Through the Interface

Life after Autodesk [Neuchâtel]

Given the impending closure of our Neuchâtel office – we have our big closing party on Thursday afternoon, although a few teams will still have people in the office until the end of August – there are a lot of former (and soon-to-be-former) Autodeskers starting to look for jobs in the region. Most were offered jobs in either Barcelona or the new Dublin office, but – given the salary differential to work in these locations and the currently booming Swiss economy, which has around 2.5% unemployment nationwide – the vast majority have chosen to accept their termination offers and... Read more →

AU London 2018

After all the fun of the Autodesk World Cup in Bordeaux, it was off to London for my first-ever non-US Autodesk University. (I nearly made it to AU Sydney and AU India during last year’s big trip, but I somehow managed to miss both events by a week or so… next time we do a “once in a lifetime” trip I’ll be sure to check the AU international schedule when planning it. ;-) Arriving in London on Sunday morning, I had the chance to catch up with Simon, an old friend from university who lives and works near Windsor.... Read more →

Autodesk Football World Cup 2018

On Friday lunchtime – after a great few days in Barcelona for the Forge Accelerator – I hopped on an EasyJet flight to Bordeaux for this year’s internal Autodesk football tournament. I was one of the lucky ones: there was a later Vueling flight – which I’d very nearly opted to take – that was cancelled because of strikes in South-Eastern France. A bunch of players and fans from the Barcelona office ended up having to rent cars and drive them to Bordeaux to participate. Apparently a number of others from the UK and Italy were also impacted and... Read more →

Forge Accelerator in Barcelona

I’m back in Barcelona for this spring’s Forge Accelerator. It’s been an interesting week: I arrived on Tuesday morning – having missed the first day in an attempt to shave a little time off my June travel craziness – and arrived to find a number of attendees working on projects related to (and inspired by) the work we’ve done in Dasher 360. This is really encouraging… I’m thrilled to see others using Forge to tackle the kind of problems Dasher was always intended to help address. Onwards! The weather on Tuesday wasn’t great – a little windy and grey... Read more →

AU classes and Forge events

I’m on the train, heading to Geneva airport for my trip across to Barcelona for the latest Forge Accelerator. It seems there’s a good crowd in the room, already, so it should be a fun week. Yesterday I submitted two classes for Autodesk University 2018 in Las Vegas: I wonder what proportion of classes are submitted on the last day of the CFP period, and whether this number is stable, year after year. I usually try to submit my own classes earlier, but this year things have been a little hectic, for some reason. The first class I submitted... Read more →

SimAUD 2018

On Monday afternoon I flew back across to the Netherlands, this time from Bern airport. My main purpose for this trip was to attend the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design, or SimAUD, in Delft. I’ve been staying at an Airbnb a little way out of the centre of town, the advantage being I’m just across from a really pretty park. Delft is a university town and is a bit like a smaller, easier version of Amsterdam. There are canals everywhere… … and almost everyone seems to travel around by bike: I rented a bike from a... Read more →

I <3 Hockey (but probably not the one you think)

Back in the UK, during my teenage years, I got into field hockey in a big way. I spent several winters playing hockey on frozen grass pitches around the East of England. When I went to University I played a lot more (between the 2nd and 1st teams, this time mostly on astroturf), and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Once I started working things became harder… I still managed to play a few times, but mostly ended up joining teams to play other sports: Field hockey just turned out not to be a sport I could play regularly, for one reason... Read more →