After posting several times about our recent trip to the US - with stops in Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco - it’s time to talk about the broader purpose of the tour.
My team has been organizing a series of evening events called “Encoding Experience”, with the primary goal of bringing together a community of interest around capturing the human experience of the built environment. We invited interesting people from academia and industry to come together and have a discussion about how we might start to quantify and simulate human experience.
Our first event was in Boston on April 26th. Prudence Robinson and team transformed the 2nd floor of the Technology Center. It looked amazing.
In addition to Pru, a number of Autodesk Research members were present. In this photo (left to right) you can see Dagmara Szkurlat, Ray Wang, me, Jacky Bibliowicz and Matthew Spremulli. Jiyoo Joe took most of the photos from Boston, including this one:
We’d met with a number of the guests before the event. A nice twist was that Suchi Reddy - who I first spoke to a couple of years ago - had presented during my online Neuroscience and Design class just the day before! A bizarre bit of synchronicity.
One of the conversation-starting floral arrangements were these “drowned” flowers.
Jacky has been working on an interactive exhibit that takes a webcam depth image and uses it as a seed for image generation.
The graphic design for the event was all done in-house by Seba Herrera. Brilliant work!
After an initial (and delicious) welcome cocktail, we were seated around a snaking table. One interesting challenge was that we really wanted a single thread of discussion, which would facilitate recording and transcribing the event as well as the work by the graphic recorder.
It actually went wonderfully: I’d been worried that side conversations would erupt, but actually everyone was extremely respectful and contributed to a rich discussion fueled by diverse experiences and viewpoints.
Hearing from thought-leaders from across academia and industry who in their own way shared a passion for the topic was a real privilege.
It was a thoroughly enriching experience, and I’m so glad we did it.
I haven’t really taken about the food, but this was excellent, too. I wish I'd taken more pictures of it (something I was determined to address for San Francisco). I do remember some lovely tiny cones of ahi tuna, supported in a bed of wasabi peas. Both creative and delicious!
Our incredible graphic recorder, Kelvy Bird, did such a good job of capturing the essence of the evening.
Having so little artistic talent (at least when it comes to drawing or painting) I was captivated watching Kelvy at work. A joy to behold.
So that was it for Boston: after a wonderful event people left and we headed back to the hotel. If you want to hear what we did next - in a chronological sense - check out the Los Angeles post.
Fast-forwarding to the San Francisco event on April 29th...
It was in many ways a similar set-up to Boston, but in a different Technology Center (this one in Pier 9) and with a distinctly San Francisco spin to it.
For one thing we had catering by Wolfgang Puck. Yum.
I had a sneak peek at the person crafting the evening’s desserts. Scroll down to see these amazing creations!
The table in SF had a similar theme, but a blend of colours. Gorgeous!
As mentioned earlier after failing to capture the food being brought round in Boston, I did take a few snaps in SF. These oysters were outstanding.
As were these canapés. There were also some wagyu beef treats that people raved about (I don’t eat meat, so have to take their word for it).
I snapped a quick selfie with Connie Lin, as we have a few friends in common and I wanted to show off that I’d met her.
My choice of clothing for this event just happened to match the evening’s signature cocktail perfectly. How about that?
Jacky wasn’t with us in SF, but his Generative AI project was running throughout.
Here's a timelapse showing the images that got created while we were eating and the “inspiration” objects were reasonably static. It seemed the best way to show the way it worked without sensory overload.
We had the same conversation prompts as we did in Boston.
Our graphic recorder for SF, Nevada Lane, was also highly talented. She was just getting started in this photo, of course.
We had a few minutes of side conversation before I said a few words of welcome and handed over to Mike Haley, our Senior VP of Research, who talked about our research efforts and introduced our raison-d’etre.
We were very lucky Mike could join us for the evening and engage directly with this impressive group.
Once again we managed a single thread of discussion from here on out.
Sometimes it was a little “interesting” to see people through the table decorations. We had the same thing in Boston, but somehow it just added to the experience.
The hand-crafted terrarium desserts were really outstanding. Both visually and gastronomically.
We had slightly less pressure to leave the area than we'd had in Boston, so it was nice that people stayed to chat.
I’m really happy with how these evenings went. I want to extend a huge “thank you" to all those involved - whether you helped with the organisation or took the time to attend and engage in this important conversation. I want to particularly call out the contributions of Prudence and Dagmara: they have gone so “above and beyond” to make these events a success. Any credit for everything going so well belongs to the two of you.
I hope we get to broaden this burgeoning community by running events in other cities, ideally including at least one somewhere in Europe. Let’s see!
Photos in this post were taken by Jiyoo Jye, Prudence Robinson and myself.
