13 AIOC 2000-12

Introduction to the Blazer Ceremony

As described in Chapter 7, various fore-runners to the blazer ceremony were held in the period up to 2000 to either farewell or welcome home the four Olympiad teams (biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics) which had been recognised until that time. As referred elsewhere, Informatics did not enter the Olympiad scene as full partners to the other four in terms of government funding, nor was it deemed part of the 2000 farewell function held at the Sydney Olympics site. Chapter 12 also has a history of this ceremony from the mathematics perspective.

However a farewell function hosted by Senator Minchin, Minister for Science, was held in Parliament House in 2001 and whereas Informatics would wait some time for equal funding, it was admitted for the first time as a team for formal farewell. The picture above shows the Tampere, Finland-bound team from left Troy Cruickshank, Adam Kerz, David Burburan and Cameron Patrick, with Deputy Leader Dr David Clark, Peter Taylor and Senator Minchin.

From the year 2002 this ceremony became a regular event, with all five teams presented with their Australian blazers, by a dignitary, often a federal Minister, always in Parliament House's theatrette and the Ceremony became known from 2002 as the Blazer Ceremony.

In fact the first such Blazer Ceremony was hosted by Science Minister Peter McGaurin in 2002. McGaurin had been a longstanding supporter of the Mathematics and Science Olympiads and in Opposition before the 1996 election as Science Spokesman had always attended Olympiad team events. The photo above shows him with the team bound for South Korea, from left ultimate Silver Medallist David Greenaway, Alex Flint, Clarence Dang and David Ananian-Cooper.

Here is the 2005 IOI team with Education Minister Brendan Nelson and member for Canberra Annette Ellis. From left the team is Christopher Chen, Alexander Davies, Ramana Kumar and Chris Leong.

Even future Prime Ministers provided their support. Here is the 2005 IO1 team with Opposition Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Kevin Rudd (Alexander Davies was from Mr Rudd's electorate). I note that many other high profile politicians have given regular support to the blazer ceremony. These include Malcolm Turnbull and Christopher Pyne.

Here is the 2006 IOI team with Education Minister Julie Bishop. From left with the Minister are Jarrah Lacko, Jack Murray, Alan Alpert and Christopher Chen.

And here is the Thailand-bound 2011 IOI team with Education Minister Peter Garrett. From left with the Minister are Michael Chen, Eliot Courtney, Evgeny Martynov, Robert Newey and deputy leader Christopher Chen.

Committee movements during this period

Professor John O'Callaghan, Head of the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC, based at the ANU), had been the Inaugural Chair and served the Committee well until he felt it was time to move on, at the end of 2007, and passed the baton on to Professor Leon Sterling at the University of Melbourne. Leon was soon to move on to a Dean's position at Swinburne.

Professor David Abramson, of Monash University, similarly passed the Inaugural Deputy Chair baton to Professor Robin Stanton, of the Australian National University, to make it a double switch at the same time. John had been the representative of the Academy of the Technical Sciences and Engineering, and this switched to Robin, while David's role representing the Australian Computer Society, switched to Leon.

Both John and Leon have provided outstanding high profile leadership for the Informatics programs, and we were extremely fortunate that both have been prepared to give so much of their own time to the benefit of the development of this subject in schools.

Dr Robbie Gates had been the inaugural IOI Team Leader, and remained there for the 2000 IOI but then Dr Benjamin Burton took this position until 2008, when he was elected to the International Scientific Committee (ISC), which involved knowing the exam paper and needing to be removed from the training for ethical reasons. From 2001 the positions of Team Leader and Director of Training (initially held by Ben Burton) were the same personnel.

Ben Burton had been Deputy Leader under Robbie Gates, and when he became Leader, Dr David Clark was Deputy in 2001, 2002 and 2003. From 2004 Bernard Blackham became Deputy. When Ben Burton vacated the Leader position for the 2009 IOI Bernard Blackham became Leader with David Greenaway became Deputy.

In 2009 Australia was awarded the 2013 IOI and as a result I was appointed to the International Committee (IC) and Bernard Blackham (briefly) to the ISC (Ben Burton was already an elected member). When Ben's term expired shortly after he replaced Bernard on the ISC as the Australia representative as Bernard was destined to be the technical head.

