CSTA 2026 Recap

Charlie Meyer

Charlie Meyer

— 1 min read
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CSTA 2026 Recap
Me, Colin, and Devorah at the Pickcode/Blanket Statement booth

The CSTA conference this week was a ton of fun. Some highlights:

  • Chatting with teachers from the community
  • Catching up with friends from other companies
  • Not triggering my shellfish allergy despite New Orleans' best attempts
  • Crocheting (!)

At the end of the 2025 conference, Devorah Zamansky described the Blanket Statement project to us and how she had successfully run it at past CSTA conferences. The goal is to help conference goers fidget productively during sessions while crocheting/knitting squares of a blanket. At the end of the conference, Devorah collects the squares, stitches them together, and donates the blanket to Project Linus, which distributes blankets to children in crisis.

Last year, Devorah explained that all it would take to get the project back up and running was some space in the exhibitor hall and a conference pass. Our booth setup of two laptops, an iPad, and some mints doesn't take up a full 10x10 booth. So, we agreed to help out at this year's conference and didn't think much of it.

Fast forward 12 months, and while we did have to explain a few times that Pickcode is an online IDE and is not a crochet company 😂, our mini-collaboration was a lot of fun. In a conference hall full of online platforms and robotics kits, it was great to have something analog around, especially for such a great cause.

For me, one of the best parts of running Pickcode has been this kind of unexpected collaboration. I don't have some grand strategy or plan, and I don't have any fancy analogies about crocheting and programming (although many at the conference tried!). This conference wasn't another step on our plan for world domination.

Sometimes, stuff is just cool!

We're hoping to work with Devorah again at future conferences, so stay tuned. If you have ideas for other ways you'd like to work with your favorite online IDE company here at Pickcode (programming related or not), send me an email at charlie@pickcode.io.

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