On the lookout for talent, Google said Tuesday that it is holding its first European code jam.
Registration for the competition, in which programmers compete online to solve programming problems, starts Tuesday and ends
May 23. A May 23 qualification round will whittle the number of participants to 500. Rounds one and two will reduce the number
of competitors to the top 50 who compete in the final round on June 29. Google will send the 50 finalists to Dublin for the
weekend for the competition.
All finalists receive cash prizes with the first winner receiving €2,500 ($3,100). Google will hand out a total of €30,000
to the top 50 contestants.
Competitors must be legal residents of Europe, Africa, or the Middle East.
Google said the competition is a way to reward programmers and also to recruit them for positions at the company. Google has
European engineering centers in Zurich, London, Dublin and Trondheim, Norway.
Rules and details of the competition can be found on the code jam Europe Web site.
Google held its first code jam in 2004 in California. It has also held such competitions in India and China.
The code jam's location doesn't appear to have been relevant historically. In 2005, when the final competition was held at
Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, a Polish university student won the top prize and students from the Netherlands
and Russia came in second and third place respectively. The previous year, a student from Buenos Aires won the contest.