In 2010 Bernard was still Leader but Jarrah Lacko became Deputy. In 2011 Jarrah became Leader and Christopher Chen Deputy and this stayed in place for 2012.

David Clark had been in the AMF for a number of years but moved across to AIOC when it was formed. He was originally Treasurer, but became Chair of the AIC Problems Committee when it started. Eventually he stood aside from Treasurer to be replaced by David Kennedy.

IOI 2000 Beijing

I did not attend this, the second IOI we had attended with a team. It improved our performance of 2 Bronze at our first IOI to three, these being won by Peter Hawkins, David Greenaway and Min-Zhao Lee.

IOI 2001 Tampere

I did attend this IOI and would rank it as one of the best organised ones I attended, and perhaps among the best facilities and excursions. It was very compact with the accommodation and facilities adjacent. Again we won three Bronze Medals, these by David Burburan, Adam Kerz and Cameron Patrick. Tampere is the town where Nokia is located.

IOI 2002 Yong-In

This IOI, held at on the outskirts of Seoul near Samsung plants, was based at a University, with all accommodation in University dorms. It was well organised also.

Unfortunately only one member of the team won a medal, but this was the first Silver of our era and was won by David Greenaway, giving him a second medal.

With several hundred people in attendance, logistics are challenging. This photo shows a panorama of buses waiting to take us on an excursion.

Here is the team on the plane traveling home. In the front seat are Alex Flint, Clarence Dang and David Ananian-Cooper. Behind them are deputy leader David Clark, David Greenaway and team leader Ben Burton.

IOI 2003 Kenosha

I did not attend this IOI but apparently it was run on a shoestring, with no finance available until Microsoft came in late to save the event. From all accounts though this was an enjoyable week though and we went back to three Bronze Medals, won by David Barr, Patrick Coleman and Giancarlo Salamanca.

IOI 2004 Athens

I did not attend this event either, but it was obviously very competitive and challenging for our team, as no medals were won, which means it is the only time no member of a mathematics or informatics team from Australia failed to win a medal.

2005: Birth of the Australian Informatics Competition (AIC)

By 2004 it was decided to proceed with a multichoice competition, which would enable wider participation and also help identify talent for programming computers. David Clark became the inaugural Chairman of the Problems Committee and continued in this role through 2012. In a way this competition is seen as an informatics version of the Australian Mathematics Competition, pitched at the same price and heavily recommended as an exercise for mathematics classes.It was planned to hold it early in the year to enable successful students to be encouraged to learn some programming and attempt the Australian Informatics Olympiad later in the year, in September.

In fact the Australian Informatics Olympiad had been called the Australian Informatics Competition until this time, and we changed its name to enable this new competition to adopt its old name.

So the AIC was launched in 2005, attracting about 2300 entries. The entry numbers grew to over 3000 the following year and in the period through 2012 entry numbers grew at 8 to 10 percent every year to have well surpassed the 5000 mark including some strong entries from Singapore and a few other countries.

IOI 2005 Nowy Sacz

I did attend this IOI but it was a very unusual one for me as I was not housed where the students and leaders were, in a university, but rather in a hotel, where "guests" (i.e. paying members of delegations other than leaders) were housed, and some distance from the university. I found that a lot of people attend IOIs that I did not realise, and also that I went to a lot more excursions, some of them very interesting indeed.

Our team was going through a difficult phase, and only one member won a medal, with Alexander Davies winning Bronze.

IOI 2006 Merida

On the day before departure from Melbourne, a terrorist incident caused Australia and the US to upgrade their security screeing for international flights to include manual searching. So we struck the first day of this for which security was unprepared. We were very late leaving Melbourne, got later at Auckland, where we were in transit, and missed our flight at Los Angeles, causing us to have to stay overnight. Furthermore we missed our connection at Mexico City meaning we arrived late on normal arrivals day rather than comfortably the day before.

Here is the team at Auckland airport during the long wait there. From left are Christopher Chen, Bernard Blackham (now Deputy Leader), Jack Murray, Jarrah Lacko, Ben Burton and Alan Alpert.

We only won two medals, but what medals they were! Christopher won Australia's first Gold Medal, while Jarrah backed this result up with a Silver. Here they proudly show their Medals at the Closing Ceremony.

