Most of these notes are for the site director, but some apply to the judges as well. There are notes for before, during, and after the contest.

Contest-Day Contact (Site Director and Judges)

Each year one of the regional chief judges will act as the contest-day point of contact to handle all questions and corrections. This year your contact is John Cigas from Rockhurst University. You can email him at cigas@acm.org or phone him at 816-501-4534.

Before the Day of the Contest (Site Director)

1. Figure out how to restrict access to the Internet. Ideally, teams should work on computers that are not attached to the Internet (local networks are OK). Consider running unnetworked computers as a possibility. If you can't isolate your computers from the Internet, disable as many services (email, web browsers, irc, etc.) as possible and plan on monitoring teams throughout the competition. Anyone found to have accessed anything outside the local network should be disqualified from the contest and reported to the Regional Director for other possible sanctions.

2. Make sure that the IDE and command-line versions of your compilers are the same and use the same options for code generation, debugging information, etc. The students will probably use the IDE, but the judges will probably use the command-line compilers. Remember that all compilers must be 32-bit, not 16-bit. If you are using a Windows compiler, make sure it is set to generate a text-mode application, not a GUI application. See Site Software Requirements for more information.

3. The judging utilities assume that the command-line versions of the compilers are on the path. See Using the Judging Utilities for more information.

4. If your compiler has multiple options for creating a project and there is a chance that a team might use the wrong one, prepare a hand-out for each team explaining how to use the compiler.

5. Have ACMIO.class available for Java programmers. You can either publicize a readable place on your network where it is placed, or copy it onto a floppy disk supplied to the teams. (Except for this file, all floppy disks supplied to teams should be blank.) There is a copy on the judging disk with path \mcpc2004\judge\ACMIO.class. Also, you can compile the source file available at http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh/ACM99.

Day of the Contest (Site Director and Judges)

1. The site director will have a sealed envelope that must be opened in the presence of at least two other coaches from two different schools. This envelope will contain a CD-ROM with all the contest materials, including a PDF version of the problem set; a hard copy of the problem set suitable for feeding to a photocopier; and the password for accessing the scoring web site (see below). The site director must then make three copies of the problem set per team, plus copies for the coaches and judges as needed. He or she may delegate that task to two of the coaches, if necessary. Under no circumstances should any student be allowed access to the problem set before the contest starts, whether a contestant or not.

2. If you prepared a hand-out for teams in Step 4 above, distribute it and discuss it at the pre-contest meeting, and post a copy on the notice board. Warn teams about immediate disqualification for accessing anything outside the local computing environment.

3. You will need to appoint a local Head Judge, and in addition you will need two Witnesses (described below). All three must be team coaches from different schools.

4. All contest-day administration (entering scores, viewing the standings, and receiving problem updates) will occur via the web site at http://csc.smsu.edu/~mcpc. The Web page is fairly self-explanatory, but if you're having trouble, call or email John. Problem clarifications and corrections will be displayed at the top of the standings pages, so be sure to check the standings regularly, even if you have no scores to enter.

5. Do not hand out floppies to teams until they are in their rooms at 12:15. If necessary, have your runners distribute the floppies. Fill out the judging request forms in advance with the team number and problem, so that teams cannot collaborate and submit problems for a different team.

6. Once the contest begins, if there are any teams that did not show up, call or email John and tell him which ones. He will leave those teams in the rankings (in case they show up late), but will mark them with {X} to indicate that they are no-shows.

Immediately After the Contest (Site Director and Judges)

5:30 Finish Entering Scores
The web scoring system will allow updates until approximately 5:50. There will be people running around everywhere at 5:30, so make sure that no one other than the judges has access to the machines you are using to enter scores. Either lock the door (and perhaps post a sign) or have someone block the entrance until you are done. Once you have entered all scores, carefully double-check the scores for any of your teams that are ranked in the top 5 in the region. If possible, delete all cookies from the web browsers you used, so that no one can access the scorer without knowing the password.

5:50 Email Solutions for Top-ranked Teams
The Head Judge and two Witnesses will need to send John solutions from all teams that are unofficially ranked in the top 5 for the region. All three should work together on this so that there are no mistakes and no foul play. If you have any teams ranked in the top 5 in the region, send John an email message with the following information:

1. name of site,
2. name of each ranked team,
3. a .tar file for each team containing the source files for their correct solutions (the name of the file should be the name of the team, like smsu-a.tar), and
4. the name, school, email address, and phone number of the Head Judge and the two Witnesses, who certify that the entered scores are correct.

The tar program is a command-line utility for creating archives and is preinstalled on all Unix variants and Mac OS X; a tar.exe for Windows is included in the \mcpc2004\judge directory of the CD-ROM. On all systems, tar has the following syntax: "tar cf name.tar file ...", where you can list the names of one or more files and/or directories to be included in the archive. Make sure that you tar up the correct files. Some teams may have multiple programs on the same disk, so don't accidentally send an old copy. John will reply to your email with a confirmation that he got everything OK. Don't assume your email got through OK until you get a response from John. Several universities this year have started silently dropping email with certain attachments (like .zip files). If in doubt, send him another email with no attachments, or call. The chief judges will then use this information to verify the final rankings. Official final rankings will be posted by Monday. 

If you do not have a team ranked in the top 5 in the region, you do not need to send anything.

After the Contest (Site Director)

Keep all contest materials (all judging sheets and time logs, diskettes for correct problems, and all of the backups created by the judging utilities) at your site for at least a month in case any problems arise.