Back when I worked for wages, the company I worked for often participated in industry trade shows.
One year it was in Atlanta, with the venue at the convention center downtown. We enjoyed the downtown restaurants and a neat tour of CNN center. IIRC, this was about 1989 or so.
The next year, the show was in New Orleans, another great, great foodie city. I enjoyed it so much, I brought DW & DD there a couple of years later. We've since been back to NOLA many times for the food and the history. The WW2 Museum is bucket list quality. The food is the best on the North American Continent, imo.