Georgia on My Mind, Day II

Although my hotel is very nice, it is not the hotel where the conference is being held. That is the Renaissance Concourse Hotel on the other side of the airport from my hotel. Fortunately, my hotel is running a shuttle to the other hotel each day of the conference, so the first order of business this morning was to catch the inter-hotel shuttle. Once at the Renaissance, I had to orient myself to the locale; conference events were happening on three different floors, and I had to find the correct one for registering/checking in! When I found the right room, I was greeted by folks whom I had met at last year's conference, which was a nice feeling and a good way to start off the conference.

This is the National College Learning Center Association's 22nd annual conference (faithful readers will recall my blogging about last year's conference in Harrisburg, PA). I had agreed in advance to moderate several sessions (moderate = help that session's presenter with setup, introduce him/her, and collect evaluations from participants afterwards and deliver them to the hotel room serving as conference headquarters), so I did that for two today (and will do two tomorrow) and was simply an attendee/participant for the rest of the day's events, which included

• a session on conducting reading tutorials
• a plenary session featuring Jim Jorstad as the speaker on the topic of designing learning centers with technology integrated (very interesting)
• a session on turning tutor training workshops into for-credit courses
• a lunch session at which participants sat at themed tables (ours: "program evaluation") to discuss topics of common interest
• a session on diagnostic interview protocols
• a session on Supplemental Instruction as it is implemented at a particular institution

Today is the birthday of Kelly, a colleague of mine at Dickinson State University, who happens to be in Atlanta, too, this week, albeit for a different conference held downtown. Before we left ND, I told her that I would take her out for supper on her birthday. Accomplishing that proved to be a little adventure. I took the Renaissance's shuttle to the airport (recall: I am not a paying customer of the Renaissance) and found the airport station for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). A MARTA employee there helped me purchase a round-trip ticket that would allow me to board the train/subway at the airport, get off downtown near Kelly's hotel, and then take the same route back at the end of the night. It was a quick, efficient, clean ride, and when I got off at my stop, another MARTA employee told me the right direction to walk once emerging from underground onto the sidewalks of Atlanta's downtown.

It took me a while to find her hotel amidst the skyscrapers of the area around which I was wandering. (Along the way I got a shoe shine against my wishes from a dude who more or less poured the polish on my shoes and started wiping before I had agreed to the polishing.) Once I found her, Kelly and I walked a short distance to Fire of Brazil, a churrascaria with a delicious and unusual hot- and cold-food salad bar to accompany the many, many different cuts of grilled, roasted, and barbecued meats that servers spent all night bringing to our table, offering us chicken wrapped in bacon, roasted lamb, spicy sausages, ribs, etc. I had crème brûlée for dessert, and they served Kelly a complimentary slice of cheesecake. Over the great food, we enjoyed friendly conversation and a chance to get to know one another better (she's been at DSU only six weeks or so).

I took the MARTA back to the airport and then waited for my hotel's shuttle to get me back "home" for the night. I felt like such a pioneer, having navigated my way through Atlanta for an evening on the town. But my own presentation for the conference is tomorrow . . . time to practice it a bit!