Re-Visiting Chattanooga

Sue and I spent last Thursday and Friday re-visiting Chattanooga. We had last been there in December 2006, when we selected Chattanooga as our site for SIGCSE 2009. It was time to go back, meet our contacts, and start making lower-level plans for SIGCSE 2009.

We had a great visit. The weather was picture-perfect. We took walks around the city, to enjoy the city and to time the walking commute between hotels, the Conference Center, and the Aquarium. We met a Southern Belle telling us about riverboat trips available on the Tennessee River, pictured here with Sue.

On Friday, we visited potential caterers for the reception. What an interesting experience! At first, we couldn't understand why the visitor's bureau put long, two hour gaps in our schedule between visiting caterers. Then we realized: taste testing! Each caterer wooed us with tastes of wonderful food that might be served at the reception, and even napkins already monogrammed just for us. Even if you only "taste" each of the wonderful goodies, how many small meals can one eat in one day?!? We needed those hours between to simply digest all those goodies.

You can expect more blogs with pictures over the next few weeks. There were lots of good things to see in Chattanooga!