AU Post Wrap-Up

What a week it has been at Autodesk University in Las Vegas...

If there was one recurring theme for the week it would have to be networking. It would have been hard not to with 9,800+/- attendees (last number I heard) from all over.

Here a few quick highlights and notes:
To start with the ADN Developers Conference on Monday offered some great information and sneak peeks into some things on the way. The push and amount of data being handled by the dwf files is still amazing.

The Keynote speech was probably the best one I have seen at AU and the screens and seating were a positive change (a pain of mine from last year solved). It was also refreshing to have Yves Behar (fuseproject) present and share some of his insight and projects. Coupled with some emerging technology and the 360 screens and it really gives you an idea of where all the data from intelligent models (manufacturing, GIS, civil, arch, eng, construction, FM and more) are going. It is going to be interesting to see how we are really able to handle datasets for integrated design practices from all groups and municipalities as time goes on. This offered a great approach and shows more work in this area since the demo's last year.

The Exhibition hall was enormous and traffic funneled through rather easily. There were a good number of vendors as well and the products showcased this year were top notch. I did notice a large number of collaboration type tools who seem to really be fighting it out for some of that marketshare. With a space that large and so many folks you can expect a few things to happen and they did (good and bad). The good, there were quite a few "floor" sessions covering top tips and tricks for different platforms. Technology was everywhere from a working wall touch screen (shown with DWF and navigated with your hands) to relics of AutoCAD past (Shaan had some old products and literature including manuals that were corrected by hand and sent to customers vs. manually retyping them) and more. The bad, there was at least one computer stolen that I was aware from the exhibition hall.

In the past the meal lines have been getting better and this year my experiences it went off without a hitch. It all moved fast and there were plenty of places to sit and eat and food was tasty as well. Well done!

The evening entertainment was positive as well and with so many meetings and other events going on there was something for everyone (Disclaimer, Matt taught me how to play BlackJack one evening). The AU Party had an 80's party with comedians, street dancers and later a band as well. For those not into the "concert" venue there was a huge hall outside with computers setup to run old video games from teh 80's and of course drinks for those interested all around.

To end this post I am going to go back full circle and say the networking and being able to see old friends and meet new like minded people with a passion the same as you was one of the best parts. In the end as Lynn Allen said AU is really A You and I could not agree more.



As mentioned before