Through the Interface

An update on my AU2018 classes

There’s just over a week to go before the craziest week of my year (i.e. Autodesk University) kicks off, once again. I’ve been heads-down preparing various slide-decks and handouts for the big event. Things are in reasonably good shape, but there’s still a bit of work left to do. I had a quick glance at the class list – mainly to make sure that I had the classes themselves in my calendar, before people start double-booking me for meetings – and I noticed the numbers of registrations: Here’s a list to the various classes with links so you can... Read more →

Forge DevCon Europe

It’s been a whirlwind few days. The trip up to Darmstadt on Monday went relatively smoothly: I had to take four trains to get there, and only missed one connection (the one in Frankfurt, but thankfully I could hop on another train and arrive just 10 minutes later than planned). Still, the nearly 6 hours of train passed reasonably smoothly. After arriving in Darmstadt I met with Sander Lijbers and Tony Thuy, who’d organised to host some customers from the Netherlands. We went for dinner at a nice restaurant serving local food. When in Germany, eat schnitzel! It was... Read more →

Counting down to Forge DevCon Europe

We’re just a few weeks away from the 2nd European edition of the Forge DevCon. It’s being held in Darmstadt on October 16th, the day before this year’s AU Germany. This is a free, English-language* event where you can learn all about the capabilities that are currently (and will soon be) available through the Forge platform. (* I’ve seen a number of emails asking whether the event will be in German or English, presumably due to its proximity with a German-language event. I can confirm that the entire program will be in English.) Here are some “reasons to attend”,... Read more →

Rob|Arch 2018

I spent the latter half of last week at ETH Zurich, attending a conference entitled “Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2018”, or Rob|Arch 2018 for short. This is the biennial conference where luminaries in the AEC industry get together and plot how robots will replace millions of construction jobs over the years to come. Not really, of course: the big thrust of this conference is to work out how robotic fabrication technology might (or must) be applied to meet the housing needs of a planet whose population is expected to increase by nearly 30% over the coming... Read more →

Don’t miss these sessions at the Forge DevCon in Las Vegas

The Forge DevCon is a great place to dive deeply into what’s possible – and what will soon be possible – with the Forge platform. I’m involved in the organisation of the Las Vegas DevCon – being held on November 12-13, 2018 – in that I help lead one of the tracks. When the first DevCon took place, back in 2016, I was track-lead for the AR/VR track… these days I’m co-track-lead with my old friend Cyrille Fauvel for the Complementary Technologies track, which incorporates topics such as AR/VR, AI and robotics. All the really fun stuff, basically. ;-)... Read more →

Forge DevCon 2018 in Europe

The Forge DevCon is coming back to Europe, specifically to Darmstadt, Germany (on October 16) ahead of AU Germany (on October 17-18). While the content for AU Germany is presented in the local language, everything at the Forge DevCon will be in English. And it’s free to attend! Registration is now open for the event. There’s a great line-up of speakers delivering a packed agenda, so be sure to sign up soon. If you’re also interested in AU Germany, here’s a video showing a few highlights from last year’s event: I don’t yet know whether I’ll be attending, myself:... Read more →

AU classes and Forge events

I’m on the train, heading to Geneva airport for my trip across to Barcelona for the latest Forge Accelerator. It seems there’s a good crowd in the room, already, so it should be a fun week. Yesterday I submitted two classes for Autodesk University 2018 in Las Vegas: I wonder what proportion of classes are submitted on the last day of the CFP period, and whether this number is stable, year after year. I usually try to submit my own classes earlier, but this year things have been a little hectic, for some reason. The first class I submitted... Read more →

SimAUD 2018

On Monday afternoon I flew back across to the Netherlands, this time from Bern airport. My main purpose for this trip was to attend the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design, or SimAUD, in Delft. I’ve been staying at an Airbnb a little way out of the centre of town, the advantage being I’m just across from a really pretty park. Delft is a university town and is a bit like a smaller, easier version of Amsterdam. There are canals everywhere… … and almost everyone seems to travel around by bike: I rented a bike from a... Read more →

Autodesk TechX 2018

This week I’ve been in Detroit for Autodesk’s annual internal share-fest, TechX. In previous year’s we’ve had Technical Summits and X-Summits (for eXperience), but this year is the first combined event welcoming 1,000 Autodesk employees to the Motor City. A lot of the content from the event is – of course – internal, but here are some shots I can share. Being a Delta hub, flights to Detroit from my part of the world mostly seem to go via Amsterdam or Paris. In fact I’m heading out via Schipol and back via Charles-de-Gaulle. In an attempt to mitigate the... Read more →

AU London 2018: Call for proposals

The “call for proposals” for this year’s AU London is now open, and runs through to the end of January. If you’d like to speak at this year’s event, propose your class now. It’s the second time an Autodesk University has been held in the UK, and by all accounts the first was a great event. This year’s will be once again be held at Tobacco Dock on June 19th and 20th (which is really a lovely time of year to visit London). I wasn’t able to attend AU 2017 in Las Vegas (or last year’s AU London, which... Read more →