IOI 2007 Zagreb

The 2007 IOI was held at the main University in Zagreb, with all living on campus and everything close together. The University was almost in walking distance to the main square at the centre of Zagreb.

This was to be the best result ever, and in front of Australian Ambassador to Croatia Tracy Reid OAM. Not only did we repeat the Gold and Silver from 2006 (Christopher a second Gold, but Jarrah had not made the team and Jack Murray got the Silver), but in fact it was the first time we had a clean sweep of medals, as Alex Mathews and Angus McInnes both won Bronze. If we had been able to add up the points and make team placings as happens at IMO Australia would have been well inside the top 10. People from strong countries were asking me our secrets on the way back from the Closing Ceremony. Christopher and Jack show off their medals above.

IOI 2008 Cairo

I did not go to this IOI. Instead Leon Sterling, who had become the Chairman of AIOC, managed the team. This was an even better result from our peak last year, and another full swathe of medals, with a Gold, this time won by Jack Murray, two Silver (Jarrah back in the team and a second Silver, and Harry Slatyer) and a Bronze (Xi Chen). In fact it was our best performance during the period until 2012.

Harry had his blazer presented by Jim Peacock, Australia's Chief Scientist (left). Harry's grandfather Ralph Slatyer (right) had been Australia's first Chief Scientist in the Hawke Government in the mid 1980s.

Harry had been in the Physics program and was selected in the Australian team, a position he had accepted. But when selected also in the Informatics team he resigned from the Physics team, under arrangement with the Science Olympiads that one could only be selected in one team. In fact after this it was agreed that a student should not embark on team selection in two disciplines and the rules were changed so that students had to decide in December which discipline they would specialise for the next cycle. This was a difficult issue but it had been noticed that a number of students had tried to get into a team in science and one in maths and weakened their chances of getting in either. There were a lot of other factors also involved in the discussion.

IOI 2009 Plovdiv

I was contacted by Ben Burton in June 2009, noting that there were no contenders for hosting IOI in 2013. He discussed circumstances in which we might apply. I indicated that AMT would not underwrite the event. He obtained effective underwriting from University of Queensland and support letters from a number of other potential stakeholders, so we went to the 2009 IOI with an application in. We did believe there may be another application, from Russia, but were unable to find out.

Ben had developed a relationship with the French team, under which the Australians would do its pre-IOI training in Paris with the French team. They had done this in 2007 on the way to Zagreb, although I had not attended that camp. However I did attend this one. We stayed at a Hotel Etap, a cut-price hotel in the Accor group near the Port d'Italie station, in the Kremlin-Bicetre precinct.

By now Ben had been elected to the International Scientific Committee, and since he knew the problems he could not be used in training. So Bernard had become Team Leader with David Greenaway now in as Deputy. The training at the Paris University seemed to be very effective. Our arrangements were a little more complicated than usual as Daniel Berger was orthodox Jewish. I went through all the things which might happen, with his parents, avoiding flights on the Sabbath and arranging for the Rabbi at Plovdiv to mentor him, finding a kocher supermarket near our hotel in Paris, etc, and it worked out.

We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on a Friday morning two hours before departure and had a serious problem, due to a security problem earlier in the day. Due to my airline membership status I was able to get through a priority security point and was able to take one person with me so chose Daniel, as I could see a delay may take us into the Sabbath. As it happened the rest of the team scrambled on board just as the door was closing.

This was a very high budget IOI. Leaders stayed at the top hotel in Plovdiv, students stayed in the Novotel, and there were elaborate performances at the Closing Ceremony, held in the Roman outdoor theatre, with fireworks and high class Eurovision performers.

The Opening Ceremony was more modest, but presided by no less than the President of Bulgaria (front, speaking) and Minister for Education (standing behind International Committee President Arturo Cepeda).

During the week, Ben, Bernard and I were interviewed and we awaited the outcome at the final General Assembly meeting.

Here are Ben Burton, Bernard Blackham and David Greenaway sitting at the GA meeting awaiting the decision on the 2013 hosting. We were successful, as it turned out we were the only applicants. Russia apparently had not been given a green light from their government in time.

This is the Roman Theatre, before the start of the Closing Ceremony.

