Community Fitness Event Participation Form: Fill & Download for Free

You should look for at least three kinds of events:[1] Local/regional groups of PMs with ongoing meetings or sessions. Here in the Bay Area, the largest is Silicon Valley Product Management Association, http://svpma.org/ . It has a monthly speaker-plus-social event and quarterly workshops. [Full disclosure: I'm on SVPMA's volunteer board.] There are similar groups elsewhere with varying levels of participation, see a great list at http://onproductmanagement.net/associations/ . Encourage you to find folks near you (or form one of your own)...[2] Product Camps tend to be bigger, less frequent, and more concentrated - with many parallel tracks compressed into a single day. Since the first PCamp here in Silicon Valley, there have been 30+ worldwide. See http://productcamp.org/ IMHO, these are not-to-be-missed opportunities to learn, share, and see how big the PM community really is. [Full disclosure: I organized the first SV camps.] These are all-volunteer events, so you and 5 friends could throw one if no one else has.[3] Some of the best PM thinking/sharing/community happens online, with dozens of cool blogs and webinar series. PM folks will want to recommend their favs, I'm sure... since we're all in motion or tied to our dev teams, virtual seems to fit our interaction model. Read, comment, tweet, and throw some sharp elbows.

It’s a long story, let me try to explain.I have been participating in the ACM ICPC tier contests in our region since 2012, my latest participation was in 2017.I consider myself lucky to have participated in what I think the most appropriately organized Arab regional contest (ACPC for short), it was in Jordan late 2012. To understand why I think so, let’s take a look into what normally happens in other regions.We have a group of contestants, passionate about competitive programming, preparing perhaps all year in their school so that at contest time they go to some venue, in this case it’s usually a school lab, school gym or even any school hall, any open space in school, that would fit a desk per team. School is usually close, so students can go to the contest just as how they go to school everyday, sometimes they stay in a dorm or any cheap housing, and in case students from different cities participate against each other, sometimes multiple sites are organized in parallel. Students get to pay a fee, it usually covers material, food or any other thing that school can’t provide.How did ACPC 2012 go?Venue: A school hall, Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) in Jordan.Accommodation: Hotel is offered at a reduced price, still optional though.Fee: $200 per team + hotel fees if enrolled in housing.Students fly from different countries to participate (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine …etc), it’s always a single site.PSUT provides machines, venues, workers to help contest organizers and a theatre for ceremonies.Starting 2013, things got fishy.Venue: International Congress Center - Maritim Jolie Ville, Sharm Elsheikh, Egypt. A venue that holds international presidential-scale events and conferences.Accommodation: Maritim Jolie Ville (yes, the resort containing the congress center above), and it’s NOT optional. A five-star resort in Egypt’s finest touristic city.Fee: $250 per contestant, coaches don’t pay (i.e. $750 per team) for both contest and accommodation (inseparable) - Funny part, as a support for self-funded teams, the exchange rate for school-funded teams: 7 Egyptian Pounds (EGP) per 1 USD, rate for self-funded teams: 6 EGP per 1 USDOrganizing the contest out of any school, and having it in a fancy place with almost no sponsors, with increased fees irritated me as one of those who don’t get supported by school. I wrote a Facebook post (translation following) for discussion and the contest director just kicked me out of the hotel, only returned after intervention from my coach.تعالى نتكلم عن مسابقة ال ACM ICPC, هي مسابقة الغرض منها تنافس مجموعة من الناس لحل شوية مسائل باستخدام الخوارزميات و هياكل البيانات. مفيش أي حاجة من اللي اتقالت تلزم إقامة المتسابقين في فندق 5 نجوم في مدينة سياحية. لو جه واحد عرض إن الناس تقعد في مكان أحسن على حساب شركته, يبقى ماشي, لكن ليه تحمل الناس حاجة ملهاش لازمة؟Let’s talk about the ACM ICPC, it’s a contest in which the goal for contestants is to solve some problems using algorithms and data structures. None of which require the contestants to stay in a 5-star hotel in a touristic city. If someone offered to sponsor contestants to stay at a better place then it’s fine, otherwise why would you unnecessarily add more fees for people to afford?Mohamed Fouadجميل ياعصام فريقك حيدفع ٢٠٠ دولار اشتراك والاقامه والانتقال والاكل دبروا حالكم مع نفسكم انا غلطانCool, Essam your team can pay $200 USD of fees, but you would have to accommodate your stay, transportation and food on your own.