Finally the SIGCSE 2009 conference is coming. For those who do not know SIGCSE, it's the most prestigious conference all over the world focusing on Computer Science education. It's sponsed by ACM and companies such as Microsoft, Google and Sun. The attendees are mostly professors coming from all over the world to Chattanooga TN for this 5-day event.
The weather in New England is so unpredictable. Originally I planned to go on March 2 from Manchester NH to Chattanooga TN for the SIGCSE conference. But on March 2 we had a huge storm in the New England area. Even when we were still having the storm, on the Manchester airport's website, it still showed my flight "on time", so we had to drive to Manchester for almost one hour in the storm. When we arrived at the airport, I was told that the flight after the connection in DC was cancelled. The airline rescheduled my flight to Manchester -> Philadelphia -> Charlotte -> Chattanooga. But at that time Philadelphia was having a Ground Stop. No planes were allowed to stop there. The flight attendants were not sure if the flight was cancelled or just delayed, so everyone were stuck at the airport. After 8 hours' wait and feeling dehydrated, I finally decided to go the next day.
The next day, which is March 3, I finally went on a flight to Chattanooga TN for the SIGCSE 2009. Chattanooga was colder than I thought, but it's surely a nice city. The hotel I'm staying is called Chattanooga Choo-Choo, belonged to Holiday Inn. Chattanooga Choo-Choo is one of the historic hotels of America.
Quoted from
historichotels.org:
From 1909 to 1970, all trains to points south passed through Chattanooga’s famous terminal, which was designed by a 24-year-old architectural student from New York. The terminal’s first plans were modified at the behest of the president of the Southern Railway System to emulate the National Park Bank of New York. Unable to compete with faster modes of travel, trains stopped running in 1970; but the terminal was saved from demolition in 1973 by a group of local investors. The1909 station, with its magnificent 85-foot free-standing dome, is thefocal point of this 24-acre historical property that features exceptional accommodations, spirited dining venues, family fun, and, of course, the finest in Southern hospitality.
This year is the 100 year of Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
View from my room:
Although the conference starts on Thursday Mar. 5, they already have workshops and pre-symposium activities on Tuesday and Wednesday at the convention center. On Wednesday, I attended the session From Java to C# - How, What and Why hosted by Microsoft. C# is still my most favorite programming language. It doesn't have so many bugs as Java, and it is so easy and enjoyable to use. This half-day pre-conference workshop is intended for Java faculty interested in learning more about the .NET platform, C#, and Visual Studio 2008. The preconference is being delivered by Joe Hummel, PhD, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Lake Forest College. Joe has been teaching Microsoft technologies, both academically and professionally, since 1992 and the days of VB3. Joe has created and presented summer workshops on .NET since 2002, and he is the author of LINQ: The Future of Data Access in C# 3.0.
(the convention center)
As part of my volunteer work, I helped out SIGCSE to stuff packets for each attendees on Wednesday. There were numerous people attending this conference. These packets will be handed to the attendees on Thursday at the registration booth.
Some pictures taken at the convention center:
In late afternoon, after I left convention center to go back to my hotel, I chose to walk instead of taking the free shuttle in order to explore downtown Chattanooga.
The shuttles in Chattanooga are completely free, and they are electric, which means that they have zero emissions. You could take any shuttle to go around downtown Chattanooga. These shuttles are also equipped with free Internet access.
Some pictures of downtown Chattanooga:
For more photos, go ahead and check out
my picasa album.
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