APIO meeting on 19 August 2010 at IOI 2010 in Waterloo, Canada

Meeting opened at 9:35am.

Delegations present:

• Australia
• Bangladesh
• China
• Hong Kong
• India
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Japan
• Korea
• Macao
• New Zealand
• Singapore
• Sri Lanka
• Syria
• Taiwan
• Thailand
• United Arab Emirates

The meeting was informally chaired by Madhavan Mukund from India.

• China was thanked for hosting the 2010 APIO.
• Iran was acknowledged as the host for APIO 2011.
• Japan expressed interest in hosting APIO 2012 and was chosen as the future host for 2012.
• Question raised: Should next year's APIO follow the format of the IOI? (Library-based tasks, extended time limits, etc).
  • Thailand is hosting IOI 2011, so could cooperate with Iran for APIO 2011.
  • By default, the proposal is to stay with the traditional format.
  • If possible then Iran/Thailand will experiment with the new task formats.
  • The grading system used by IOI 2010 may be released publically, so is a possibility for APIO 2011.
• Question raised by China: Should the APIO have a formal committee, and a formal chairperson to run meetings?
  • Currently, there is no APIO committee. Is it not well-defined who is responsible chairing meetings or for ensuring APIO-related matters are addressed.
  • A proposal was made for a committee of 5 members:
    • 2 elected members
    • 3 members: one from each delegation who has or will host the latest APIOs.
  • The 3 delegations for APIO 2010, 2011 and 2012 (China, Iran and Japan) agreed.
  • Australia and India were elected for a term of one year.
• Question raised by China: Should there be an upper limit on the number of sites per delegation?
  • There were several delegations with many (5-8) sites this year, which was tedious for the host to manage and made it prone to miscommunication.
  • Some delegations (Australia, India, Japan were noted) require 5-8 sites due to both logistical constraints and contestant's schedules.
  • It was suggested that each delegation could nominate a single contact person who would then be responsible for interacting with the host APIO committee, rather than individual site hosts. This would ease the administrative burden on the host.
• Question raised by Iran: Do we want to have an olympiad where delegations travel to a central location?
  • Iran may offer to host a contest site so that delegations could fly to a central location to compete.
  • Indonesia would also be willing to host an on-site contest.
  • It would not be compulsory for competing delegations to attend.
  • It would need a strict upper limit on number of students per site.
  • As the contest is very early in the year, many delegations have not yet chosen their teams.
  • Many delegations do not have the budget to send students to a regional contest in addition to the IOI.
  • Iran will decide if they want to offer this option for APIO 2011.
• China gave a report on APIO 2010:
  • 19 delegations competed
  • 51 contestants got medals
  • 9 gold, 16 silver, 26 bronze
  • 12 delegations got medals
  • Thanks to Madhavan (India) and Jittat (Thailand) for assisting with task preparation.
  • Thanks to all delegations for participating.
• Dates for APIO 2011:
  • Lots of exams in India around March/April
  • Proposal for 7 or 14 May 2011.
  • Most in favour of 7 May 2011.
  • 7 May 2011 is a holiday in Korea.
  • Decided on Saturday 7 May 2011.
• Question raised by Australia: Do we want to standardise on a license for APIO tasks?
  • At the IOI workshop, a wiki was discussed that could collect tasks from regional contests such as the APIO.
  • Ideally, tasks would be licensed so that other delegations could reuse them for team training.
  • The Creative Commons BY licence was proposed: it would allow people to use the tasks in private contests. Any public use or redistribution would require attribution to the original task creator.
  • Iran will consider this for next year.
  • Australia will pursue past hosts to negotiate the licence for past contests.

Meeting closed at 10:05am.