The ACM student chapter is coordinating efforts for two annual competitions that GW computer science students regularly participate in. You can get some brief information here, but feel free to contact us for more details! EVERYONE is welcome to participate (even if you're not a computer scientist actually, we're looking for people with various backgrounds, especially for ICPC).
ACM ICPC - Programming competition ( icpc.baylor.edu )
What: ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) is probably the biggest collegiate programming competition out there. It is organized by the ACM and sponsored by IBM. Other big names (such as Google) have recently joined in the sponsor list in various ways and traditionally a lot of carrer oportunities open up just for getting to the final. Simply put, if you can do this, you're an interesting asset.
How: 3 person team (GW sends 3-4 teams every year), one computer per team, 5 hours, around 8 problems. The purpose is to solve as many problems as possible (by programming solutions) as quickly as possible. Languages accepted are generally C/C++ and Java, but this may always change.
When: The first phase is the regional phase which takes place in October. First one-two teams get to the world finals which happen around spring time. Locatin for world finals is always different.
Coaching: Professor Price Jones has traditionally held CS 197 for coaching teams. Also, I(Alex) am willing to coach anyone interested in participating or at least training for it. I have a lot of good knowledge to share.
Why: First off, it's fun. GW has a rep for having fun at competitions wherever we go, it would be nice to keep that going. Second, it builds up essential skills. Speaking from my own experience, knowing how to solve problems of the type you will see at ACM has gotten me job offers even after I failed other big parts of the interview. They can teach you a lot of new things at a job in a few weeks, but they can't teach you this stuff that quickly. So if you know it, they want you, if you don't... they'll want someone who does. Also, participation in the competition grants you a one-year free ACM membership.
CCDC - Security competition ( www.nationalccdc.org )
What: CCDC stands for Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. The idea is as follows: you are presented with a network, take care of it! This implies defending against various types of security attacks, detecting intrusion, reporting data theft etc.
How: Teams of up to 8 people (only one team per university), various network setups (they change everytime), but everyone is guaranteed to be kept busy. Sometimes everyone gets a computer (or more), sometimes computers are shared. The network is virtualized, there is a computer outside the network that has access to the Internet. The Red Team that does the attacks is composed of security professionals and they're very good at hacking your system. The rules are very dynamic so I won't go into details.
When: Qualifying round takes place around the end of January, the Regional round is around spring break (generally the week after). The national I think takes place in May, but I'm not sure.
Coaching: Lecturers Brad Pittack and Christopher Toombs have provided coaching for our teams, I hope they'll stick with us as we continue this tradition.
Why: Wow, where do I begin. Let's get the obvious out of the way first: it's very realistic, the guys that organize go out of their way to make it just like the real thing. So it's a fantastic experience, you learn so much there that you will never learn in school and it's definitely something to throw on your resume, ESPECIALLY if security is what you want to be doing. Now not so obvious, but this is the most amazing competition I've been to in my entire life (and I've been doing comp sci competitions for a little over 11 years). I'm not even a security guy and I've kept going on and on, it's absolutely fantastic. This is a new thing, Trevor started it two years ago and we would love to keep it going. Don't hesitate, you won't regret going.
Oh and PS: When we joined none of us knew ANYTHING about this sort of stuff. Actually, some of us (such as myself) still don't. So don't let that scare you off, you'll learn as you go and it beats any class you'll ever take.
