After having spent a really interesting week in Pittsburgh and a great Halloween in San Francisco, on Sunday night I flew - on the same flight as my old friend Gonzalo Martinez - to Portland.
Portland International Airport (PDX) is a gorgeous space designed and built using our technology.
We stayed in the Kimpton Vintage Hotel and walked across the Morrison Bridge each day - about a 20-25 minute walk - to get to our Portland office. We ended up being really lucky with the weather.
Many of the bridges nearby can be opened for marine traffic to pass beneath. The Morrison Bridge is a drawbridge or bascule bridge.
Not every day was clear, but it was always worth the walk.
Sometimes there were just a few of us...
… at other times we were in larger groups.
Coming back across we had a great view of the White Stage sign (or the Dasher sign, as I liked to think of it).
Here's a snap I took with my old friend Fikret.
The Portland office is in a really interesting location. You can see it from many of the roads and highways going past.
Here's a view from the other side, as you approach on foot.
From the roof you have a view across to downtown Portland, as well as onto various road and river arteries.
The view changes a lot based on the weather,
Our event in the Portland office was in the Autodesk Conference Experience (ACE) space.
It's a comfortable, flexible space that was pretty much perfect for our needs.
We reconfigured the space a few times, during the week, depending on the type of session being held.
These sessions were with a fairly traditional layout.
This one was a lot more interactive and casual.
We event held a few sessions on the roof, weather-permitting.
Snacks were all too readily available. I tried not to overdo the donuts...
… but the "Pumpkin Panna Cotta Brûlée" donut was just too tempting. That's an Old-Fashioned in the pipette-based the injection system. Yum.
This week was a precious opportunity to catch up with colleagues I only see for much of the rest of the year on Zoom.
There were a number of social events to facilitate these interactions, once the evening came.
The opening reception was at the hotel, which was very welcome for those of us feeling jetlagged.
The second night's social event - the night of the mid-term results - was at a local golf-themed bar.
There was a really fun 9-hole mini-golf course that many of us enjoyed.
Watching the results come in was really interesting.
A fun fact: back in the day Autodesk and CNN were early adopters of Perceptive Pixel screens. The on-screen gentleman on the right (John King?) had a phone call with the foreground person on the left, holding a beer (John Schmier) to get some pointers on getting it working.
It was an enjoyable evening, and not only because many people found the results to be good news.
The most formal evening event was after Day 3, where we had a sit-down meal at Andina, a Peruvian restaurant. The mixologist made a delicious pisco sour.
The dinner was a our most formal one, but still served family-style. Which tells you something about how formal this group gets.
It's always a great group of people.
Here's a random photo my friend Josh took of me on the roof.
Our last evening's optional dinner - for those who couldn't get earlier flights - was at Tusk, a mediterranean restaurant.
Bryan Crewes from our PDMS org is based in Toronto, and kindly took Dagmara and I to a few places in Portland he really likes. The first was an alien-themed pub with a fun pinball area.
The second was a gothic speakeasy hidden inside Black Cat Frozen Custard. We knew the current password but arrived just after last orders! Next time we're in Portland we'll make sure we get there in time - it sounds super fun.
During my days in Portland I did get the chance to walk around quite a bit - even the evening when it rained.
It's a nice city to walk around, although it clearly has an ongoing struggle with homelessness.
Overall it feels safe and remains very walkable, though.
Bryan had mentioned that Matt Groening - creator of The Simpsons - took inspiration for many of his characters' names from the city's street names.
I was therefore very happy to stumble across NW Flanders Street on my wanderings.
On Friday afternoon I arrived back at PDX for my flight to SFO.
It had started raining, so it was clearly time to leave.
I had accepted my default seat - a window seat right at the back of the plane. It was great to be able to take photos without the wing in the way, though, especially as we went over the city of San Francisco.
The onward flight to Zurich was uneventful: I'd booked a window seat and was lucky to have an empty middle seat next to me… I even managed to doze for a few hours. I got home on Saturday evening, happy to see my family and walk my dog. I don't currently have any travel planned for the rest of the year, so I'm looking forward to settling back into a local rhythm for the coming weeks.
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