An International Experience
The Central-European Olympiad in Informatics (CEOI) is a programming contest for secondary school students from countries in central Europe. About 40 contestants from 10 countries compete against each other, solving difficult problems of algorithmic nature. Each participating country sends 4 contestants from their national olympiads which take place in the months beforehand.
CEOI was founded in 1994. Now, Delegations from Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are invited as regular participants. In addition, teams from other countries may be invited as guests.
CEOI shares its competition format with the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), which is the annual world programming championship for secondary school students. On each of two contest days, the contestants participate in a 5-hour exam. They are given a number of difficult algorithmic problems and are required to solve these by writing programs. Their programs are then evaluated and scored based on both efficiency and correctness. Several CEOI countries send their IOI team to CEOI for a challenging occasion to practice.