MEET THE TEAMS OF 2020

Team name: La bomba de tenedores

Institution: Universidad Simón Bolívar

Coach: Augusto Hidalgo

1. How did you (Coach) get involved as a coach for ICPC competitions? What year did you become involved as a coach?
I was a participant as well, I went to the 2016 and 2017 WFs. I feel that doing competitive programming was very good for me, helped me develop problem-solving skills and meet cool people while having fun. So I wanted to give back what I could to this discipline. As a teacher assistant, I started recruiting people from the first years, and help them to start with competitions. I officially became a coach 2 regionals ago, and in the last one, we qualified to the WFs 🙂

2. Are there any obstacles your team has had to overcome?
Our country’s situation has been bad for the last years, we have to overcome a lot of economical obstacles, lack of internet connection or other services, this makes it harder to train and to participate in contests. Nevertheless, the team has done a great job!

3. Is there a strategy or lesson your team has learned that increased your success?
There are some very important strategic tips in their work-flow:
– Never waste computer time, the person on the computer can’t be stuck there.
– Work in parallel in the first half of the contests.
– Using a sheet with the list of problems, and the insights or thoughts they have in each, helps them communicate what they think of the problems without much friction in their parallel work.
– Taking rests after each problem, burnouts are really bad.
– Convincing themselves they can solve the problem!

This team is bound for success!

#ICPC2020
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