My team is trying out a new concept over the coming months, something we’re calling DevLabs. The idea is that we schedule a period where members of my team are available in a particular Autodesk office to sit down with people working on their development projects. (The concept is new for us, at least: I know Google does something similar with their Hackathons.)
Attendees can plan on dropping in for a just a day or for longer – even the whole week, if they so choose - to spend time working through development issues with members of my team. This is not a replacement for API training, of course, as people in the room will each have their own requirements, although we will try to send enough members of my team to each location to make sure the people attending get enough attention (assuming they’re not expecting us to focus on them exclusively).
You will need to bring a portable computer with your development environment on it (up to you whether you bring a netbook, notebook, desktop or smart-phone – the main thing is that you have access to your code and whatever compiler is needed for it :-) and as you code you can ask members of the DevTech team how to solve certain problems, get them to review your code or to make suggestions for alternative implementations. You may even get input from other DevLab attendees, too.
There’s no charge for attending, one of the reasons we’re holding the events in Autodesk offices where we have local staff. Attendees will only need to make their own arrangements for travel, accommodation and meals. And during this trial period we’re keeping the DevLabs open to all: there’s no requirement to be a member of the Autodesk Developer Network, for instance.
Here’s the date, location and product focus for each of the trial events:
- San Francisco, USA
- June 22-26, AutoCAD APIs
- Farnborough, UK
- June 1-5, AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor APIs
- Bangalore, India
- September 8–11, Geospatial and Revit APIs
- September 14-17, AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor APIs
- Beijing, China
- August 17-21, AutoCAD and Autodesk Inventor APIs
- August 24-28, Geospatial and Revit APIs
If you have any questions about these DevLabs or would like to register, please email us at [email protected].