علي فكره انا مش بهزر وده قرار الحقوا احجزوا في فندقBTW I’m not kidding, I made the decision, find yourself a hotel.To be honest, the organization level was decent, good venue, touristic scenes, good food and above all you have the contest atmosphere, it made a lot of people just ignore anything the moment they paid the fees and just had time to enjoy the 5-day event.Year after another, things have only gone worse, venue has remained the same, prices kept going up.2013: $350 per participant (contestant or coach), 2800 EGP per contestant.2014: $1500 per team, 12K EGP per team.2015: $1500 per team, 12K EGP per team.2016: $1500 per team - CRISIS: Egypt enforces currency float, USD jumps to 18 EGP - it’s near 27K EGP per team!! (to compare, average salary of a Software Engineer in my city by that time was 6K EGP per month, each member has to work 6 weeks full time to make up the registration fees)2017: $1500 per official team, $3000 per unofficial team, it’s near 27K EGP per official team, 54K EGP per unofficial team.2018: $500 per participant to stay in a triple room, $650 per participant in a double room, $1000 per participant in a single room, and I literally couldn’t keep reading to the unofficial team prices.You may be asking, aren’t you all Arab guys super rich? well it’s only some of us, and for Egypt, according to the IMF, Egypt’s GDP per capita is around annual $2800, $200 less than the fees for an unofficial team in 2017.So, why are those guys unstoppable? to keep it short, it’s monopoly, and it’s done right.Let’s ignore what happens on the contest floor for a second, and focus on the organization. the contest directors - who are also teaching staff in the Arab Academy for Science and Technology in Egypt (AAST for short) - knew how to (a) build a superior image for the contest in each contestant’s mind, and they knew how to (b) organize the contest:a) They have a media team whose responsibility is to promote the contest, they have social media accounts ran professionally, from time to time they would hold an interview or share a quote by any of the previous winners to share how successful they became in their career and how they landed a great job in a big company like Facebook or Google thanks to the contest. They have built a direct implication in followers’ minds between winning the contest and a successful career in a big company. They managed to increase number of participants, which makes winning the ACPC more of a glory.b) Among the invitees would be the city governor, a couple of ministers, reporters from the press, TV presenters, and even the ICPC directors themselves. They use the big name of the AAST and the ICPC to market the event, and year after another they stack up their PR success with more and more appearances.To keep the monopoly going, the current contest directors hold a close grip on the contest organization, any proposal from any other university to organize the regional or the Egyptian contest gets rejected.I gathered a team in 2014 to propose a plan to organize the Egyptian contest, it got rejected, then in 2015 the American University in Cairo (AUC) got rejected, and finally in 2016 German University in Cairo (GUC) also got rejected.So, there’s no way to participate in organizing the contest except under their umbrella.In 2016, I was coaching my school teams, and one of the 4 teams qualified to the ACPC skipped me and sent an email to the ICPC complaining about the high fees. The ICPC directors forwarded the email to the ACPC director as a FYI - which shows an unexplained negative attitude from the ICPC directors -, the ACPC director later disqualified the team, and I had to work hard to both return the team to the contest and also work on a funding plan that would have the contestants pay as small as possible and focus on practicing instead of focusing on raising funds.Creating such a bubble around the ACPC was followed by other businesses emerging around it, problem solving trainers started organizing training camps for beginners, promising their attendees to preform well in contests to reach ACPC and do better in interviews. Such camps and programs have almost never proved to be producing any good candidates, they only charge insane amount of money to what appears to be low quality training. Those guys would then sponsor the ACPC and help promote its reputation to keep the business running. They would also promote themselves as well, which lead to school students abandoning their free long-term school training for an short-expensive-yet-fancy training.To make things worse, actually very few people complain: those who can’t afford. Most of the teams get funded by their schools, all they need is to forward an email to some professor. Others would end up on gofundme campaigns to raise the money. To make it even worse, some teams from outside of Egypt actually ask for the contest to be in Sharm Elsheikh so they can enjoy the touristic city!It would have been acceptable if this ridiculous amount of money gets back to the ICPC community in the region in the form of training camps or providing resources to speed up contestants’ progress or basically be paid in any attempt to improve the region’s actual performance in the ICPC - which is far behind other regions. But instead it gets paid in fancy hotels and bills nobody gets to know how big they are or if there’s actually profit being made out of it.So to summarize what’s going on:The ACPC is the only way to the ICPC, people would practice all year to participate.The contest directors monopolize the organization.The contest directors keep the contest in a great image in front of both the beginner students and the country’s officials.The ACPC directors and ICPC directors look to be in great terms, and the ICPC directors don’t show any will to intervene.New businesses have emerged based on the ACPC, and they would support current organization, to keep the money flowing in.I only feel pity for those who simply wanted to compete in something they are passionate about, only to find themselves having to deal with tons of issues on the side, with no single support from school, and with a lot of pressure everywhere and a polluted contest environment.Oh, and thanks for the A2A!

