CEOI – What is it?
The first International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) for secondary school students, supported by UNESCO, was organised in 1989. Thirteen countries took part in the first competition, held in Pravetz (near to Sofia), Bulgaria. A year later already 25 countries sent their teams, composed of four students and two team leaders, to Minsk, Belorussian Republic, Soviet Union. In the subsequent years the number of participating countries rose to almost 50: Anavissos (near to Athens), Greece, hosted ca 24 countries in 1991; Bonn, Germany hosted already 46 in 1992; Mendoza, Argentina hosted ca 43 in 1993, and lastly Stockholm, Sweden, hosted 49 in 1994.
Inspired by the fast-growing popularity of the IOI, the Romanian team proposed in 1993 to organise a similar event for the Central European countries (as a matter of fact, they have been organising the Olympiad in Informatics of the Balkan countries since many years). Shortly thereafter, Romania officially invited the teams of Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia to participate in the first Central-European Olympiad in Informatics (CEOI for short). Five of these eight countries Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania sent their teams to Cluj in May 1994 where, upon special invitation, four more teams from Moldavia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Turkey took also part in the contest. CEOI’94 was hosted by the “Tiberiu Popovic” secondary school in informatics, Cluj; the organising committees were headed by Ms Clara Ionescu and Dr Horia Georgescu.