After not being good for very much last week – while recovering from AU in Las Vegas – I headed back across to the Netherlands on Monday afternoon.
In Geneva airport there was a large stuffed reindeer just sitting there. A huge thanks to Ben Rand for pointing out the obvious: that Rudolph is probably a big fan of Project Dasher! :-)
I took the train from Schipol down to Delft, which was feeling very festive.
I love Dutch train stations and the connectivity between multi- and two-wheeled transport.
I had a very nice room in a hotel close to the Delft University of Technology campus called Casa Julia.
I headed back out to the centre of Delft for dinner. The city was very quiet on a mid-week night in early December.
Heading back to the hotel I had to wait for the bridge to close – I remember having this happen the last time I visited Delft at exactly the same bridge. I wonder how often boats come through…
Tuesday morning was brisk but (eventually) bright.
The event was a workshop on Digitalisation in AEC, with the idea of helping the Faculty of Architecture and The Built Environment at TU Delft plan for the changes happening in industry.
The day was split into 10-minute sessions presented by both TU Delft professors and external parties such as myself.
I had a chuckle at one point when I saw the list of presentations. Mine was basically all videos (with a few static images), so it weighed in much heavier than most. (Some of the below were admittedly placeholders that got replaced by larger files, but mine still “won” by some margin. ;-)
Here are snapshots from some of the presentations. The event was well-attended, and I was very pleased to see so many students in the audience.
My session came quite late in the agenda, and I focused my 10 minutes primarily on some of the projects we’ve implemented using Dasher 360, as well as some talk of Generative Design in the AEC space.
In case you’re wondering, the flooring is actually carpet made to look like wood. Interesting.
Autodesk wasn’t the only “vendor” present: I was followed by Niels from ESRI, for instance.
After a jam-packed day of content, the faculty’s Dean wrapped up proceedings.
I unfortunately couldn’t stay for drinks as I had to head up to Amsterdam to have dinner. I did so via a couple of jam-packed trains.
I made it to dinner on time. We were meeting to discuss the following day’s event: when I knew I was coming to the Netherlands I had reached out to Sander Lijbers in case he wanted to organise a customer visit or two. In typical Sander style, he somehow managed to organise an event where 20+ people would come together in our Amsterdam office – some flying in from London – to talk about Generative Design.
It was an interesting meal, and not only because the CEO of Kyocera and his 30+ person entourage were having drinks in the space next to us. Dinner and a show!
It was great to meet Ed and Cristian, as well as catch up with Radu, Sander and Dieter. I’ll post more on the following day’s event in my next post.
