ACM Regional Asia 1999
Dhaka Site Report
24th November 1999
The third time in a row North South University, Dhaka was given the honor to conduct the ACM Regional Contest 1999 as an Asian Site. Ever since Dr. C J Hwang (Director Asia Region) had placed his faith in Dr. Abul L Haque ( Dhaka Site Director for three consecutive years and also Head of the CSC Dept. NSU) three years ago it was a Cinderella story. Suddenly people knew that in fact there is another corner in Asia where programmers are born and bred. Countries like India, Pakistan, SriLanka, Iran started to tread in this new waters for the first time. And this year we can see the new Asian sites coming up (e.g. IIT Kanpur, Iran etc.) apart from our own Dhaka site in NSU.
In Bangladesh it seemed that a new era had begun. Suddenly there was this way of proving oneself as programmers internationally through a reputed organization like the ACM. A new order was born. Programmers started to become more active online trying on ACM like problems and one up manship among themselves wasn't rare. The first Bangladeshi NCPC (National Computer programming contest) was held just a year later using the PC Square software which is used in the actual ACM ICPC.
This year the contest started on a negative note. Because of a nationwide strike the contest had to be held a day ahead (24th November) of the scheduled date(25th). Fortunately we knew about this early and were able to notify all the contestants and coaches of the matter with a lot of time to spare. This was the only blemish in the entire festivities. All the registered 34 teams showed up including teams from Hong Kong, Pakistan and China. A panel of ten judges were there to officiate the contest.
The contest went on for four and a half hours with six problems to solve. The Chinese University of Hong Kong solved five of them and became the Champion. The BUET Green team albeit leading for the first three and a half hours had to be content with the runner up trophy. This year NSU wasn't supposed to automatically qualify for the finals as a host team. So this was a big disappointment for all of us as only one team was chosen for the finals and that wasn't a Bangladeshi team after all. We had no doubt the best team had won but still it was a shock that a team from Bangladesh will not participate in the Millennium ACM Finals. We of course felt a great pride in hosting such a major contest three times in a row and we believe we will have more chances in the near future. The NSU Pro Vice Chancellor Hafiz G A Siddiqui chaired the prize distribution ceremony with the honorable Chairman(NSU) Mr. M A Kashem as the chief guest.Dr. C J Hwang was full of praise and made us feel real proud. He promised that we might be considered a few years later to be a host site again. We look forward to it!!!
Syed Shabbir Husain
Head Systems Commitee Dhaka Site
Systems/Software Engineer NSU