Just to alert you to this year's NZPC, South Pacific ACM and Australian Computer programming contests coming up.

NZPC is on August 22 and registration is now open at: http://www.nzprogcontest.org.nz/Registration/NZContestRegister1Open.php

The ACM is really for tertiary students but there are problems solvable by high school teams and high-school student teams(in NZ) can be non official cometitors.It is on Sept 12 and it doesn't look like registration has quite opened yet but keep an eye on: http://www.sppcontest.org/register.html

Also: For high school students only -  the Australian Computer programming Contest an easier option. My students didn't enjoy it so much but there's no denying its easier than NZPC from a teacher's perspective. It runs any 2 hours in the time frame Aug 17 to Aug 28: http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/deraadt/acc/

Also: For high school students: Entering any of these will bring students to my attention - in the nicest possible way! I will contact them and see if they are interested in coming to summer camp and trying out for the 2010 International Olympiad in Informatics.

The 2009 team leaves in about 10 days for the 2009 event in Bulgaria - visit http://www.ioi2009.org/

Also the University of Auckland hosts a competition. Details are here.