Florida is freaking awesome (Featuring ISTE)
ISTE 2026 was one of the best experiences of my life.
I legitimately cannot remember a more rewarding experience than my ISTE trip I just got back from. Just a few weeks ago, my close friend and Deskpad collaborator Daniel and I were unsure if we were even going to be able to attend the conference, as we found ourselves neck-deep in the grind of college application season. But we decided to prioritize Deskpad, and it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
We touched down in Orlando on the morning of Saturday the 27th of June. Daniel had taken a redeye from San Francisco, and I had woken up at 4:30am to pack and take a flight from New York where I’ve been spending the summer as a research assistant. We met up with each other at Gate 43 of the Orlando International Airport, where I got off my flight at around 10am local time. We dapped each other up and shared our collective awe that this trip, which had been a mere wisp of an idea just a few weeks prior, was now very real. And also very hot. Orlando was burning when we touched down, and the humidity definitely didn’t help. When I stepped out of the airport, it felt like I had been hit with the breath of a particularly ferocious dragon. We then ordered our Uber, and proceeded to the hotel where we would be spending the next four nights.
As a native Californian, I am ashamed to say I had a bit of a preconceived idea of what I thought Florida would be like before I arrived. I expected the heat, obviously, but I mostly expected other negative things. In my mind, I pictured exasperated people, miles of dry land, and landscapes that were at best underwhelming. What I experienced, however, was perhaps the exact opposite. From the moment I touched down to the moment I took off, I was met with with the kindest people, the most beautiful palm trees, and the most lush, green scenery that I can recall in recent memory. The heat and tropical lightning storms were awful, yes, but the Floridian hospitality I received most definitely made up for them.
Now, the conference itself. When Daniel and I were checking the prices to rent booth equipment a few weeks prior, we nearly fell backwards off our seats. More than $1000 for a chair?!?! Did these chairs contain magical powers that I was unaware of?? Regardless, we realized that renting directly from the conference center was most certainly not the move. We ended up heading to a local Orlando Target and buying foldable tables, chairs, stools, rugs, and bowling pins that we planned to return after the conference. Even when we were transparent to the Target employees about our plan, they kindly allowed it and even smiled at our shrewdness (this is the Floridian hospitality I am talking about!). We ended up lugging (to our Uber driver’s dismay) all of the newly purchased equipment to the conference center, where we were met with another misfortune: because we weren’t 18 yet, we would not be allowed on the Expo Hall during setup, as it was a liability to the conference in case we got injured. Fortunately, due to the combination of kind employees and smooth talking from Daniel, we were allowed to leave our heavy tables and chairs by the registration center and set it up as the conference hall opened to the public on Monday June 29th. With our tails slightly between our legs, we returned to our hotel room, but at least without the heavy equipment weighing us down.
Sunday the 28th was a blur. Daniel and I had a great dinner the night before, and planned to wake up at 9am to plan our conference out and get ready for the 4:30pm Welcome Reception that ISTE was hosting. Unfortunately, being the undisciplined teenagers we are, we slept through all five of our alarms and, to our shock, found the time to be nearly 1pm as we regained consciousness. After a Hawaiian bowl we hastily ordered on Doordash, we started our planned outreach. About one hundred educators and technologists who had posted about ISTE received annoying messages from Daniel and I at this time, and while many probably didn’t even see them, we felt proud of our LinkedIn handiwork. We decided to reward ourselves with a nice walk around the resort, which we completed before we headed to the 4:30 reception. I realized to my horror at the entrance that I had left my badge back at the hotel room, but a kind ISTE employee who had met us the day before just laughed and printed me out a new one.
The welcome reception went, in a polished way, not as well as expected. In a perfectly blunt way, it was pretty shitty. It was both Daniel’s and my first time at an open-networking event like that, and everyone we saw already seemed to be deeply immersed in a conversation. While we did talk to a few people, including the founder of a Mexico-based EdTech company, we found our performance to be a disappointment. Heading back to the hotel with our tails between our legs for the second time in two days, we decided to preserve morale by calling the event a “learning experience” and putting it behind us.
The first real day of the conference was Monday, June 29th. We got to the conference right around 9am when the Expo Hall opened, and scrambled to assemble and organize our tables, chairs, and electronics while the rest of the teachers and educators were let in. The first 45 minutes of our presentation time turned out to be just setup, as we had to unpack, prop up, and carefully place all of our equipment, all while making sure to meticulously collect the tags of each item so that we could return them back to Target after the conference ended. When we were finally set up, we began to get in business, and our first few hours ended up going really well. We also met our booth neighbors, Filewave, who were some of the kindest people I have ever met. Not only did they allow us to share their power that they had paid for, but they also were just extremely good people (another point for Floridian hospitality). It is rare that you meet people who truly go out of their way to help total strangers (and to an extent, competitors as booth neighbors), but that is exactly what they did for us. Thank you deeply to Lena, Lisa, and the other kind Tennessean man whose name is evading my brain at this moment. For the history of Deskpad’s existence, we will be indebted to you for the kindness you showed us at this conference.
