I never had a chance to explore Cleveland before. I was actually in the city once before, for a junior national fencing competition but never saw anything other than the competition venue and the hotel.

This time, I didn't have much more of an opportunity. Normally, I like heading to a conference a day or two early or stay a day or two later to check out the town but this time, schedules didn't allow it. I drove in the day before the conference and had to leave before the conference ended. That basically gave me Tuesday morning - a half day to explore.

Started the morning with a run by lake Erie.

Afterwards, Devorah and I got breakfast at a local diner and then wandered the city, or at least the downtown. We used Adventurelab as a guide. Adventurelab is an offshoot of Geocaching where people hide little boxes all around the world. People find them using a GPS, or now the app and discover cool places and things. Adventurelab is essentially the same thing without the little boxes. People write up the experiences to share local treasures with visitors.

This took us past the Erie Street Cemetery - Cleveland's oldest existing cemetery, The Hermit Club - "the nation's oldest private club devoted to the preforming arts," the Old Stone Church, and other local treasures. Along the way we also passed a great Lebanses bakery, Clevo Books - a bookstore that specializes in foreign books translated into English, and other local treasures like the Arcade:

On the way to the Old Stone Church, w passed the Soldiers' and Sailor's Monument - a civil war monument. Outside, we started talking to a volunteer who was doing some gardening. He gave us a rundown on the monument and it's history as well as some other local history including showing us where Charles F. Brush lived, an inventor who worked on the arc lamp.

We got to talking architecture a bit and mentioned that we had walked past the Cleveland Bankers Trust Building. He asked if we had gone inside, now a supermarket. We hadn't but later in the day we did. Magnificent.

All in all a pretty cool whirlwind tour. That plus the CSTA's reception at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame let me leave feeling that I got a reasonable taste of Cleveland.

Now, on to the good and bad from the conference and my suggestions for the future.

First off, great overall conference. I personally would have liked to see more sessions with more advanced HS content but I also understand that the majority of conference goers don't really need that.

I'm going to mostly talk about a couple of negative points here and a couple of small positives since pretty much all the posts up until now have been glowing. Just remember as you read on - it was a great conference and just because this post highlights one or two things I didn't think were terrific, it was still a great conference and I'm 100% going to be back next year.

I liked how they mixed in regional meetups in the schedule, making it easier for people to get together although I also appreciate the New York meetup after the conference which also facilitated that but with the chapter picking up the tab for drinks and snacks :-) .

One really simple thing I'd suggest is to sell additional tickets to the opening reception. I know this doesnt' affect a lot of people but it also should be pretty easy. My wife usually comes with me to conferences and I know a handful of other people who also bring their partners. Our partners play tourist by day but they also know some of the other conference attendees. TL;DR. they'd like to attend that opening reception but there' no mechanism to do so. To be honest, we're probably talking about so few people that the door police could probably just look the other way but why not just charge whatever the cost is for these few extra people.

They do have +1 tickets available for the "after hours" but those were expensive. I'm not complaining. Last year, in Las Vegas, a +1 ticket was either $125 or $150 which seemed like a lot and pool parties aren't my thing. I was told by someone on the inside though, that the cost was what the venue wanted so I'm not complaining about the CSTA here.

This time, I opted to go to the event since I wanted to check out the R&R Hall of Fame but Devorah opted not to since a regular day ticket was only $40 vs the $125 for the +1 ticket.

My other big suggestion has to do with the keynotes and the Impact (nee equity) fellows.

This year, I found all the keynotes lacking, mostly because they were all really short and this was exacerbated by having pseudo panels. Losing a good chunk of the keynote slot to one or more impact fellows didn't do it for me. The keynotes are supposed to be special - but idea inspirational talks and this year they were mostly teasers for later sessions. Loosing that chunk of time makes a difference.

I'll also say that the Impact Fellows talks really didn't do anything for me. Some of their stories were more compelling than others but we were in a room of hundreds of teachers and my guess is the story or the message from one of the Impact fellows isn't any more or less powerful or relevant than anyone else in the room.

I guess, and I'm sure this isn't a popular opinion, that I don't get the Impact fellow thing. Sure, it's a nice reward to a small handful of CS teachers but I'm not seeing the impact. I can't look over the bios and statements of all the fellows since the CSTA website seems to be having issues but I've read their articles as they've come out and seen the bios. Some have come in having been real leaders with real experience while others are still wet behind the ears. The value of the content I've seen is also mixed. Some great and some not so great but in any event, I'm not seeing a lot special, or rather I see as much or more value from everyday CS teachers who aren't fellows on the interwebs. Actually, back when blogging was more popular I'd say that there was more good content being shared and discussed by the community at large although the community was admittedly smaller.

So anyway, I'm not seeing it. Great reward but to me it takes away from all the other teachers who aren't Impact fellows who are doing the same or more. In any event, if you want to highlight the Impact scholars, make an impact scholars session where they can share their stories and leave the keynote slots to the keynote speakers.

Just my opinion.

Another small thing that I liked was that email beforehand telling us that coffee/tea/pastries would or wouldn't be available in the morning before the start of the first session. This is a small thing but it's a nice touch. Before I weened myself off caffeine, I needed my cup of coffee in the morning and hated it when I spent far too much for overpriced hotel or convention center coffee only to find it there available at the conference. On the other hand, knowing it was there was a really nice touch.

So, that was CSTA2025. I got a couple of other side blog post ideas from the conference so maybe I'll write those up, probably after we get back from our trip to Italy which we're embarking on soon.

If you were at CSTA2025 I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and if you weren't I hope you get a chance to go next year in New Orleans.