Greetings from Marrakech, Host of the 2015 ACM-ICPC World Finals

I’m thrilled to be back again this year to cover the 39^th Annual IBM-Sponsored ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals (that’s a mouthful, so we’ll stick with "ICPC" from now on). After traveling to Russia for the last two World Finals, we’ve headed south to the beautiful (and ridiculously hot) Marrakech, Morocco.

Are you interested in some background on the contest? Check out the 2015 ICPC Fact Sheet for lots of great details about the history and structure of the world’s oldest, largest and most prestigious collegiate programming contest.

This year’s contest will take place Under The High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco. A trio of fantastic Moroccan universities – Mohammed V University, Al Akhawayn University, Mundiapolis University – as well as The Moroccan ACM, are serving as hosts. All event activities will take place at the beautiful Palmeraie Resort, located just a few miles outside of central Marrakech. Founded in the 9^th century and one of Morocco’s four former imperial cities, Marrakech balances its rich history with its role as Morocco’s hub of innovation. In other words, it’s the perfect city to host the ICPC World Finals!

This year there are 128 teams participating in the World Finals. So how’d they get here? They earned their way, of course!

Initially, selection took place from a field of more than 300,000 students in computing disciplines worldwide. A record number of students advanced to the regional level, as 38,160 contestants from 2,534 universities in 101 countries on six continents competed at more than 450 sites, all with the goal of earning one of the coveted invitations to Morocco. Of the 128 teams competing in the World Finals, 23 represent the United States. After yet another year of record participation at the local and regional levels of the contest, this year’s World Finals is poised to be the biggest and best ever (and yes, for those of you who’ve read my previous World Finals coverage, I say this every year, but only because it’s true)!

The contest itself will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. local time on Wednesday (for those of you in the United States, Marrakech is 5 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time). Before then, however, students will partake in numerous activities, both cultural and educational, as they prepare for the competition.

I’ll be back with more tomorrow!

Chas Kurtz is CACM's on-site blogger at ICPC.