Programming students take on the world

New Zealand’s team for the 2010 International Olympiad in Informatics has arrived in Canada for the 2010 competition. Team Members Logan Glasson (Burnside High School), Jamie McCloskey (Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti), Boris Pfahringer (University of Waikato)  and Tony Sun (Christ’s College) attended an intensive pre-departure training camp hosted by the University of Auckland prior to leaving. 
Margot Phillipps, director of the NZ Olympiad in Informatics organised the camp to give the students a chance to practice their skills built up over the year, and focus on the upcoming event. 
“The students have been working steadily towards the competition,” said Phillipps. 
“They have been getting competition practice in on-line contests hosted by Australia, the USA and Croatia. All that remains is the final build-up to make sure we do as well as possible.”
The annual competition features over 300 of the world’s top computer science high school students, who are selected through national computing contests.  250,000 young people from some 100 countries compete each year to represent their country at the IOI, the world’s premier high school programming competition.
Troy Vasiga, chair of the IOI 2010 comments “These are top students from around the world who will be the leading computer scientists in their respective countries in the years ahead.
They are motivated, ready to learn and eager to solve the world’s problems.”
The team is accompanied by Phillipps and training Director, Robert Bowmaker. The competition took place at the University of Waterloo in southern Ontario. It was split over two days, 16th and 18th August. Each competition session lasted 5 hours in which competitors had to demonstrate their skills in problem analysis, design of algorithms and data structures, programming and testing.
Their enthusiasm, dedication and long hours of practice will be put to the test in spirited but friendly competition.   
Before departing, the NZ Team also had an opportunity to meet some of their sponsors with visits to Solnet and Datacom. Phillipps acknowledged the support received from these sponsors as well as the Universities of Canterbury and Auckland, Ace Training and Development, Netvalue, the Royal Society of NZ and several anonymous donors. 
“Some of these sponsors have been with us since NZ sent its first team to the IOI in Mexico in 2006. They have watched as our teams have found their feet and made the medal board. In 2008 Ronald Chan won a silver medal and, last year, two members of the current team, Jamie McCloskey and Boris Pfahringer won bronze medals. We are hoping to do even better this year.”