Through the Interface

Autodesk DevCon 2024 in Munich

A full week has now passed since more than 500 people were in Munich for the Autodesk DevCon 2024, and yet I'm only now finding time to put proverbial pen to paper. It's just been really busy, but I'll talk more about why at some point in a future post. For this year's event I opted to take the train from Neuchatel to Zurich and then from there on to Munich. In theory that's 5.5 hours from city to city, but that's not really accounting for delays due to the unreliable Deutsche-Bahn network. (That's not me being all “Swiss”about... Read more →

Getting ready for the Autodesk DevCon in Munich

On Monday I’ll be taking the train across to Munich for the 2024 version of the Autodesk DevCon in Europe. I’ll be around at the event on Tuesday and Wednesday, heading back on Thursday morning. If you’re going to be at this year’s DevCon, please do say “Hi”! Read more →

TechX 2024

In my last post I mentioned my trip to Las Vegas for this year's Autodesk-internal TechX event. This post summarizes the whole week, to give a taste for how these events go. Things started on Sunday evening at the Allē Lounge on 66 roof bar at Resorts World, where Autodesk's technical leadership community got together for a welcome reception. The view was spectacular! I have made a lot of friends at Autodesk, over the years, and TechX is my main chance to reconnect with many of them. I've known Alan Quinton since my days living in the Bay Area... Read more →

Back in Las Vegas for TechX 2024

It’s that time off year again: our internal Autodesk geekfest (called TechX) is being held this week in Las Vegas at the Resorts World Hotel. (It's held in a different city every year.) I’ve come across to attend a Technical Leadership Forum on Monday, and then present a TechX session on using WebAssembly to create a Forma extension (in this case using VASA) on Tuesday. I’ll also be participating in a number of other activities before heading home on Friday. As I wanted to be here in time for a reception on the Sunday night, I headed across on... Read more →

The AU 2024 Call for Proposals is open

It’s that time of year again: the Call for Proposals (CFP) for Autodesk University 2024 opened on April 2nd and will stay open until the end of the month (April 30th, 11:59 PM Pacific Time, to be precise). I’ll be proposing at least one class, all being well, with the hope of getting to travel to San Diego from October 15th-17th for this year’s event. It’d be interesting to see AU in a new city. Fingers crossed! If you’re a software developer who is thinking about submitting a proposal, then I recommend checking out this post on the Autodesk... Read more →

Autodesk DevCon 2024 events announced

I know I’m late to the party on this one - if you’re a software developer working in the Autodesk Platform Services ecosystem then you’ll by now already have heard the news and marked your calendar - but anyway: a number of Autodesk DevCon events were announced last week. The flagship DevCon event is being held in Munich, Germany, from May 28-29, 2024. (This recognition that Europe is at the centre of the world is long overdue, just sayin’. ;-P) A satellite DevConX with more limited capacity is being held in Boston a few weeks beforehand, from May 14-15,... Read more →

AEC Hackathon Zurich Edition 2024

As I mentioned last week, on Friday I headed across to this year’s AEC Hackathon Zurich Edition in the city of Winterthur, about 2 hours from my home. The event was held in one of the buildings on the ZHAW campus. The space was fantastic: an old factory that was once used to maintain trains (it’s just next to the train tracks going through Winterthur). I was only able to come for the first evening of the weekend's event, as I had a prior personal commitment during the rest of the weekend. Friday had a number of talks focused... Read more →

Swissbau 2024

On Monday afternoon I received a message from my friend Sven Amiet asking whether I'd be going to Swissbau 2024. I had some sense it was happening this year (it happens every other one), but I hadn't realised it was this week already. In any case I checked my meeting schedule - and found that I didn't have anything important - and decided to head across to Basel on Tuesday morning. It’s always impressive to arrive at Basel’s Messeplatz by tram. The last time I’d been here was for Swissbau 2020 (I skipped the one held 2 years ago).... Read more →

Capturing the human experience of the built environment

Now that the dust has settled on another Autodesk University (the best one ever?) it’s a good time to revisit what brought our team to AU, this year. I realize that I've posted a lot of pictures of people wearing helmets and high visibility vests without really explaining what it was all about. Our team at Autodesk Research has been very focused on understanding the human experience of the built environment, with the ultimate goal of making our software tools better at helping our customers design human-centric spaces. Spaces that emphasize occupant well-being in its various forms. Humans are... Read more →

AU 2023 Day 2

My second day at this year's Autodesk University started with another lovely sunrise. After breakfast I spent an hour or so writing my Day 1 blog post in the Community Zone before I realised a queue was forming to enter the general session. I wandered over and joined it - quite near the front - and chatted with a number of people who were clearly very excited about listening to the day's guest speaker. Here are the people waiting in the Community Zone for the general session to open its doors. I found a single seat free in the... Read more →

