It was quiet last week here as I went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a conference: Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Midwest Conference, known to me as CMMC, uh, MC. What is CMMC? Well, in a nutshell, it is a process for Department of War contractors to prove that their technologies, processes, and practices adhere to certain different standards of security. It’s adjacent to what used to be my mainline, software quality assurance, but my wife is big into it and has a string of letters on her LinkedIn profile and many fine remunerative contract opportunities so long as the Federal government keeps pushing for it. Which it sometimes is, sometimes isn’t. But I had a chance to learn something, and I had a chance to get away for a couple of days with a beautiful woman, so I took it.
The conference was in downtown Tulsa, so we stayed at the Hyatt Regency on Second Street. The textures from our window:
That’s looking northeast from our room which was on the southern edge of the building. The Hyatt Regency has a walkout basement thing going on; Third Street is a floor higher than Second Street, so the little parkway below just north of the building is a parking garage that serves the hotel and the performing arts center. I presume Tulsa or someone offered some green roof tax credits or something, because I saw a lot of them downtown.
Downtown Tulsa wasn’t full of older buildings like you get in some places. It’s not like downtown Springfield which has a bunch of brick buildings clustered together in a fairly small footprint. We didn’t ramble too far–from just north of the BOK Center to, what, Detroit or Cincinnati Street and Second Street to Cameron (once) but mostly Archer. An early review of the history made me think the older part of town was elsewhere, but the train tracks and the train depot are within this grid, so I guess it was a relatively small town until the oil boom in the 20th century, so most of the buildings are relatively new.
We got in on Wednesday afternoon, walked a bit to find the place where the conference was held, had a nice dinner at Ti Amo, which is right near the BOK Center arena, home of the minor league hockey team and host for nationwide touring act concerts. We met up with some CMMC professionals at Cabin Boys up on Main and Cameron, our furthest venture from our hotel, a walk in a warm rain. On Thursday, the conference had a full day. I, however, did not attend the whole day, opting to play hooky for a couple of sessions to walk up to Magic City Books, a new book store (that is, it sells new books–I guess the store itself is a decade old). I was looking for a regional or local history book, but it didn’t really have “a history of Tulsa” books. Wicked/Highway 66 books, some academicish books, and Prairie City by Angie Debo, which offers a “composite” of similar towns, I guess? What the book store did have was a shelf-sized display of books (dozens) on the Tulsa Race Massacre, a 1921 event which left many black (and white) residents of the Greenwood section of the town dead. Poor Springfield only had a single lynching in 1904 to try to carry collective or city-based racial guilt into the 21st century. Tulsa had a whole pogrom.
On Thursday evening, we had some Cajun food at Bourbon Street Cafe, and on Friday morning, we attended the half day of the conference–well, my wife did; I attended a single session and handled luggage and checkout duties. Then we drove home, tried to stop in Claremore for lunch but managed to get to the Chik-Fil-A at the same time as two high school cross country teams.
Another nice little break and quick trip like our stay downtown and an upcoming overnight in St. Louis. And maybe a lead on some work for me, which would be nice.
It’s funny; Tulsa is as close as either St. Louis or Kansas City to us, but we have to now not really thought of popping down for a quick visit. Staying downtown is nice, as although there are many people working in the towers and going in and out of the parking garages, the city is really quiet in the evenings. Foot traffic is less than even downtown St. Louis (we stayed downtown in April, and I didn’t see a bunch homeless people on the streets–I was only hit up once, sitting in the hotel coffee shop no less. The restaurants were empty, although I’m sure that’s different on concert nights and when something is going on at the performing arts center, but probably not as much as a major league sporting event.
So we will probably be back. Next year for the same conference if nothing else.
