Members of the Autodesk Developer Network have started receiving information on how to register for the upcoming series of DevDays being held around the world. Thanks largely to the positive experience of running Cloud Accelerators in different locations, the ADN team has shifted their thinking for this year’s tour: rather than visiting 15+ cities around the world, the team has reduced the number of locations to a few per geography but increased the amount of time being spent in each. 3-4 day Accelerators will be held in a number of cities adjacent to the more traditional DevDay events.
This gives developers a great opportunity really to kickstart their cloud-centric development efforts: to gain a deeper understanding of Autodesk’s fast-evolving PaaS offering but also to create something tangible before heading home.
Having participated in the recent Accelerator in Prague, I can certainly appreciate the logic: it was really rewarding to see developers having the chance to create something brand new – away from their typical routine – and then head back with working, cloud-based prototypes ready for further development.
The DevDay events will continue to cover the new features and APIs in the desktop products, of course, and the Accelerators will have help on-hand for working with those APIs as well as their newer, cloud-centric siblings.
The choice to hold centralized events brings pros & cons, of course, much as we’ve seen with a single US DevDay being held prior to Autodesk University in Las Vegas: the travel costs will be higher, for some, as well as bringing less immediate benefit to the local development community. But on the plus side you get the chance to spend really quality time with members of the Autodesk team and network with developers from much further afield. A number of ongoing business relationships were established during the Accelerators that have been held, so far: a very interesting secondary effect.
I strongly recommend signing up for one of these events (while they’re intended for ADN members you should certainly reach out to your local ADN representative via the registration page if you’re interested in attending but don’t belong to the network). I’ll for sure be at the DevDay and DevHack at AU, and will be doing my best to get to the DevDay and Accelerator in Munich.
