"The challenge you have always been dreaming of!" is how the marathon programming challenge is advertised. It is organized each spring by the Electrical Engineering Students' Hungarian Association (MAVE) at the Budapest Technical University (BME). The thirty teams who performed best in the qualifying round will take part in the finals, where they will have a single but very complex task to complete within 24 hours. The task is set by PhD students of the IT department of BME, so the contestants can expect the same kind of interesting and challenging task as in previous years. To solve the problem, participants will need to be able to demonstrate good team work, quick and precise program coding skills and a wide range of IT knowledge.

In keeping with tradition, the organizers are hoping that this year's contest will also have an international flavour. Last year, programmers from 10 countries - Hungary, USA, Austria, Holland, Poland, Latvia, Romania, Sweden, Serbia and Ukraine - took part in the finals, and most of these countries will probably be represented at this year's re-match in Budapest.

Nav N Go is a diamond grade sponsor of the Contest, with total prize money of 5,000 euros. The Hungarian software development company also sponsored last year's event, and this year every member of the top three teams will each receive a GPS navigation device with iGO My way software.

"Our company is always happy to support the discovery of talented young people, especially programmers, particularly because Nav N Go owe a large part of their international success to such excellent development programmers,” said András Fazakas, Operations Director of Nav N Go. "Year after year, the MAVE Contest offers serious challenges to the three-person teams, among whom, we are pleased to say, Hungarian teams have also played a successful part. We hope that the navigation devices we are offering as prizes will motivate the programmers to take a greater interest in developing navigation software.”