CrossFit is one of the newest trends in the fitness industry. What separates CrossFit from other training methods is their community centered nature. People workout in groups rather than alone. That itself would be a boost to many people and might help people to be consistent and show up at the gym.You often hear about people talking about CrossFit, telling they see great results after taking it up. You see these CrossFit boxes (that’s what they call their gyms) popping up everywhere. They still haven’t made their way anywhere near where I live (Kerala, India). For the same reason, I’ve never been able to practice CrossFit. However, this is my basic understanding of CrossFit:It’s like doing cardio; but with weight training!Sounds really fun right? But that’s the case only on paper. CrossFit is extreme and it often results in injuries. However, this has nothing to do with the program and almost everything to do with the way the program is followed. In most cases its due to the higher number of reps involved in training. The sheer volume of training itself is overwhelming. Have a look at this ‘beginner level’ routine - 5 Beginner-Friendly CrossFit WorkoutsAnother factor was that CrossFit gained popularity so fast that a lot of boxes have trainers who really don’t have a clue what they are teaching or doing. I remember reading about Bart Loews’s experience at a CrossFit box where the trainer told him to not worry about the form and just do it fast. I think was doing ‘toes to the bar’ workout then.Now, this doesn’t mean everyone who takes up CrossFit is just trying to show off or doesn’t have an idea what they are doing. There are serious CrossFit athletes and some of them are really bad ass. These guys are simply the best at what they do and are often at the pinnacle of their fitness levels.Pictured above is Mathew Fraser; the 2016 CrossFit games champion. Believe me, the competition is extremely hard. From 2016 CrossFit Games - WikipediaEvent 1 was a seven kilometer run was based around a similar event in the 2009 CrossFit Games. Mat Fraser and Samantha Briggs were the winners of this event.[7]The second event was a deadlift ladder where the competitors had to lift in reverse order of finish in the previous event. The start of Event 2 had the last place finisher start the event first, ten minutes after completing the run. The men's weight started at 425 pounds and ended at 615 pounds while the women's weight started at 275 pounds and ended at 415 pounds.Remember, that’s just the first two events, there were about 15 events spanning across 5 days; all tougher than the its predecessor. Here is another picture of Mat in action:I would also want to mention WWE star Seth Rollins, being a long term fan of the sport. He is one of the best wrestlers on the planet at the moment and is a big time fan of CrossFit. Like I said, one of the best at this grueling training method. CrossFit is not intended for everybody.CrossFit's Injury Rates Revealed is a worthy read for people who are interested in knowing about the ill-effects of practicing CrossFit unless your trainer actually knows what they are doing. To quote:In a recent study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, researchers surveyed 132 CrossFit athletes. They found that "97 (73.5%) participants had sustained an injury that had prevented them from working, training or competing." Of these injuries, nine required surgery.This amounts to an injury rate of 3.1 per 1,000 hours, which is similar to sports such as Olympic weightlifting, power lifting and gymnastics, but less than contact sports like rugby. What may come as a surprise: it matches the injury rate for general fitness workouts.Diving deeper into the data, the researchers found that shoulder injuries accounted for nearly 25 percent of reported injuries. This exceeds the injury rate of competitive Olympic weight lifting, where athletes move hundreds of pounds over their head.Though those numbers may seem high, do note that it is on par with any other physical activity. However, this does not mean CrossFit is either safe or hazardous. Just like any other training regime, CrossFit comes with its own risks and those risks manifest themselves when you are not paying attention to your form or yourself. If you think that CrossFit is a bad idea or that the probability of injuring yourself is too much, do read the above article.