal.


Before the day:
    
    - Students must register for the challenge on the portal.  Each student needs to register on the portal here: https://challenge.entelect.co.za/portal.
    - Students must form their teams of exactly three members on the portal before 12:00 midday 3 August 2018.

 

On the day:

    - We will have Entelect staff at as many venues as possible to guide students and answer any questions.
    - Students can start arriving between 08:00 and 08:30.
    - The official challenge will start at 09:00 and ends at 15:00.
    - The challenge will be published on the portal.
    - Students will upload solutions on the portal.
    - A live score board will display each team's rankings on a leaderboard.
    - The challenge will close at 15:00 and the winning team will be announced shortly after we verify the results.


After the day:

    - The winning team will be awarded a gaming laptop per person on the team, and IoT gadgets for the university's lab.
    - If the team is able to attend ComicCon Johannesburg in September, the prizes will be awarded then, or other arrangements will be made.

The Entelect Challenge will take place on the 4th of August here on campus (9h00 - 15h00). If you are interested in attending, please make a booking here on the CS website. This competition is very similar to SB/ACM/CCC, you get a number of problems and have to solve as many of them as you can in a short period of time.

Their website is not very informative, but it seems like you have to register a team on their site. I will post an announcement if I have more details.

https://challenge.entelect.co.za/university

The results of the SBTIC are finally out.


The teams that are going through to the finals:

Univeristy of Pretoria               up7	AwesomeSource
University of Cape Town          uct8	BLT
Univeristy of Witswatersrand    wits7	Bugs Buggy
University of Stellenbosch        su1	Bitphase
University of Western Cape      uwc4	Blink 10110110
Univeristy of Kwa-Zulu Natal    ukzn6	RawSauce
North West University              nwu3	NWU Team 3
University of the Free State      ufs3	Quantum_Syn
Rhodes University                    ru7	RU Team 7
Nelson Mandela University        nmu5	ASDF123
Walter Sisulu University           wsu6	Technologists
University of Fort Hare             ufh7	Beginners
Univeristy of Limpopo              ul9	UL Team 9


The rankings of the remaining teams:

1     up7       AwesomeSource	        5
2     uct8      BLT	                        4
3     wits7     Bugs Buggy       	        4
4     wits10   TheActuallyHorses	        4
5     su1       Bitphase	                        4
6     uwc4     Blink 10110110	        4
7     ukzn6    RawSauce	                3
8     up1       _d0gegrammer$	        3
9     uct3      Gergle ErCerPerCer	        3
10    witst     WITS Lecturer	        3
...
12    up5       pickle.jar	                3
...
14    up3       CodeCrafters	                3
...
39    up8       Binary Junkies   	        2
...
54    up18     UP Team 18	                2
...
66    up6       Infinite Automatas	        2
...
81    up10     Pied Piper	                2
...
100   nwu6     NWU Team 6	        0

The printed CCC certificates for the gold, silver, and bronze medal winners are available for pickup at the CS reception (if you send me your name). Ulrik, there is also a printed copy for you.

And no, I have still not heard back from Standard Bank about the final rankings.

If you are interested in cluster and high-performance computing, check out the CHPC competition.

The CHPC Student Cluster Competition gives undergraduate students at South African universities exposure to the High Performance Computing (HPC) Industry. At the CHPC's 2018 National Meeting teams will build small HPC clusters on the exhibition floor and run application benchmarks to determine the best performing cluster. Hardware will be provided by the CHPC and our industrial partners. The winning team will be entered into the ISC Student Cluster Competition hosted at the 2019 International Supercomputing Conference in Germany.

To enter a team visit https://scc.chpc.ac.za/apply and complete the online application form by 18h00 on 14 May 2018. For more information on the CHPC Student Cluster Competition visit http://scc.chpc.ac.za.

Successful teams will be contacted by 19 May 2018

If I don't receive the names for CCC (as stated in my previous post) by tomorrow afternoon, you will not get a certificate. Please send me any outstanding names asap.

A few more details on the SB Impact Challenge tomorrow:

Venue: SIT Lab
Time: 10h00 - 14h00, students are advised to be there at 9h30 to setup
Programming Languages: C, C++, Java 8, Python 2.7 or 3.5
OS and IDE: Your choice (or rather what is installed in the labs)
Submission: Submit source code that is evaluated according to a set of test cases (similar to Fitchfork)
Internet: No internet access
Allowed: Hard-copy (paper) books and notes and a non-programmable calculator
Not Allowed: Own laptop, tablets, phones, electronic material on the lab PCs (eg book in PDF format), memory sticks, CDs, etc

Can the following teams who participated in CCC on Friday please send me their full names (of all members), so that I get get your certificates ready. Just send an email to cstallmann@cs.up.ac.za

m3h
CodeCrafters
kobus-v-schoor
pickle.jar
Compilation Error!
Slipstream737

The SB IT Impact Challenge is this Saturday.

