Georg Hofferek – IYPT Blog

New Problems

Georg Hofferek — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 10:55:34 +0000

If you haven’t seen them yet, the new problems for IYPT 2011 (which will be held in Tehran, Iran) are already available.
http://iypt.at/en/home/problems2011/

Kiwi

Georg Hofferek — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:31:44 +0000

We just learned something about biology: Some kiwis are marsupials!

Excursion

Georg Hofferek — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:40:17 +0000

We are in the garden of the Schallaburg, and some of the participants are playing some kind of volleyball. Hopefully nobody gets hurt. After all, they are physicists…

Preparing Results

Georg Hofferek — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:41:14 +0000

All the groups of three teams have finished. We are waiting for the two groups with four teams to provide you with the results. The nice thing of being an organizer of IYPT is that we now already know some tendencies, and which teams will (most probably) be in the final.

Real fire

Georg Hofferek — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:21:46 +0000

Some of you might have noticed, while we were in Schönbrunn gardens, a fire broke out in a building nearby. So after two “false” alarms at our hotel, finally some real work for the fire brigade…

Blackboard erased

Georg Hofferek — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:37:37 +0000

It took us several hours yesterday evening to compile the jury for the fifth Selective PF. After we were finished, we were exhausted and decided to go to sleep, and type it into the computer on the next day.

When we came to the office this morning, somebody had erased the blackboard!

After a moment of shock that several hours of work might have been lost, we realized that fortunately we were smart enough to take a photo of the blackboard before leaving last night. So, no harm done!

Still, I wonder what the one who erased the blackboard was thinking. In my opinion it was quite obvious that the information on it was very important.

Exhaustion is kicking in

Georg Hofferek — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:29:36 +0000

Several technical problems, the general stress at IYPT, the fire alarm in the middle of the night, etc., are taking effect…

A pic says more than a thousand words…

Tim is exhausted

Visa Applications

Georg Hofferek — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:16:10 +0000

After several months of waiting, several emails, and several phone calls, we finally obtained a general clearance to issue invitations (in German: “Generalverpflichtungserklärung”) for visa applicants from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs today. This greatly simplifies the procedure of issueing visa invitation letters for us. Unfortunately, applying for and receiving Austrian visas is still a very complex bureaucratic process. (Austria is infamous for its bureaucracy. And for one time, the cliches are true, unfortunately.)

To be honest, I feel ashamed for my country that the government makes it so difficult for interested and motivated young people to come here to compete in this extraordinady competition called IYPT. I apologize in advance for any troubles and inconveniences that Austrian authorities might cause you in order to get your visas.

Pre-Registration Finished

Georg Hofferek — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:06:34 +0000

The deadline for pre-registration has passed yesterday. 27 teams have pre-registered, so we are looking forward to a big and interesting tournament. Actually, we had hoped to get at least 28 teams, so that the IYPT2010 would be the largest IYPT (in terms of competing teams) of all times. Nevertheless, 27 is a fine number, as it is divisible by 3. If no teams cancel, we will not have exhausting fights with 4 teams.

As Tim mentioned earlier, we are still working out a few issues with our online registration system. As soon as it is available, we will send out user names and passwords to all pre-registered teams, along with some general information on the registration process.

15 Teams Pre-Registered

Georg Hofferek — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:51:23 +0000

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.