Through the Interface

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 →

Putting the TechX in Texas

I’m packing my bags soon for another trip across the pond for our annual, Autodesk-internal geekfest, TechX 2023. This year’s event is being held in Dallas, Texas, a city I haven’t visited in perhaps 20 years. I’m sure a lot has changed – we’ll see! Photo credit: Robert Hensley, CC license. In any case TechX isn’t about the venue – or even about the technical content, which, while often really interesting, is also watchable remotely during and after the event – as much as the chance to (re)connect with people. In that sense it’s similar to the Autodesk University... Read more →

The Forge Data Day in Munich

Today I’ve been in Munich for the inaugural event in the Forge Data Days tour. As I decided to attend at fairly short notice, I didn’t even look into flights: flying from Geneva or Zurich to Munich is expensive at the best of times (considering the distance), and with less than a week of advance notice it would have been ridiculous. So I took the bus, which cost about $20 each way. It’s an hour and half to get to Zurich from my place, and the direct bus to the centre of Munich took another four hours. Not bad,... Read more →

Come to the Forge Data Day in Munich on Tuesday!

I talked recently about the first in-person event tour that’s been held for Forge developers in at least a few years, this time focused on the new Forge Data offering (including the Data Exchange API that’s now in public beta). At the time I wasn’t sure which event I’d attend: there’s an in-person (finally!) Forge Accelerator next to the Barcelona event, which made that one especially interesting, for instance. In the end the timing for the Munich event worked best. I’ve now booked my hotel and bus ticket, and I’ll be there for the first event in the global... Read more →

TechX 2022 in Atlanta

On Monday I flew from Geneva to Paris and then changed flights to head across to Atlanta for TechX 2022. TechX is Autodesk’s annual internal technology geekfest. This year’s TechX – the first in-person event since 2019’s in New Orleans – has been held in the Atlanta Hilton. I have a room that’s on a high floor, and as I’m waking up with jetlag for the first time in nearly 3 years, I managed to see the view across the city as the sun came up. The mornings have kicked off with keynote sessions. Andrew Anagnost, our CEO, showed... Read more →

Forge Data Days coming to a city near you

Now that I’ve recovered from this week’s trip to Paris – and from both the pleasure and the shock of seeing people physically in meatspace – it’s time to look ahead to another trip. The Developer Advocacy and Support team have announced a new worldwide event tour where they’ll be talking to people about the upcoming Forge Data platform. Here are the dates that were confirmed at the time of writing this post: Europe May 31st | Munich, Germany June 2nd | Gothenburg, Sweden June 7th | Birmingham, UK June 9th | Milan, Italy June 14th | Barcelona, Spain... Read more →

BIM World Paris 2022

On Monday I hopped onto the train to Geneva and from there onto the TGV to Paris Gare de Lyon. I was in Paris for BIM World, where we displayed the Dar 2m Smart Bridge. It was my first time seeing the bridge in person, which was a really exciting moment for me. After checking into a very nice little hotel in the 6th arrondissement I headed to the conference centre to help with the setup. The bridge was already unboxed and hooked up when I arrived. Pete Storey had some wires to connect to get it up and... Read more →

BIM World Paris is next week

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ll be in Paris next week for BIM World on April 5th and 6th, 2022. The 2m Dar Smart Bridge has apparently arrived in Paris from Dubai, so once a few legal formalities have been completed it should be on-site at the event. I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks – and performs – in person, especially when connected to Dasher! Autodesk will have a fairly significant presence at BIM World, by all accounts. I’ve done my best to pull together the various activities (beyond whatever’s happening at the booths on... Read more →

Walk across the Dar Smart Bridge at BIM World Paris for free!

This is all very exciting. I’ve booked my TGV ticket for Paris to attend a physical, in-person event: BIM World Paris is being held on April 5th & 6th, 2022, at Porte de Versailles. Autodesk is sponsoring the event, and the Autodesk Research team will be using the opportunity to show off the work that was done on the 2m Dar Smart Bridge, something I’ve covered recently in some depth. I’ll be attending along with my friends and colleagues Pete Storey and Fikret Kalay. In preparation for the event, I’ve been remoting into the PC running the bridge’s “operating... Read more →