Are you interested in having your college be a host site for the Southern California Regional of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest? If so, here's what your site would need to provide:

A (set of) networked hosts or workstations powerful enough to have 70 or more teams pounding on them for five hours doing continuous editing, compilation, and testing. The Contest staff will need to have access to the machines before the Contest, preferably about a week ahead. Two of the staff people usually go to the site a day ahead of time to set things up.

One desktop machine for each team to access the contest hosts (or a desktop machine of sufficient power for each team with local network access such that no other host is needed). Since 1990, the Southern California region has used UNIX(tm)-based machines.

A private room for the judges to work, with five or more desktop machines of the type mentioned above.

Space for the contestants to work. Each team needs to have enough space for the three team members to sit together and discuss things among themselves. (If there is not enough space for each team by the desktop machine, space in nearby classrooms can be used, or an adequate number of tables and chairs placed near the desktop machines will do.)

A large meeting hall that can seat at least 200 for the pre- and post-contest meetings.

An enthusiastic pool of volunteers to help pull all the arrangements together and help the day of the contest! Ideally, two or three volunteers should be available to handle advance logistics, and eight or nine volunteers should be available to work on the actual contest day. A system administrator should also be available on the day of the Contest to deal with unforeseen circumstances.

Someone to cater the contest-provided lunch to all participants. This may be on-campus food service or an outside catering firm that can feed around 200 people. The contest will pay for the lunch, so the site simply needs to make the arrangements in consultation with the contest staff.

Lodging for contestants who are traveling large distances the night before and the night after the contest. This can be on-campus housing, if available, or local hotels or motels. Contestants are responsible for their own lodging expenses.

Arrangements for parking. If there is a fee, the contestants are responsible for it.

Interested? If so, please contact <volunteer@socalcontest.org> .