The Australians after the Closing Ceremony, from left David Greenaway, Daniel Berger, Ben Burton, Kenneth Wong, Evgeny Martynov, David Tian and Bernard Blackham. We had not expected that this team could repeat performances of the last three years, as all were new, but they did get a rather honest result with Bronze Medals to Evgeny, Kenneth and Daniel.

IOI 2010 Waterloo

The Waterloo IOI was held virtually entirely on a University campus, and Canada being a similar country to Australia, we viewed this as being a prototype for the one we would host in 2013. It was also run on a modest budget, similar to ours.

Probably the highlight was not so much the academic side, but the rare opportunity for many to visit Niagara. This was managed very well, with the large number of people handled in such a way as to keep everyone moving well all day. Here are Bernard Blackham, Christopher Chen, Ben Burton and I on the boat cruise.

This was still a relatively inexperienced team, although Evgeny Martynov and Kenneth Wong had been to Bulgaria and won Bronze Medals there. In the end we won two Bronze medals, with Evgeny and Luke Harrison displaying them after the Closing Ceremony.

IOI 2011 Pattaya

This was a high budget IOI, held at the coastal town of Pattaya, south east of Bangkok on the coast.

The site was a compact location with excellent hotels and exam facilities all adjacent. It was a luxurious complex which has been used by the Thai Government for high level intergovernment meetings.

The team arrives for the Opening ceremony. From left Eliot Courtney, Evgeny Martynov, Robert Newey and Michael Chen.

Australian leaders on excursion with the Royal Palace in the background. From left Bernard Blackham, Peter Taylor, Ben Burton, Jarrah Lacko and Christopher Chen.

By 2009 organisers had provided live feeds of scores during exams and by now this had become more sophisticated. Following the Australian team just a few minutes before the end Australia was sitting on just the three Bronze Medals, but in the last five minutes Evgeny made a submission to grab Silver to top his previous two Bronzes while Michael Chen submitted to gain a Bronze. Eliot Courtney and Robert Newey also won Bronze Medals. Here is the whole Australian party after the Closing Ceremony, from left Ben Burton, Evgeny Martynov, Jarrah Lacko, Michael Chen, Peter Taylor, Eliot Courtney, Robert Newey, Christopher Chen and Bernard Blackham.

Michael was only in Year 8 and as such he had a future ahead of him where he could end with 5 IOI medals.

IOI 2012 Lake Garda

Lake Garda is the biggest lake in Italy, mid way approximately between Milan and Venice. There were basically two venues, about half an hour apart. Accommodation was at a holiday village at Sirmione, at the foot of the lake, while exams, the Opening Ceremony and some meetings were at a large convention centre at Montichiari. The exam room was very large and well equipped.

Our team arrived early in Milan, where they made their time adjustment. They are shown above in the hotel making some preparations. From left are Nicholas Laver, Joshua Lau, Daniel Goldbach, Michael Chen, Jarrah Lacko, Christopher Chen and Luke Harrison. Luke had composed one of the IOI problems, and as such had been invited as an adviser on this question. The same had applied with Christopher Chen in Waterloo two years before.

The team won a Silver (Joshua) and two Bronzes (Michael for a second and Daniel). The Closing Ceremony saw the passing of the flag to me as Chair of IOI 2013. At left is the new IOI President Richard Forster and to my left is Giuseppe Colosio, Chair of IOI 2012.

Committee Issues

The committee has faced a number of issues, some unique to informatics as a discipline, others maybe cultural. These include the ones discussed below.

The name Informatics

I first became aware of issues re the word Informatics in 1974 when the CCAE decided to merge the disciplines computing, mathematics and statistics into one school of their own. One of the proposed names was School of Informatics, which drew most of its criticism from the computing staff, which had most weight of numbers. They argued, correctly, that informatics had computing connotations which is not what they do. The largest discipline among them anyway was Systems Analysis, and the programming concentrated on COBOL for business, which is what the government, the major employer wanted. There was also a smaller hardware discipline and in fact they did no informatics. The school did adopt the name School of Information Sciences, which may sound similar but is different, but I became always aware anyway that the term informatics was not used in Australia anyway, even though it was strong elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe and Asia.

When the interim committee met in 1998 they discussed this point but decided we needed to be consistent with the name informatics everywhere, because this was the name in the international Olympiad.