DevDays Online

For those of you who (like me) missed this year’s in-person DevDays – or perhaps have colleagues who would benefit from seeing sessions you managed to attend yourself in Las Vegas or elsewhere – you’ll be interested to hear that DevDays Online will be disseminating all that DevDays goodness over the wire during the month of February. The great news is that this isn’t being limited to ADN members: anyone can sign up and attend. The sessions will also be recorded, in case any are at times that don’t work for you. You can register to attend the various... Read more →

A summary of news from Forge DevCon 2017

For those of you who – like me – weren’t able to travel to Las Vegas for this year’s Forge DevCon, I thought I’d do a quick round-up of the major news that I could extract over the wire. I’m sure there will be further blog posts from the Forge team summarising more of things I couldn’t see – not being there in person – but this will hopefully be of some use to people, at least. To kick things off, I suggest reading this blog post. It talks about some high-level items, such as additions to the platform,... Read more →

Registration for the Forge DevCon is now open!

I have to admit it’s a little bittersweet to be talking about this year’s Forge DevCon: I’ve been involved in helping schedule some great classes for the AR/VR track, but I won’t be presenting myself – or even present at the event, at all – this year. But it’s all in a good cause: our big trip is progressing well, and – in any case – I’ve had enough time in Las Vegas for the year. :-) For those of you attending, you can now go ahead and register. If you want to attend just the DevCon, you will... Read more →

The last few days to submit your Forge DevCon class proposal

We’re now in the last few days before the AU2017 – and Forge DevCon 2017 – CFP deadline on May 17th, 2017. Submit your class today! I’m particularly interested in your proposals related to Virtual, Mixed or Augmented Reality: despite not being able to attend the event, myself, I’m still running the AR/VR track. So – if you have a cool project that involves software development for AR/VR, ideally involving the Forge platform in some way – then submit your proposal with “Software Development” as a relevant topic and “Forge DevCon” as a pre-conference event. I’ll be involved in... Read more →

The closing night party at Madame Tussauds

This year’s Autodesk Technical Summit had a couple of fantastic parties. After all, the event’s raison d’être is – beyond inspiring employees with excellent technical content, much of which I’ll be going through offline during the coming weeks – to get a bunch of introverts to speak to each other. One was held at The Roof Gardens / Babylon – a rooftop venue with live flamingoes in central London (wait, what?) – while the other was held at that venerable Londonian institution Madame Tussauds. Madame Tussauds is one of the most visited tourist attractions in London, and has been... Read more →

Autodesk Technical Summit 2017

Once again the Autodesk Technical Summit is proving to be hugely valuable and interesting. I’ve been attending a number of classes on various themes: yesterday I mostly attended sessions on AR and VR, while today I’ve been finding out about the impressive work the AutoCAD team is doing with Fabric, as well as some upcoming Forge services and some internal tools to help build neural networks. Speaking about neural networks, we had a load of fun at the local pub, last night. Brian Pene introduced a few of us to Prisma, a tool that uses a cloud-based neural network... Read more →

Heading to the UK

I’m writing this on a train to Geneva airport from where I’ll hop across to the UK for a week. This afternoon I have a meeting in London at the British Library, after which I’ll be checking into the Hilton London Metropole where Autodesk is holding its 9th (at least I think that’s right, if the first was – as I seem to recall – in 2009) annual Technical Summit. This is the internal meeting where technical staff from around the world get together to share information and learn from each other. Every year the percentage of presentation proposals... Read more →

Autodesk University has a new neighbour, the Forge DevCon!

The big news of the last week or so is that the Forge DevCon – which was held at Fort Mason in San Francisco in 2016 – is moving to Las Vegas for 2017. It will take place on November 13 & 14, i.e. Monday and Tuesday of the Autodesk University week (which in recent years has been when the DevDay and DevLab has happened). This is a good thing, in my opinion. Somewhat selfishly it’ll mean less travel for those of us coming across from Europe, but it will also make AU a more compelling, developer-centric event. I’ve... Read more →

The European DevDay in Munich

On Sunday I flew out to Munich for our annual European DevDay. For the first time I chose to fly from Bern’s airport in Belp, which is a short 45-minute drive from my home. It’s a small airport, so I could park right next to the terminal and walk a short distance to the check-in. Here’s the plane I took – an Embraer turbo-prop. Checking into the Ramada Hotel in Munich, I realised I’d stayed here before for one of the Autodesk Soccer tournaments. I’d forgotten how long the corridors were, and I was unfortunately assigned a room right... Read more →

Speak at the Autodesk Forge DevCon 2017: call for papers now open

The “call for papers” is now open for the next edition of the Forge DevCon being held at Fort Mason in San Francisco on June 27-28, 2017. Here’s a quick reminder of how the first DevCon went down, to whet your appetite. You can already pre-register your interest in attending, but I’m currently more focused on getting potential speakers to sign up to talk. I’ll once again be running the AR/VR track (as well as the associated exhibition area) for the event, so if you feel you have something to share in this space, please go ahead and submit... Read more →