Let's start with the exhibit hall. First things I noticed that while Amazon, Google, and Microsoft were all listed as sponsors, none of them had booths in the exhibition space. This was a big change from past years. I'm not sure what to make of this since all three have either products or programs relevant to K12. Maybe nothing going on here but I think this was worth noting.

So, who was there?

A lot of robotics and physical computing players - Raspberry Pi, Lego, Ozobot, and more. A lot of tables with electronics on them. Since I'm not teaching and not doing anything with hardware, I didn't speak to anyone at these tables.

There were also a lot of organizations. The expexcted host tables for CSTA and also the expected code.org, The College Board, and the other usual suspects. Cleveland State had a booth - that's where I followed up on the session on teacher cert in Cleveland as did the University of Nebraska and Carnegie Mellon. Also SXSW edu, U Teach CS, and a bunch of others.

Another well represented area were online IDE providers. I spent a fair amount of time with my friends at Pickcode and at CodeHS but there were others in the room including Kira Learning, Juicemind and a handful of others that I didn't check out.

With fewer representatives there were still a couple of straight up curriculum providers, autograders, AI related vendors and the like. Interestingly enough, only one, if I'm remembering correctly book vendor. Maybe that's because K12 CS is in some ways not well enough defined to have lots of books sellers pushing products or in the case if the high school offerings - frequently APCSP, APCSA, too well defined with teachers relying on full online offerings and maybe eschewing traditional dead tree resources.

While I probably spent most of my exhibit hall booth time catching up with old friends - specifically at the CMU booth, Pickcode and CodeHS, I also spent some time at the Cleveland State booth and with U Teach CS where I was able to find out a bit more about how things were going on in their respective states in terms of teacher preparation - long story short - while individual organizations and institutions are fighting the good fight, overall I haven't found a state that, in my opinion, is doing it right. No surprise there.

Since I did spend a good amount of time looking at online IDE booths, I guess I should say more.

Now, I've known the CodeHS people for along time and liked them for a long time In the past couple of years, got to know Pickcode and like that very much as well. I also see both as filling important roles. CodeHS has been around longer and is more fleshed out. They provide full curricula and I guess what I'd call end to end tools for HS teachers. That's probably why I never used them personally, okay, the real reason is that hardly ever was in a situation where my classes used an online IDE, but beyond that, what they've built is terrific for new and less experienced teachers but by the time they came to the game, I had my tools, techniques, and experiences worked out. I briefly used repl.it (back when they were cool) for a summer online experience but I liked that because it was bare bones - just the IDE, perfect for me. That said, I've frequently recommended newer teachers check out CodeHS because of everything they provide.

Pickcode on the other hand is newer with a leaner experience. That's my personal preference albeit a subjective one. Makes it easier for a person like me to do my own thing and just use the tool where I want to. While I've been recommending CodeHS to some people for their complete curricula, tutorials and more, I've been recommending Pickcode to others - for people who want a simpler interface and product and a more agile company that's still young enough to be able to tune their product to a single teacher's needs, Think of it like a boutique product in terms of service but not price (this isn't to say that CodeHS isn't responsive but that's just an advantage of a smaller company vs a midsize one). I do want to note that Pickcode also does have learning resources as well as the IDE and a language that's transitional from Scratch to Python but I haven't personally played with that.

I also spent a little time with Juicemind but so far I've found there web site less inviting. On the other hand, my friends at Siena use them for some programs and they wouldn't use them if there wasn't something there.

There was also a booth that I didn't check out that had IDE on the sign but was also touting autograding.

The other player that, while I didn't spend time with them at CSTA, I did at SIGCSE was Kira Learning. That's Andrew Ng's new outfit. They're touting an all in one learning system with AI grader/assistant.

To be honest, I wasn't impressed and I'm saying this as a guy that really loved Andrew Ng's ML class when it first hit the scene. I mean, it seemed fine but nothing special or amazing. Maybe I'm missing something but the most exciting "new" thing I saw from the demo and from playing with it was that it had Andrew Ng's name attached. Seemed like when a Broadway show counts on a big name to sell tickets rather than the show itself and has the big star push the show to even greater heights.

So that was it for vendors for me.

Also big at CSTA was the hallway track. I've always said that CSTA is more of a people conference than a session one.

As I mentioned, I had a chance to spend time with a friend from CMU, the Pickcode team and reconnect with CodeHS and also had a chance to catch up with a number of New York and former NY CS educators throughout the conference (in no small part thanks to Tom O'Connell for organizing the NY Meetup during the conference). I even managed to steal a few minutes with Jake Baskind although I wasn't able to catch up with my code.org friends as well as a few other people who I think were at the conference but never ran into.

I also managed to meet some great new educators, or rather, great educators that were new to me. In some cases they're very experienced. Now, given that I'm your typical socially awkward, introverted tech geek, that says something about the vibe at the conference that even I can end up making new connections :-).

Last up, the two receptions. First one was opening night. I love the way that they've been setting it up in recent years - bringing the food in to the exhibit hall. Let's people mix and mingle and get an early look at all the vendors and suppliers. Food was good and stations were well layed out so that there was never much of a line for either food or drink. Kudos, particularly when thinking back to my first or second CSTA when the reception was, well, let's just say, the less said the better. The CSTA organizing teams have really upped their game in recent years.

The other one was the evening at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I skipped last year's "after hours" event. That was an outdoor pool party during a heat wave in Las Vegas in July. No thanks. Not my scene. I might have gone anyway if +1 tickets were reasonably priced since my wife Devorah was along for the trip. Trouble was that the price for an extra ticket was something like $125 or $150. I don't blame CSTA for this - I was told by someone with inside knowledge that this was the price that the venue set but I decided to pass.

This time, +1 tickets were also expensive ($125) so Devorah went to the hall during one of the days when I was in the conference (ticket price was something like $40) but since I wanted to check it out, I went.

Really fun time. There were around 1300 people registered for the conference but the Hall never seemed overly crowded. Probably because throughout the evening people switched up from hanging and chatting at tables near the food and touring the museum. Spent most of the time with a fellow NY CS educator. Thoroughly enjoyed the museum and the evening overall.

That's it for the actual conference but there's going to be one more post in the series - things I liked and things I think the CSTA should change along with a bit on actually visiting Cleveland.