In the last few years there have been some members of the committee wanting to change the name of the AIO to Australian Computing Competition, and there is a very popular similar competition in the US, en route to IOI, although no formal paper was ever presented for debate to proceed.

My feeling is the name should not be changed again. Maybe my main argument is that it would be difficult to market if that one event featured a different name. One could not change the name of the AIC as it is definitely not computing, and the later events are international where the name is fixed.

But the name is increasingly accepted in Australia and we should stick with it. The CSIRO now uses the name Informatics in its relevant Division's name, and I also discussed this issue often in negotiation with government and all advice I had from Ministerial advisors was that they implicitly understood the name Informatics and their advice was it was the name which should be used.

Selection method

I can only remember one occasion when a student returning from the previous IMO did not get selected in the team the following year. This was justified on merit, although I am a little surprised it did not happen more often.

However there have been a number of notable cases when either this has happened in Informatics or in fact a student generally recognised as good enough did not get selected. This seems to be because of strict reliance on two or three exams, held only at the selection school. Bernard Blackham did not get selected in any team although he was known to be good at the time and has since then more than convincingly proved this in hindsight. Bernard was unlucky because in the year when he had his best chance the exam did not discriminate sufficiently, and a lot of students achieved similar scores.

David Greenaway won a Bronze Medal in Year 10 but was not selected in Year 11. He returned to the team in Year 12 and won Australia's first Silver Medal. Jarrah Lacko won a Silver Medal in Mexico in 2006, was not selected in 2007. However he returned to the team in 2008 and won another Silver Medal. Arguably both would have won medals as Year 11 students, and the students selected instead did not win medals instead.

This is a problem the committee is well aware of and is looking at. Students in Mathematics and Informatics will perform sometimes quite differently from day to day, depending on factors such as whether the questions suit them. Mathematics uses more exams and probably allows itself more flexibility. I think the solution with Informatics is to look at other exams such as the AIIO (Australian Invitational Informatics Olympiad), FARIO (French Australian Regional Informatics Olympiad) and APIO (Asia Pacific Informatics Olympiad) over which more consistent patterns will develop.

Education issues, Informatics teaching in schools

Whereas some Australian States have an official Year 12 syllabus for what we would call Informatics, it is hardly taken up anywhere. There are just a few instances where a keen teacher competent in Informatics has been able to take advantage of the situation. There are a number of reasons why there is such a small take-up. The main reason is probably that few teachers are qualified to teach it, and this is likely to be the case for a long time.

Another reason presumably is that Departments of Computer Science have been quite happy to teach programming themselves in ways which they wish to do without students having got accustomed to bad habits at school (just as maths students acquire bad habits with Calculus). Another is that the traditional sciences are too established to allow a newcomer.

Despite this the members of the Informatics Committee find this to be a vexatious issue. Just like gender equality arguments (there are many talented women, just like men, and we should allow its full exploitation on an equal basis) there are many students with high ability to program computers, specifically more so than in their other disciplines, and they should be free to exploit their talent. If Australia is to maximally develop, it should be exploiting young talent to drive computers, rather than the current trend to get more computers for students to use programs already written.

Other countries are doing this. When the IOI was held in Thailand in 2011 we heard explicit speeches by government officials saying Informatics was becoming a compulsory subject not only in secondary schools, but also in primary schools. I would be surprised if it was taken as far as this sounds, but the intention is worthy.

How to bridge the gap from AIC to programming in the AIO

Another, related issue, becomes how AIOC can by itself overcome this problem by training students themselves, in particular enabling more students to graduate from a high score in the AIC to being able to participate in the AIO in the following year. I have spoken to some high scorers in the AIC who say they are so busy they can't get further involved, but obviously there are a lot there.

I believe the most important way of solving this problem is to have our own trainers at least in each of the main cities, and I believe AIOC has followed this path as well as possible so far by the establishment of State Directors. Obviously there will be differences between States, and this development is in its infancy, but I believe they are on the right track. I don't believe it is a solution to hold the AIC early, just to allow the extra time. Students who want to learn programming will do so anyway, and holding the AIC earlier then May, which is the earliest competitions run, will risk loss of entries there.

Most new initiatives of the AMT will probably be as partnerships, and in this case there is already good material on the web from the National Computing Summer School, based at the University of Sydney, and there is excellent cooperation as I see it between the two organisations in using this together.