ICPC Astana settling in

Most participants arrived in Astana over the weekend, but for me yesterday was the travel day. It started still in the dark (photo on the left), and when I arrived in Astana it was dark again. I also did not meet any other World Finals participants on the way, so it was pretty lonely. Having arrived in Astana though, I was instantly impressed by how smoothly everything goes, both with respect to ICPC and Astana in general, and of course I immediately got to meet some old friends, even at 22:00 on the hotel dinner. 

While I was in the air, the team registration, the talk by ecnerwala and the opening ceremony took place, which were also recorded (1, 2, 3). As part of the registration, team photos were taken, for the history but also for use in the World Finals broadcast on Thursday. On the right you can see the ETH Zürich team which graciously agreed to take me with them to Astana. Go ETH!

Today is a pretty chill day, with a few events such as the Tech Trek with another round of team Kotlin coding (recording) and the ICPC challenge (recording), but where most people just hang around in the big hall (a photo from the official gallery on the left) which reminds me a lot about the TopCoder Open onsite arenas back in the days, only it's at least 10x bigger this time: it is right next door to the contest floor, there is food, sponsor booths, but also a lot of space to just talk or play games with your friends. I think it is a perfect setup for an onsite contest!

One other thing already going on for three days is the ICPC Quest, which this post is also part of. There are various challenges aimed at people getting to know one another, and creating more content about the World Finals, and completing those challenges gets one some plush camels. I did not take part in it in the past, but I've decided to give it a go this year, and it's fun! I'm including #ICPCAstana in this post to fulfill one of the quest tasks :)

Thanks for reading, and check back tomorrow!