If you want to test the system and/or get some practice on past problems, please go to:

https://sbtic.co.za

Use the login details of your team. If you registered late or not at all, you can use the login of an unassigned team. If you use one of those and you see someone else already used that account - that is someone else submitted a solution, please go down the list an pick another one. Notice that this is for PRACTICE purposes only. You will get different details for the official competition.

up1	 KBVBtWXe3k	_d0gegrammer$
up2	 e3NmPALB98	Compilation Error!
up3	 MQWH3kFhCq	CodeCrafters
up4	 RC22zi9P7Z	Squad3.0
up5	 K6sddmhAex	pickle.jar
up6	 fsUccsYzas	Infinite Automatas
up7	 ukyrwbMJvx	Pied Piper
up8	 cmmA2ZQxHM	AwesomeSource
up9	 YdCfawCgMc	Binary Junkies
up10	 kGus9HvTTK	The Zucc
up11	 jeM6G6PEzf	 Team 11
up12	 6MPdUfAzRE	 Team 12
up13	 mqAWisBz2q	 Team 13
up14	 ztmZY4fQG2	 Team 14
up15	 RnMyCeWhaJ	 Team 15
up16	 gJ62jPbEGD	 Team 16
up17	 jJdC9tQr9x	 Team 17
up18	 bYHAB9Ygpp	 Team 18
up19	 FnBJ2eJ4h8	 Team 19
up20	 zbuhZYPXkT	 Team 20
up21	 XcfiLWBPKB	 Team 21
up22	 8DrQywTHJV	 Team 22
up23	 PsVwxYdJgY	 Team 23
up24	 VKXyzrN29s	 Team 24
up25	 GjLhqhukYv	 Team 25
up26	 R24mkBtd3K	 Team 26
up27	 3Ka37nMMtp	 Team 27
up28	 DQ42aefhR7	 Team 28
up29	 XMB2ULy97Y	 Team 29
up30	 C73jy7JqJs	 Team 30

HackFu has also started this week. It will run until the 23rd of July. A bunch of gadgets are up for grabs for students from SA and Singapore.

More info here:

https://bronzefrog.mwrinfosecurity.com

Like every year, the Entelect Challenge has started again. Unlike other contests where you sit down for a few hours and try to solve as many problems as you can, with Entelect you have a lot more time and can code in your own free time. The challenge involves creating an AI bot and play against bots from other people. The finals are typically held at rAge in October. A total of R200k is up for grabs.

This year, Entelect also has a University Cup. This is a 1 day hackathon. Day is not fixed yet, but will probably be in July or August. Teams must consist of 2-3 members. Each member of the winning team will get a gaming laptop and additional gadgets.

For more info on both challenges, go to:

https://challenge.entelect.co.za/

Some details on the competition tomorrow

Venue: SIT lab, Informatorium
Date: 27 April 2018
Time: 15h00 - 19h00, I suggest that you arrive at least 15 minutes early to setup.
Equipment: Use the lab computers, or bring your own laptop.
Internet Access: Yes, you can google as much as you like. You can bring any books or other resources.
Submission: Make sure you have an account with CCC, you will need the user/pass to login, get the problems and submit the solutions. Unlike other competitions, you only have to submit the answer, not the source code. If you upload your source code, you can get bonus time.

We need a lot more teams for the SB challenge. We currently have more people participating in CCC than in the SB challenge.

During the SB challenge you will compete against teams from other SA universities. Please get a group together and email me your details (as listed in a previous announcement).

If you cannot find a team, still email me your details and then I can try to put a team together from all the team-less participants.

I need your info no later than noon on Wednesday (25 April).

Fujitsu has an AI competition with $20000 prize money. If you are interested, go to:

https://openinnovationgateway.com/ai-nlp-challenge/

Here is an update about the upcoming events. Please send me the details of your Standard Bank team asap.

1. ACM ICPC Finals (15 - 20 April): The UP team that won the regionals last year is going to China for the finals. Wish them good luck.
2. Microsoft Hackathon (16 - 18 April): A 3-day hackathon at Microsoft's HQ in Johannesburg, with focus on AI, Azure, and Python.
3. Catalyst Coding Contest (27 April): An international 4-hour competition. We will host the event here at UP. Please register on CCC's website (https://register.codingcontest.org) if you want to participate as an individual or as a team.
4. Standard Bank's IT Impact Challenge (5 May): A 4-hour competition among all SA universities. We will host the event here at UP. Please send me (cstallmann@cs.up.ac.za) your team details (see previous announcement) as soon as possible. All nationalities and study fields/degrees are welcome. Food and drinks will be available.

A reminder to please get a team together for the Standard Bank competition on the 5th of May. Note that registration closes on the ***23rd of April***, please email me your details (see previous announcement) before that date. There will be free snacks, drinks, and lunch.

Also note that the old rule of non-SA citizens has fallen away. Anyone can participate and go through to the finals, irrespective of their citizenship, as long as they are enrolled at a SA university.

Also remember the CCC competition on the 27th of April. Register as a team or individual on their website.

