The execution of this competition has as its main objective to disclose the Programming Marathon among the students of the region and motivate the local students to take part on the trainings. The ACM-SBC Programming Marathon is a national event traditional at the field of Computer Science and annually occurs since 1996. In this events, teams of three undergraduate students compete, having 5 hours to solve the biggest number of the proposed problems. Standardly, the Mini Programming Marathon happens in the second Friday of May, inside the Week of Computing and Technology (SeCoT) of the Campus Sorocaba.

Our expectation, is that the training focused on the competition may provide motivation and context so that keen students develop important professional abilities not usually exercised in the undergraduate course. For an effective training development, study groups will be formed to resolute and discuss programming challenges similar to the ones proposed in the marathon. In the recurrent meetings, several algorithms and basic data structures will be revised and advanced concepts will be presented, motivated by the problems previously studied. It is also mandatory to practice the problem solving concerning the competition’s context, that is to say, with limited time and on teams. One or more simulated competitions will be proposed in periods closer to the competitions. The competition takes place into two stages, the first, regional, historically occurs in the second fortnight of September, whilst the second stage, national, historically occurs in the end of October. Consequently, the training activities will be centered around the periods of May to October.