The rest of day one went by just as quickly. We had conversation after conversation with teachers, educational technologists, and open-minded attendees about what exactly we do at Deskpad, and how they could support us. The throughline was that many were just impressed that we were doing this while in high school, and we received an overwhelming amount of support and praise, which we were extremely grateful for after two underwhelming days so far. Being the scrappy and forgetful team that we are, we realized we forgot to buy the software that could scan people’s badges and put their information into a built-in CRM, so we decided to go the old-fashioned way and collect people’s names and email addresses in a blue flower-covered notebook we had purchased as an afterthought at Target. We ended the day extremely exhausted from repeating our pitch over and over, but felt extremely gratified to have been given this opportunity. Here’s a quick photo of what we looked like:
Around 6:30pm, we returned to our hotel room, exhausted and ready to sleep. However, we looked at the weather forecast, and realized that we would not have the opportunity to use the hotel’s grandiose pool if we didn’t go tonight, as the next couple nights would be filled with lightning storms. So, despite being exhausted, we headed down to the hotel pool for what ended up being an extremely fun time. We returned to our room sopping wet and, after a quick shower from both of us, decided to order in Chipotle and omit another late night out. Unfortunately, despite our seemingly logical line of reasoning that if we stayed home and ordered food we’d go to bed earlier, we ended up starting the Jason Bateman-starring Ozark, which we watched late into the night.
We woke up at 7am for day two of the conference extremely sleep deprived, but we pushed through. Day two’s first half ended up being pretty slow, as the heightened excitement and novelty of the Expo Hall from day one had worn off a bit. However, about halfway through the day, we had a brilliant idea. Rather than passively sitting at our chairs and waiting for interested passersby to come to us, Daniel would wait out in the front and ask every person who walked by the same thing: “Hi, we’re a couple of high school students here showcasing our project. Could we steal two minutes of your time to tell us what we do?”
It worked like a charm. Though I had told Daniel this idea would have a 90% conversion rate, I mostly said this to get his morale up and to get him to actually put himself out there. However, even I was surprised to find that my then-optimistic prediction was actually quite accurate. Nearly every onlooker’s ears perked up when we mentioned our age and mission, and they were even more impressed when we showed them what we do. The second half of day two had hands flying as our booth visitors scribbled down their name and contact information in our blue-flowered notebook. We also received a couple of compliments on our pen—a dull baby blue Japan-made one I found in my brother’s bedroom. Day two was a massive success, and we came home again exhausted but again triumphant.
I won’t write too much about day two’s evening because to be honest, we really didn’t do anything. Exhausted from our late night the night prior, we didn’t have the energy to go out, but also we didn’t have the discipline to go to sleep on time. What ended up happening was another night of Doordash—this time Cuban food for me and Panda Express for Daniel—and a 2:30am bedtime fueled by how good Ozark was getting. When we finally shut our eyes, we realized we were screwed for the next morning.
Day three—Wednesday July 1st—felt like it arrived far too soon for our sleep-deprived brains and eyes. However, the one thing I had been harping to Daniel about all trip was the continental breakfast buffet at our hotel. I love food. I am a foodie, I admit it. And hotel breakfasts are like the Holy Grail for us foodies. You have mountains of eggs, bacon, pancakes, and every pastry you can imagine lining the kitchen, and you can go back and get more as many times as you’d like. Despite being extremely tired as I shut off my 7am alarm, I had to nearly shake Daniel awake so that he would join me at my breakfast paradise. Even on a cumulative total of less than 10 hours of sleep in the past two nights, the breakfast was awesome. I ended up getting three plates, and though my eyes ended up being a bit bigger than my stomach, I had a fantastic experience. It felt like a very fitting way to leave our hotel, and we checked out officially at 8:45 and headed to the convention center for our last few hours of presenting.
On our third and final day, we continued the strategy we had discovered the day prior of Daniel standing outside the booth and attracting onlookers. As we were walking in, Daniel optimistically predicted that we would fill two pages of our notebook with names and emails due to our new strategy. We ended up filling more than three. Day three was a fantastic experience, and in the last hour of the conference, we decided to close up a little early and actually explore the other booths as visitors. We went to the big dogs, obviously, like Google, Microsoft, and Adobe, but our most enjoyable experience actually ended up being at a car racing simulation at ViewSonic.
As the conference came to an end, we found ourselves very content with the progress we had made. We collected countless names and emails in our little notebook, and made connections and friendships that we’d otherwise not had the opportunity to make. At this time, I should say it. Thank you so, so much to everyone who stopped by our booth. We truly thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you’re still reading up to this point, the one thing you might have noticed is that the throughline across this entire story is the kindness were were met with at every single turn. From the the ISTE employee who reprinted our badge without a second thought, to the Target staff smiling at our scheme, to (and especially) our booth neighbors sharing their power and kindness, everyone we met this trip was extremely good to us. If there is one thing I have learned from all this, it is that good karma exists. When you put goodness into the world, it has a funny way of getting back to you. And we were most definitely the recipient of that on our trip.
We look forward to using ISTE 2026 as momentum into our next phase of Deskpad. But for now, we sit back with content and gratitude, as we look back on what was truly, a hell of a trip.
- Akshay