Through the Interface

This is "one of those weeks", with presentations in Munich on Wednesday, Barcelona on Thursday and London on Friday. I haven't had a week like this since the old DevDays tours. The good old days!

I arrived on Tuesday night at Munich Airport.

Wednesday's event was the Automotive Innovation Forum in Munich. It's the first time I've attended this event, and it proved to be very interesting: around 560 automotive customers came to the Hilton at Munich Airport to learn about our automotive-related offerings (primarily Alias and VRED but also our generative design tools).

The day opened with various keynotes. I particularly enjoyed those by Rivian and BMW design.

I was part of the "Experience" track, which was kicked off by Daniel Darancou from Qiantu, an emerging Chinese EV company:

I was asked to talk about "Digital Twins for Factories of the Future", which largely meant talking about Dasher 360 and how it's progressed from buildings to infrastructure and onwards to factories.

Romeo Sanchez from our consulting team shared this photo of me talking (thanks, Romeo!):

On the exhibit floor, the VRED team had created an HDR scan of the environment and set up a cluster to do realtime raytracing of a new electric SUV from NIO. Check the screen above the car for a comparison between virtual and real.

I had to leave fairly promptly after my session to get to my flight for Barcelona, which thankfully went smoothly.

After last week's windowless room in Stockholm, the hotel gods were smiling on me. On checking into the Barcelona Princess – the hotel right across from the conference centre hosting OTx EMEA – the person at the hotel reception said "you ordered a room with a view…"

Me: "I did?" (Thinking: that's why the cheapest room on offer was so expensive…)

Receptionist (after consulting with her manager): "We've given you an upgrade to a master suite."

Me: "Yay!" (I don't know whether this was said aloud or not.)

It turns out my suite has a baclony with a hot tub. Woohoo!

This would have been amazing, were it not for the fact that a) I'm staying just one night, b) it's raining and c) the hot tub is empty. Oh well – I really shouldn't complain, I have plenty of windows.

After dropping my bags I headed across to the OTx dinner reception with its awards ceremony. I had the good fortune to catch up with (from left to right, not including me) Nono Martinez, Lilli Smith and Zach Kron, who were all here to talk to attendees about Refinery.

The band the OTx team had arranged was fantastic: a cover band with genuine talent and really great breadth.

In the morning I'll be presenting about Autodesk Research projects related to Generative Design, before heading across to London to help out with the Dynamo Hackathon there.