Yesterday, some of the seniors from the 301 crowd along with a few teachers had an end of year dinner at Joe's Shanghai. While it's Famous for its soup dumplings: I'm partial to the braised pork shoulder: We haven't had a 301 dinner in a long time, but I remember the crew, first unnamed, then using the moniker "the Z-team" used to go their all them time. It was always Joe's Shanghai, followed by a trip to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory: and then the obligatory photo in front of the Mei Dick Barbershop at 37 Mott St (now gone): The 301 crew, or Z-team as it's some times been called are the students that spend their time in the CS room at Stuy.

One of the things I love about StuyCS is that we've built a true Geek culture. Last week, we had a last minute visitor - Stephen Wolfram. Well known for Mathematica and more importantly, Wolfram Alpha, without which our students wouldn't be able to complete all their homework. The only problem was that we had about 24 hours from when the visit was confirmed til the talk was to take place.

I think my one regret over the years is that I haven’t done much travel. So, when I had the opportunity to go to the 2014 Tapia conference, I jumped at the chance. I didn’t get to see too much of Seattle, but that’s OK. Now I’ve more incentive to go back. In addition to seeing new sites, it also gave me an opportunity to see friends that I don’t get to see too often.

Today was Halloween. This year we were the crew of the Enterprise. The original series, that is. Overall, the school had a much more subdued spirit than past years but it was fun. Certainly more fun for me than the past couple of years. For those of you that don't know - I have a long history of going all out for Halloween. Starting in October 1994 as Groo the Wanderer: To Bob Ross: To many more.

For those of that don’t know, the New York Tech Meetup it’s one of the things that help make the New York Tech Scene so awesome. It’s a group of some 30k+ members and once a month, at Skriball Center at NYU they hold a meetup. It’s really quite an event. Members of the tech community demo their projects, there’s question and answer time, and afterwards theres a gathering for schmoozing amongst the crowd and the presenters.

This past year, I was able to convince my administration to allow me to create a new course - Software Development. I really felt there was something missing in our kids CS preparation - missing both from Stuy’s program and from many youngsters college experiences. I plan to do a few posts on the course, it’s design, implementation, and lessons learned, but for today, let’s look at the years culminating event:

Inspired by the likes of Jon Simantov and David Lerner as well as the greater Stuy CS family, a few of us have been working on CSTUY, Computer Science and Technology for Urban Youth. Yeah, we backed into the acronym. Let's bring Stuy CS out of Stuy so we can work on inspiring a wider range of students. Well, last Wednesday we had our inaugural event. Hosted by NY TechStars (thanks Moisey), we invited 75 youngsters to an evening of talks.

A little over a year ago, I decided it was time to reach out to my alums, a group I refer to as the “Stuy CS family” and try to get us together. The most rewarding part of my job involves the relationships I’ve developed over the years but is was always between me and my alums and them to their classmates. This was an attempt to start building a network that spanned the years.

The day before Thanksgiving is always fun. For as long as I can remember, recent graduates descend upon Stuy. For the most part, they mull around the senior bar but we get our share up in 301. This year was a little quiet but I got to see more than my share of graduates over the weekend as I attended the 2002 and 2007 class reunions. I’ve only been invited to a handful of reunions and really consider it an honor when I am.

On going back to work today Since school was still out due to Sandy, we ran a second online class yesterday. At the end of the session, which I’ll summarize below, I told the class what I wanted them to accomplish today and over the weekend. One student queried “you mean no class on Friday :-(?” Alas no – while students aren’t reporting to school this morning, teachers are. Of course the logic as to why is far from sound.