Since missing out on all the great snow over Christmas and New Year, I’ve been doing my best to catch up. This weekend left me feeling quite a bit better.
The skies were clear, and while it hadn’t snowed much before the weekend...
... it did snow overnight on Saturday. I was on the first lift up on Sunday and so got to make the most of the fresh snow accumulated on the pistes. Sheer joy.
My flight on Sunday evening was at 6pm from Zurich, so I had to leave the slopes around noon to leave me enough time to get there, especially as over the weekends at the moment the train service between Zurich main station and the airport is disrupted by scheduled engineering work.
Still, everything went smoothly and I ended up with plenty of time after clearing security.
I had a window seat for the flight - a rarity for me - so took a few snaps as we passed over London to land at Heathrow.
It was a very nice surprise to find that my friend Marta Bouchard was on the same flight - heading to London for customer meetings.
I'd already arranged to meet Tomas - who was flying in from Bonn for the same event as me - at arrivals, so the three of us took the Heathrow Express into the city.
After leaving Marta, while wandering around Covent Garden Tomas and I literally bumped into Pete Storey, so we went for a late bite and a Guinness with him. It was Sunday night, so there weren't many options. We ended up in an All Bar One, which was fine.
I had booked an Airbnb close to the office, to share with Tomas and Marco, who had arrived from Singapore earlier in the day. It's the first time I'd tried a local Covent Garden Airbnb and I have to admit to being very impressed. At £400 a night - at least at this time of year - it's basically the same price for 3 people as one room in a local hotel. Definitely worth doing.
Monday morning was mostly spent catching up with folks in our London office. Here’s Tomas and Marco with Tom, who lives in the UK. They've been a team for years but this was the first time they’d all met together, in-person. Remote work has become such the norm for us.
One of our catch-up meetings was with Hilmar and David, who work on a parallel research track. It's really valuable to sync up on respective progress from time-to-time, as it helps us assess synergies and potential economies of scale.
Our main reason for being in London was an internal event named ResearchX (a riff on our broader TechX event). The point was to bring researchers around the world into central hubs during the course of the week, and have share-outs from each hub on different days to allow our researchers to connect with each other. Not quite as good as getting everyone all in the same location, but a lot more cost-effective and sustainable.
London was kicking off the event on Monday, with San Francisco, Toronto and Boston later in the week.
We had a really strong turn-out in London, with some great talks.
A big part of the event was giving folks time to have side discussions. It was great seeing everyone engage on a variety of topics.
There was also pub-time in the office local, The Porterhouse.
A few stragglers headed for dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant.
On Tuesday morning I found myself up early for a walk along the Thames. It was raining, but not heavily.
I ended up walking along to 180 Strand, where I met up with Adam, a friend of the family, for a coffee.
The main event for Tuesday was a lunchtime visit to UCL’s Here East campus, where we met up with Fiona Zisch for a quick tour followed by a great discussion about overlapping interests.
On getting back to the office we had a meeting with Simon Bee from the Tandem team (thanks for coming down to meet us, Simon!). I really love what that team is doing.
At the end of the day I headed with my old friend Simon for a beer near Paddington, where my brother and Simon's partner joined us for some drinks.
After a full two days it was time to head home. I got up at 5:30am on Wednesday to head back to Heathrow. Here's a photo of the elevator that opened in our apartment (we had to use a special key for it to open - a new experience for me!) as I headed out.
The city was yet to wake up, as I headed to catch the tube to Paddington from Embankment.
The Bakerloo line is one of the most in need of a refurb, but it does the trick.
I was at the airport by 7am, with plenty of time to pass security before my 9am flight home.
The sun eventually came up as it was time to board.It was a great (but short) trip back to the UK. It was a packed few days - so I didn’t get the chance to catch up with as many people as I’d have liked. I’ll hopefully be back soon with more time to see people, especially as our collaboration with UCL develops.
Finally, many thanks to all the people involved in organising ResearchX (with a special mention for Dagmara Szkurlat, who I know has been driving this effort a lot). It’s really important for hybrid-first companies such as Autodesk to find ways for their staff to stay connected, mitigating for the lack of water-cooler discussions (for instance). This week was a really valuable activity that I can already see is leading to new connections forming within the organization, as well as existing connections strengthening.