I've been up in Providence RI since this past Wednesday for SIGCSE2022. The big Computer Science Educators conference. Also, my first in person conference since pre-covid.

I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this big in person gathering but as it's turned out, it's been pretty comfortable.

So far, I've attended two terrific keynotes. One by Barbara Liskov and the other Barbara Ericson, some really interesting sessions and some less interesting ones and have had a great time discussing CS education.

The big highlight has been seeing friends in person and being able to talk. Sitting down for coffee with a friend or having a rount table discussion around a well, round table.

One of those friends I was delighted to see was Alfred Thompson. Alfred's already sumarized his first and second day experiences so there's not reason for me to write much the same so I figured I'd just quickly list out a few of my highlights and in particular things I plan to write more about when I get back to NYC.

• Language choice for APCS. There was a panel that considered why change to Python or why stick with Java. I didn't attend this session but talked at length about it with a number of people. It had me reconsidering my opinions and I'll certainly write about this in the near future.
• I saw an interesting talk by Sam Lau in which he discussed how statisticians and computer scientists differed in their views as to how and what should be taught in a data science course. This got me thinking about developing CS offerings at the high school level.
• I attended the "It seemed like a good idea at the time" session for the first time where teachers discussed their failures. This was a great session hosted by two more friends I haven't seen since pre-covid - Dan Garcia and Jim Huggins. One topic brought up there was dealing with late assignments as well as alternative grading. This too is something I plan to write about.
• PD For CS Teachers and teacher prep programs. This is clearly something I care deeply about and there were some sessions on this.
• I also spent a good amount of time catching up with my friends Jim and Robin from Siena College. They're doing some cool thing up there so that's another thing I'd like to write about.
• I also had some good discussions with vendors in the exhibit hall as well as some great hallway tract talks.
• My thoughts on the hybrid format of this conference

That's a big list - a lot of things to write about. I hope to get on this when I get back to NYC on Sunday.

In the meantime, if you're in providence for tomorrow's last day of SIGCSE, please find me and say hello!!!!