For the first time in my AU experience I was scheduled to get into Las Vegas early enough to participate in a few of the many pre-conference events. I found out after that the amount of pre-conference activity is almost as overwhelming as the actual conference. Here’s how my day went
- 5AM Up and dressed, eating breakfast, triple checking I had everything, and passed level 80 of Candy Crush
- 6AM arrived at the airport
- 7AM arrive in Calgary in the middle of a full force blizzard
- 10AM board airplane for Vegas 45 minutes late
- 11:30AM finally take off; we must have de-iced in anticipation of takeoff 3-times
- 2PM Arrive at hotel, check-in, register for AU, and make it to first session (1-hour late)
- 2PM – 4PM ADN3589 Breakout Manufacturing
- 4:15PM – 6PM AU Mentor / Freshman Orientation
- 6PM – 6:30PM NVIDIA and Dell AU Cocktail Reception
- 6:30PM – 8PM AU Speaker Reception
- 8PM – 10PM Blogger & Social Media Social
That’s right, got into Calgary in a full-out blizzard. About 30-flights across Alberta had already been cancelled by the time I got to Calgary and many more got cancelled after I left. In a weird twist of fate we were told that because of the many domestic flights cancelled it opened the windows of opportunity for the international flights to leave. There was a round of applause when we finally took off.
Because of the delay in getting into Las Vegas I was unable to attend the Vault Gunslinger I was invited too. A “Gunslinger” is a way for Autodesk to get a group of people into a room and have them completely rip apart the software, letting Autodesk know what they like and what they don’t. I’ve never attended a gunslinger before and was really looking forward to it.
I can’t talk much about the ADN breakout as most of it is under NDA (non-disclosure). However there wouldn’t really be much I would talk about. Autodesk highlighted (from a programming perspective) what you can currently do with the various manufacturing products and what’s coming in the upcoming releases. I don’t think I even saw one piece of code, just a lot of PowerPoints. I will say keep an eye out on the next version or two of Vault, there are some very cool things coming (well, as cool as Vault can be)
For the first time I attended the AU Freshman Orientation, participating in a mentor role. I was shocked by the amount of people that attended the event. There must have been over a thousand people there and they were all bright-eyed and bushy tailed eager to get their AU experience going. I’m glad I did this once, not sure I’ll do it again.
The NVIDIA Cocktail Reception was very disappointing. Why? Two laptops in the corner of the room not really doing anything. I expected a presentation, wanted to see what was hot and cool. Got a drink and a short speech from one of the sales people. I can get more from the NVIDIA website.
The Blogger and Social Media Reception was great just from the aspect of all the people I was able to meet and talk to.
So that is my recap of Day “0” of Autodesk University. As you just read not much to report, but it was good just because of the contacts and the conversations.
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