On Sunday I took the train across to Zurich to start the journey to Nashville for Autodesk University 2025.
Everything went smoothly, to start with - I was through ZRH security in very little time, which is always nice. The person who checked my passport at the E gates (a special check specifically for people flying to the US) was an engineer who seemed very excited to speak to someone from Autodesk (despite being a SolidWorks user himself).
Anyway, I eventually boarded the first leg to Chicago.
My first movie choice for this trip was The Salt Road, which had Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs losing their home and walking along the South Coast of England. A lovely film!
The second was also very good. The English title was The Promised Land, but I strongly suspect the original Danish title was something else entirely.
The funniest thing is that it was a film about potato farming. Albeit a highly engaging one. (The story is actually more fundamental than that - I'm being a bit cheeky - but I very much enjoyed the pace and focus of this film.)
I napped for a bit and then wrapped up with the latest Mission Impossible.
Despite leaving 30 minutes late from Zurich, we caught the time up, and more, arriving 30 minutes ahead of schedule at Chicago O'Hare.
I thought that 2.5 hours would be enough time for me to get through immigration, customs and security, and still have plenty of time to sit around bored at the gate. It turns out I only just made my connection.
Immigration was really slow: I was asked lots more questions on arrival than I had been at any point on entering the US over the last year, for whatever reason… was it a local thing or a more nationwide shift in sentiment? I found myself having to try to log into my AU app to show the immigration official the conference I was due to attend. Next time I'll go against my own previous advice and print something out ahead of time.
I then had to change terminals (5 to 1) and go back through security, which was also very slow.
But I made it to my gate just as it was boarding. The second flight was short and sweet, but I felt properly frazzled by the time we arrived.
Something that felt different about the journey in was the lack of obvious AU-affiliated folks… when going to Vegas I would *always* aim to transit via Heathrow, mainly because I have lived through some ugly East Coast transit situations, over the years (especially when AU was in November-December, when the chance of Weather - note the capitalization - was significant). I would have done something similar for this trip but I wasn't given a decent option by our travel system. Travelling into Vegas via London always felt really fun - the party basically started at the gate. I don't remember how I travelled to AU in New Orleans or San Diego, but I suspect it was similar to this trip into Nashville.
Once I got settled into the Omni Hotel, I stopped by the bar for a pint and a burger before heading up to sleep.
I slept really well - I woke up at 3am for a few minutes but managed to sleep again, waking up at 6:30am.
I usually manage to hit the gym at AU for the first couple of mornings: when the jet lag is strongest and the effects of the night before the weakest.
At 8am I popped across to the main conference centre to pick up my AU badge, and then walked a few blocks to the Renaissance Hotel for the pre-conference events.
I passed by the APS team, who were busy charging footwear for the afternoon's Technical Leadership Forum. (I know - aren't we all just living in the future? 😉
At 8:30am the Dynamo and APS Hackathon was kicking off properly.
I was there in case anyone wanted to do something with VASA.
People were mostly focused elsewhere, so I actually had quite a bit of time to catch up with colleagues and get a head start on this blog post.
I was very happy to get some time with Sol and Rachel Amour. My favourite couple at Autodesk.
During a break I popped down to meet Amadeu, an old friend who was over from Paris with his colleague Adrien.
After lunch I headed out towards the PLF.
Inside the ballroom I had the great luck of bumping into my old friend Shaun Hurley. It was such a pleasure to catch up with him, however briefly.
Cyrille Fauvel realised that his "speaker shoes" were slightly too small, so kindly offered to give them to me once he'd hobbled off the stage.
We tried them on, and while still a little snug, for me it was much more of a cinderella moment.
After being introduced by Julian Brun - who did a fantastic job of managing things - Ben Cochran took the stage to start the mainstage PLF proper.
Next up was my Autodesk Research colleague, Tonya Custis, who talked about AI.
A customer from WPS talked next (sorry for not having taken a photo!) and was followed by Joe Speicher, our Chief Sustainability Officer.
In the break I bumped into friends from CCTech, and promised Pratik he'd make it onto this blog.
In the more developer-centric of the two breakouts, Cyrille introduced the sub-talks.
Petr Broz was fooling around. Presumably a bit like I was.
Our platform group's Chief Architect, Brett Adam, gave a brief but enlightening talk about MCP, including the announcement that Autodesk will be delivering our own set of MCP servers for various APIs and services.
I headed back to the Dynamo Hackathon after Brett's talk to hear the team presentations. There were some great projects from the various teams:
- DynaHopper
- We Make Good Points
- Almost.exe
- Aftershock
- Monsters of Disaster
- AutoCATS
- The Diet Geeks
I didn't stay for the awards, as I knew I'd only have a short time at the PLF reception event. Judging must have been hard - the standard was consistently good.
On my way down to the Omni Hotel from the PLF I bumped into my old friend Saikat, who I hired into Autodesk probably 21 years ago. It's always a pleasure to see him, still flourishing in life and at the company.
I then managed to bump into Zach Kron on his way back up the hill. We decided to head to the Speaker Social together before going our respective ways for dinner.
The Speaker Social was very conveniently located basically 10 floors directly below my hotel room.
It's my once-a-year chance to catch up with old-timers - and in this case both Autodesk Expert Elites - Shaun and Donnie.
Towards the end of the Social I popped upstairs to drop my bag. I'm so glad I did - I ended up being completely transfixed by a murmuration of starlings happening right outside my window. I'm going to do my best to come back up at dusk to see this again, if I can! Wow!
Some colleagues from Research were having craft beers and burgers at the Black Tap. By the time I met them Liviu was dealing with dessert. I didn't envy him!
Here I am with Andy, Liviu, Rob, Gareth and Pete.
Nashville is a fun city. In the area we were you can't walk 10 metres without stumbling on a bar with really good live music.
We ended up in Ole Red, where we experienced Wild Bill and the Bruisers. A real treat! In the meantime my manager, Tony Ruto, caught up with us: the taxi queue at the airport had been insane, apparently, presumably due to the influx of AU attendees for Day 1. At least he could grab a beer with us before we all turned in.
At around 10pm I headed back to the Omni - which is just opposite the Conference Center - to finish up this post and try to get as good a night as possible before my busiest day at this year's AU.
That's it for Day 0. Let's see what the event itself brings!
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