What seemed like a few short weeks after Autodesk University 2024 in San Diego, last week I was back in the San Francisco Bay Area for internal Autodesk Research meetings.
On the Saturday I hopped on a flight from Zurich to San Francisco. The flight itself was comfortable enough - at least it was direct.
I love arriving at SFO. It brings back all kinds of memories of when we lived in the Bay Area back in 2000-2003.
The sun was setting as I took a Lyft into downtown SF.
I stayed one night at Hotel G, which was on Geary just off Union Square.
The room was basic but comfortable. I always say to myself “it doesn’t matter - I won’t spend much time there, anyway”, but that turns out not to be very accurate when you're fighting jetlag and waking up (if you're lucky!) at 4am. That night was particularly fun as Hotel G is right next door to the Westin St. Francis, where disgruntled staff members are striking. And when I say striking, that’s literally the case: they're striking oil drums with big sticks between 7am and 10pm (they were very good at stopping at 10pm, I have to say).
Despite having eaten 7 meals during that very long Saturday, I did venture out for an early dinner before hitting the hay. I went around the corner to Akiko’s Sushi Bar.
Sashimi is the perfect thing (for me, at least) to eat after a long flight.
I went to sleep early (probably at around 8pm) and then was up at 4am. Thank you, melatonin! After working for a few hours I decided to pop down for breakfast at the Pinecrest Diner. A bowl of fruit with Greek yoghurt hit the spot.
On the way back to the hotel I popped into the CVS across from the hotel. I haven’t been to SF in a while, so seeing everything under lock and key was a bit strange. While I was there someone loaded a couple of shopping bags with sundry food items (that weren’t locked away) and walked out, tripping the security alarm. Everyone just shrugged and went back to their business. I’d heard of it happening - and understand why it does, at least to some degree - but it really feels strange to experience it firsthand.
After checking out I went to meet my friend Elise for lunch. But first I stopped by the Macy’s to pick up some trousers.
The view from the menswear floor was quite something.
While waiting for my Lyft I saw my first Waymo of the trip. It’s not a good photo but yes - there’s no-one in the car. I know SF residents take these sights for granted by now, but we foreigners find them very much a novelty.
I had yet more sushi with my friend Elise in the Mission. She kindly walked me to the Mission & 16th BART station so I could head across to the East Bay for my offsite.
Here’s a random photo of a dirty BART map. I really didn't have much time in SF on this trip - just one night on the way in, and a few hours on the way out - but I'm always happy to visit the city.
Our offsite was being held at the majestic Claremont Hotel in Berkeley.
It was a gentle night on the Sunday night - most people were only now arriving - so it was a quiet beer in the bar and off to bed. Monday was spent with a smaller group workshopping some specific topics.
The view from our meeting room was spectacular: we could see the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges.
And the view shifted with the weather throughout the day. It was kinda hard to focus on work, at times.
And then there was the sunset. Sensational!
After some champagne sabrage in the lobby (every day at 5pm!) we had a meeting reception with the broader team.
At some point during the evening I decided that a morning run into the Berkeley Hills would be a Really Good Idea.
The idea was sound, but execution was hard. My friend Andy and I ended up wheezing after 600m (his watch told him so), so we walked the rest of the way. We still got to see the view, though!
And the walk was very nice, too. :-)
Tuesday - the first day of the offsite proper - involved a number of presentations and some more workshopping activities. I won’t (well actually I can’t) bore you with the details, but trust me when I say we had lots of really good discussions. I also won’t be sharing more photos of the work stuff, just suffice to say that it wasn’t all “fun”.
The teambuilding activity at the end of the first day was absolutely fun, though. We played pickleball in the old Ford factory in Richmond, right on the bay. I used to play a lot of tennis, so I really enjoyed pickleball (it's most of the fun without most of the pain).
It turns out I wasn’t too bad at it, either: Peter Jones and I ended up winning the “tournament” and being given pickleball paddles as prizes!
Now I just have to find where to play it in Switzerland.
Despite waking up with major aches and pains the next morning, I ended up hiking back up the hill to see if I could get a little higher up. I did, although I still turned back before the summit. There was a sign that proclaimed the rest of the trail was “steep”, while even the section before had been far steeper than I wanted to climb. That was enough for me.
After another day of hard, hard work (honestly!) we had our closing reception on Wednesday evening.
My old friend Clayton - who was not attending the offsite but lives close-by - stopped in to say hi to everyone.
It was a really fun evening.
A great chance to hang out with friends who happen to be colleagues (or is that the other way around?). Good times, in any case.
After one final session on Thursday morning, Dagmara and I headed across the Bay Bridge to meet with a few folks at 1 Market St. We had lunch with Sebastian Casallas from the Workshop XR team (I don’t have a photo of us together, Seb!) and then met with one of our AI Researchers, Yi.
After this my old friend Jim Quanci swung by the office to pick me up for a coffee in the Marina district and a lovely chat with him and his wife, Mary. It was a wonderful way to finish up a great trip.
Jim kindly dropped me at SFO for my flight out. I was, by this time, pretty exhausted.
The flight was uneventful - I wished I’d been able to sleep, but as ever it was elusive - and I landed in ZRH. I had to wait for my carry-on to be delivered (they had made me check it again, very annoyingly) but I still managed to get the train I wanted. I do love Switzerland for that.
And the train ride was, as always, lovely. Especially with snow on the ground...
... in the trees...
... and on the houses.
It was even piled up on station platforms.
After falling asleep in front of a Christmas rom-com (my daughter had the remote), I managed to scrape myself upstairs where I slept like a log. This was the view from my bedroom window upon waking.
Many thanks to my wonderful colleagues in Autodesk Research for a great week, and especially to Hans Kellner, Hilmar Koch and Amanda Bailey for sharing some of the photos used in this post.
