Monthly Archive for December, 2009

15 Teams Pre-Registered

Published on December 29, 2009 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , .

With Bulgaria’s pre-registration yesterday, we currently hold at 15 pre-registered teams for the IYPT2010. We were really impressed how fast some of the teams reacted after we published registration information on the website and sent out email invitations.

Nevertheless, we expect many more teams to follow. In total, we expect between 25 and 30 teams, based on participations in the last years. If you have not yet pre-registered your country, please send us an email to info@iypt.at. More detailed information on (pre-)registration can be found in the official invitation: http://www.iypt.at/dl/invitation.pdf

To see which teams have already pre-registered, have a look at http://www.iypt.at/en/iypt2010/registration/. There you will se a list of pre-registered countries, which we always keep up to date.

Published by Georg Hofferek

IYPT IT Part 2

Published on December 24, 2009 in Uncategorized. Closed

In this post I’d like to write down some thoughts on helping an IYPT Team with their preparation.

In the last years the amount of data produced in the preparation has grown exponentially. Georg still has a CD (700mb) with all the files from several IYPTs and AYPTs – dating back to ~2002. In 2009 the Austrian Team’s final presentations were stored on a 8GB USB Stick. But the amount of data that was produces is more in the range of several hundred GB. Even short videos can grow to some hundred MB.

The ideal solution would be a (distributed?) versioning system that is able to handle large binary files and is easy to use. Such a thing does not exist. Ok, than let’s at least just use FTP or WebDAV? Not a great idea eihter, because sadly the Internet just isn’t there yet (not yet fast enough). Still in 2009 we’ve setup a svn repo on you server. “Do not upload any video files or other large binaries!” Well… they did.

So I guess in 2010 we’re back to using USB Sticks. Easy to use, cheap, fast – the only problem: No automatic versioning and no auto backup. I’d recommend to have either one of the Teamleaders or the Captain responsable for keeping an eye on all the files. And a strict backup plan would be a good idea…

Now this is probably a good spot to say a big “thank you!” to Heinz. In the last years (always?) he’s been doing a great job collecting, sorting and archiving all the files that the teammembers created while working in Vienna. I don’t even want to think about how much work would have been lost in those chaotic sessions without him.

Published by Timotheus Hell

IYPT IT Part 1

Published on December 22, 2009 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , .

Now since I’ve spent last night fiddling around with this shiny new wordpress installation I really feel the need to write something.

In the last years we have collected lots of experience on what kind of IT is necessary to support an event like the IYPT (mainly by organizing the AYPT). For the IYPT 2010 we have to scale up everything we’ve learned so far.

Since i hope very much that there are many more IYPTs to come, I would like to start a small series of posts about my experiences so far.

So lets start by giving this some structure. First, there’s of course the website: aypt.at and my new toy iypt.at. Then we have to look into communication and collaborating in a team, keeping files up to date and protecting them from hdd failures (yes, we’ve had them!). And eventually there’s the open problem of how to deal with the team’s large binary files (powerpoint, videos, pictures).

So let’s start with the website. I guess in 2010 I don’t have to stress the fact, that a website is necessary to accompany an event like the IYPT. But looking at the sites from last years’ tournaments I feel like there’s always been something missing. The goal has to be to provide different groups of people (e.g. participants, teachers, parents) with all information they might be looking for. IYPT2010 gives you all the information about the 23rd IYPT in Vienna. However I felt like that is not enough, so we’ve added The Tournament with all kinds of information about the IYPT, its history and so on. Sure, the only way to experience what the IYPT is all about is to participate, but the website at least gives you a video of a fight and the slides that were used in the report.

There’s still more to come. I’ve already setup a gallery, but currently I’m also thinking of using this blog as some kind of photoblog. Sure, having hundreds of photos online sounds great – but I now prefer the way how Rudi Lehn is blogging and using pictures.

Ok, that’s enough for now. I promise to write more about the website, subversion, the pain of  binary file versioning, and ideas on how to do team-registrations right after Christmas 🙂

Published by Timotheus Hell

The new IYPT2010 blog

Published on December 21, 2009 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , .

Hey there!

My name is Tim and I’m the one responsible for iypt.at. I’ve been at the IYPT 2009 in China and I had to notice that my mom actually did some googling and found Rudi Lehn’s blog about the IYPT. So I came up with the idea to do some “official” blogging. I hope that i can get some other folks from the 2010 LOC to get on board and blog about their work and experiences. Think of this blog as an experiment – I can’t say yet, what we (or I ?) will write about or if this will work at all. But hey, it’s 2010 – so the IYPT definitely needs some web 2.0 🙂

Published by Timotheus Hell