Microsoft is holding a small hackathon to help improve a repository platform. If you want to expand your machine learning and Python knowledge, and play around with a few Microsoft platforms, this is for you.

The hackathon will be held 16 - 18 April at Microsoft in Joburg. To attend, click the button in the uploaded PDF.

We have finalized the CCC venue for the 27th of April and you can register for the competition (look for Pretoria) at:

https://register.codingcontest.org/

Note that the previous booking on the CS website was just to get a rough estimation. If you want to participate, you have to register on CCC's website in order to get login details you will need for the competition. The competition will be hosted in the Informatorium.

Also remember to get a team together for the Standard Bank competition and to send me the details so that I can register you.

The annual Standard Bank competition will be held in May. During this contest teams from different universities compete against each other. The best team from each university will go through to the final round where you are booked into a hotel and have a weekend to solve a problem. The questions during the pre-rounds/heats are general CS-related problems solved by a small program. Your code will be marked by a system similar to Fitchfork, and the team that solves post problems in a few hours wins. The topic of the finals is centered around blockchain.

Just like the CCC competition, UP also won the SB competition last year. For this competition you have to work in teams. We encourage teams to get members from other departments or faculties to join. Please refer to the uploaded documents with regards to the rules and the way teams have to be put together.

Date: Saturday, 5 May
Time: 9h00 - 15h00
Venue: Informatorium, UP Hatfield Campus
Food: Lunch, snacks, and drinks provide

If you are interested, please get a team together and email the following details (for each of the members) to: cstallmann@cs.up.ac.za

1. Team name (be creative)
2. Full name
3. Degree (eg: BSc CS)
4. Year (eg: 2nd year)
5. Cellphone number
6. Email address
7. ID number
8. A short summary (2-3 sentences) of your plans for next year (eg: continue studying, finding a job, etc)

I forgot to add slot to the booking. You can book now.

The competition is from 15h00 - 19h00. You can come and leave as you like - no strict rules.

The next biannual CCC competition takes place on Friday the 27th of April 2018. This competition is hosted across the world, but mainly in Europe and North America. UP (or rather Ulrik) won the competition last year. The competition consists of a number of problems that have to be solved. Unlike other competitions, CCC typically does not require you to submit the code, but only the answer. The team with the most solved problems wins. The duration is typically 3 or 4 hours. You can participate individually or as a team. More info here:

https://www.codingcontest.org/en/

IMPORTANT: if you want to attend the event, please make a booking here on the CS site, so that we know how many we have to cater for. If you work in a team, each team member has to book here.

The Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) has launched a hackathon. Please see the uploaded poster. Note that the old deadline has been extended to 14 February (today).

Apply here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScr1XZCGLDj0eDYGRwniidsOJ3Xsy8lA_xUpJc6Bg73LLV8Jw/viewform

A Big Data + Machine Learning Competition


2019 Topic: Urban Functional Classification Based on Remote Sensing Images and User Behavior

See Information on here
http://www.ikcest.org/bigdata2019/?lang=en

Teams can be 1-5 people. 

Closing date for registration is June 10th.

If you submit a team, please let me know at vukosi.marivate@cs.up.ac.za

Hello all

We have been invited to submit a team to the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA) CSIR Datathon this year. It will have 2 parts with a workshop 2-4 July at the CSIR and the main competition in December.  

The DIRISA student datathon is a competition that is organised by the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA) to showcase how open research data can be used to come up with creative and innovative solutions to some of South Africa’s problems.

**What are the objectives?**
- To give students an opportunity to learn about the benefits of open data
- To showcase innovative solutions using open data
- To find new solutions to problems
- To advocate for the use of open data

**Team application and deadline**
Apply to be a team here http://bit.ly/UPDIRISATeamApplication 

How will the teams be formed?
Each team can be made up of a maximum of
five (5) people. Please ensure that your team
is balanced in terms of gender and race.

Deadline for internal  team application [5 June 2019]

Please see the description of the Datathon in the file attached on the ACM101 website and here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h1wM-Z0FsEz1Bc-sI9L-wbAn1X4a6iBw/view?usp=sharing


**What is DIRISA?**
The Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA) is one of three technology components of the National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System (NICIS). NICIS is a national initiative of the Department of Science and Technology implemented by the CSIR. The primary role of DIRISA is to enable, promote and support data intensive research across all scholarly disciplines.

**Why apply?**
You will get to be able to take on Data Science challenges using Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Statistics, Math, Visualisation etc to tackle the challenges. You will also take part in a workshop to kickoff and get you up to speed.

**Who is the Datathon open to?**
The datathon is open to undergraduate and graduate students above the age of 18. No experience in data science is required.

**Do I have to be an expert?**
No. There is a workshop to get you up to speed.

**Who will mentor at UP**
Dr. Vukosi Marivate, the Chair of Data Science will be one of the mentors from UP as well as some members of his research group Data Science for Social Impact [see research group info here http://www.vima.co.za/research/research-university-of-pretoria/ ]