Through the Interface

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 things... Germans are the first to complain about the state of rail in their country.)

Interestingly the initial delays/rerouting happened on the Swiss side, as there'd been a landslide in the St Gallen region. The joys of living in a 3D environment, I suppose (these things never happened when I was growing up in the (very flat) East of England). Anyway, the 30-minute buffer I had to change trains in Zurich ended up getting absorbed by taking my first train all the way through to St Gallen and hopping on a replacement bus service to St Margarethen, where I could pick up the train I was suppose to be taking from Zurich. I arrived in St Margarethen with 15 minutes to spare, so only arrived in Munich 40 minutes later than expected thanks to the DB-delay.

When I arrived in Munich it was still dry, but that soon changed. I popped by a friend's place - Petra lives walking distance from the main station - and we headed together to a lovely meze restaurant called Das Maria.

I love falafel even when it's overcooked and dry and theirs was cooked to perfection.

It was lovely catching up with Petra, although the heavens opened as we walked back so we both got a little soggy, to say the least.

I was wet and cold by the time I got to the Best Western in Arabellapark, which was more comfortable than I'd expected. It even had a nice chalet-style theme, which made me feel quite at home.

The first day of the DevCon started with a general session.

Ben Cochran kicked things off, introducing the event and its focus on data.

Shelly Mujtaba took to the stage next.

He talked about the various pillars of our data strategy.

He also provided handy QR code links to the various data roadmaps, which you should be able to scan and check out yourselves.

Tulika Gang was next, and she covered a lot of detailed information about the Autodesk Platform.

It's always good to see C# SDKs continue to be prioritised, even if I tend not to be using .NET myself, these days.

The priorities for developing the Viewer make a lot of sense to me. 

And there was summary of what's here and what's coming with data access.

My team is working a lot with Forma, these days, and I'm very invested in seeing what comes out of the bottom item in the "later" list. Interesting times!

After years of working on Project Dasher, I love seeing the investments the Tandem team is making to simplify building high-quality, connected digital twins.

I'm impatient to be able to build extensions that work with Tandem, but the JavaScript SDK for embedding the viewer is a good near-term compromise for developers.

Here's a photo the event photographer took at the end of the general session. I was having a nice chat with Susanna Holt when we became aware we had a camera pointed at us. I think that's what we were laughing about.

There were a few folks present from Esri, including my old friend Philippe Leefsma.

It was great that time was left between sessions for people to chat. These interactions are a really valuable part of the DevCon experience.

Every event needs an Autobear. In hindsight I should have made sure there was a human standing next to it for scale - it was big - but anyway.

Outside of the general sessions the agenda had 3 or 4 simultaneous breakouts in each timeslot, so I was only able to attend a quarter or so of the sessions (in fact way less than that). I know recordings were made by some presenters, so I'm hopefully there'll be a way to catch up on the great material even the most avid attendees ended up having to miss.

The first breakout I popped into was around data. As the DevCon was oversubscribed, Autodesk employees had been asked to let external guests sit before taking a seat themselves - which makes complete sense - but this did mean that I often sat around the edge of the most popular sessions.

Krzysztof Jedrzejewski and Håkon Dissen from the Forma team talked in more depth about what's happening there.

It was great to see our friends from Plex-Earth getting a shout-out (as I suppose I'm doing now ;-).

Josha van Reij talked in an another session about how Arcadis is using AI. Another packed room, so unfortunately I didn't stay around for this one.

Michael Beale presented a number of samples focused on data. Michael and Petr Broz had something like 8 sessions each at this DevCon - and every one was very well prepared and delivered. These two are heroes.

My team-mate Tomas came down from Bonn for the event. We had to join an important call during the afternoon where we shared some of our research with internal stakeholders: the organisers generously placed us in this room. After an hour in there everything I looked at outside the room was blue.

This was one of the nicer breakout rooms, I found, with lots of natural light. The first session I attended here was from Petr and Michael who talked about harnessing AI to render scenes from the APS Viewer, using 3D information such as normal vectors to get amazing results. Really cool stuff.

In the evening we were bussed across to the Bamberger Haus - one of Munich's many beer gardens - for the social event.

I really enjoyed catching up with so many old friends.

And yes, things moved back to one of the hotel bars in Arabellapark. I wasn't planning to stay out late, but that's often the way these things go. Thanks to Jakub Bielski from SOFiSTiK for sharing this photo!

The second day kicked off with another general session. This one I attended from the back, so my photos aren't as clear.

Shelly hosted a panel session with a couple of our customers who use APS.

Then Susanna Holt took to the stage. She shared a lot of very interesting information - the fact she speaks German and loves white asparagus (which is currently in season) for starters.

It's great to see some numbers showing the continued strength of Autodesk developer community. (Who I very much think of as "my people".)

The only business-focused session I attended during the DevCon was by Emil Kfouri, who talked in a very sensible way the best way to use Agile and Lean during your product development.

Petr and Michael talked about the history - and future - of connecting APS with PowerBI.

The outdoor space brought some welcome relief for folks between sessions in a jam-packed agenda.

Adam Nagy and Aditi Khedkar talked about the MFG Data Model.

Another session that was after my own heart was a customer session about building digital twins using APS.

My DevCon wrapped up with another Lebanese dinner with the APS staff who made the magic happen at this year's DevCon. They really did an incredible job.

The next morning I left the hotel before 6am to get to the main station to take the first train home.

It was fun to see both the departure...

… and destination cities painted on the train.

Leaving so early actually meant the train was only 10 minutes late arriving in Zurich, which meant I could get my connection easily and arriving home at around 1pm.

It was such a great event - I really love attending DevCon. And thanks to everyone who said "hi". Many talked about how this blog (particularly in the early days, admittedly) has helped them solve technical challenges and ultimately benefited their careers. This is the kind of feedback that keeps me motivated when I get back to my desk and dig into the less fun aspects of my job. Thank you all for that.

If you want to hear more about the DevCon, I recommend this great recap video from my colleague Lejla Secerbegovic.

 

 

See you next year!