AU 2023 Day 1

After a great trip to Stanford on Friday, we had some last-minute preparation to do for our AU exhibit at Pier 9 on Saturday morning. We headed into the office - after having to explain our way through a security cordon along the waterfront due to APEC 2023 - and printed out a bunch of legal waivers for study participants to sign. It seems APEC will be impacting our SF employees, with the offices being closed during the AU week. Enough people had warned me about craziness at SFO that I ended up at the airport well ahead of... Read more →

Autodesk DevCon 2023 in Munich - Part 2

In the last post we took a look at the first day of last week's Autodesk DevCon in Munich. Today’s post focuses on the second day and overall impressions of the event. For me day 2 of the DevCon started with a short U-Bahn trip from Goetheplatz to Harras. From the U-Bahn exit, I instinctively started walking the wrong way - I’d like to say this is easily done, but anyway - but luckily a fellow DevCon attendee coming from the other direction helped me realize my mistake. I do love the Autodesk developer community! The general session filled... Read more →

Autodesk DevCon 2023 in Munich - Part 1

This is a two-part series covering last week’s Autodesk DevCon in Munich. I ended up choosing to write the series chronologically - so readers get a sense of the event’s flow - and found it was long enough to split into two: there was just so much to talk about! On Sunday of last week I once again hopped on the train to Zurich and then the Flixbus to Munich, heading across for the European instance of this year’s Autodesk DevCon series. Children in Bavaria headed back to school last week, so there was quite a lot of traffic... Read more →

CAAD Futures 2023

On Tuesday night my daughter and I headed to Geneva to hop on a plane to Amsterdam Schipol. We were quite lucky with our arrival: we were able to get out of the airport and onto a train to Delft within 20 minutes. On arriving in Delft we headed to our Airbnb, managing to avoid being hit by bicycles. We came across some interesting structural work being down on a nearby bridge. After dropping our bags, we headed out for dinner with my old friend Pete Storey, who kindly popped over from Utrecht to meet us for a bite... Read more →

Register today for Autodesk DevCon 2023 in Munich

Photo © Michael Šubák from Pixabay Hopefully those of you interested in attending the Autodesk DevCon 2023 in Munich, Bavaria, were able to save the date of September 11th-12th. Well, it’s now possible to register for the event. There is an attendance fee – with early-bird pricing of 180€ up until July 30th, with the price going up to 300€ and then 360€ at the event itself – but hopefully there are fewer capacity limits on attendance than in SF (one of the advantages of not being on a boat ;-). It’s a fun time to be in Munich,... Read more →

Checking whether your class proposals have been accepted for Autodesk University 2023

Just a quick note to say that you can now log in to the Autodesk University website (this guidance has changed, please see below) from today – June 23rd – to see the status of your class proposals and learn whether or not they were accepted for AU 2023 in Las Vegas. I was very happy to learn that the two proposals I submitted this year were accepted: I’m sure there’ll be an email sent very shortly, but I just thought I’d share this in case anyone’s impatient to find out their situation relative to classes at this year’s... Read more →

CAAD Futures 2023 at TU Delft from July 5-7

For the last few years I’ve been on the scientific committee for a conference called CAAD Futures. My involvement began with the 2021 edition of the conference: I reviewed several papers submitted to the conference and also ended up being invited to talk during one of the conference’s workshops (it was called Beyond generative Computer Aided-Architectural/Urban Design (CAAD/CAUD) and was hosted by Todor Stojanovski). That last edition was held in Los Angeles – and the workshop hosted in Stockholm – but I only participated remotely. This year’s edition is being held in Europe, at TU Delft in the Netherlands,... Read more →

Save the date: Autodesk DevCon in Munich on September 11-12

The dates and location were announced for the SF edition of the Autodesk DevCon 2023 a few weeks ago, and now it’s Europe’s turn. Join the Autodesk team in Munich on September 11th and 12th at the Holiday Inn Munich-Westpark. Registration hasn’t yet opened, so right now it’s just about putting the dates in your diaries and (potentially) planning travel/accommodation. I expect to come across to be there – it’ll be great to catch up with everyone! As I couldn’t remember the location, off the top of my head, I went ahead and searched my Google Photos for the... Read more →

Register today for Autodesk DevCon 2023 in SF

An Autodesk DevCon is coming back to San Francisco in 2023! It will be held on September 6th and 7th at Pier 9, between the Klamath Ferry and our Technology Center. Photo © The Bay Area Council Foundation It’s worth noting that there is a fee to attend the event (this is currently $150 but will increase to as much as $300 on the day of the event). Space is limited, given the venue, so it is worth registering as soon as you know you can attend – there’s a very good chance that we won’t have tickets left... Read more →

TechX 2023 in Dallas

Last week I was in Dallas, Texas, for TechX 2023, Autodesk’s annual internal event for technical and design staff. As the technical content shared at the event is company confidential, I’m mostly sharing pictures of people I had the good fortune to hang out with, during the course of the week. There was quite a bit of “real” work going on, too, though, so hopefully you won’t come away with the impression that it was just a week-long party. Ahem. As there’s no direct flight to Dallas from Switzerland, I chose to fly via Heathrow from Geneva on the... Read more →