Autodesk University 2026 - Days 0 & 1

On Sunday I started the journey across to Las Vegas for this year's Autodesk University. I took the train to Zurich and flew from there to San Francisco: it was actually pretty cool flying via SF for AU, as there were several Autodesk and Autodesk-adjacent folks taking the same flight.

Arriving in Las Vegas internationally is usually very smooth, but now that SFO has MPC (a real godsend, if ever there was one) but Vegas hasn't, it was actually better to come via SF (at least in terms of the options available to me - there's no direct flight into Vegas from Switzerland).

It was strange yet somehow comforting to be back in Las Vegas for AU.

When I checked in I managed to get a Sphere view room without additional cost: the person checking me in seemed to day I could have "an 88 room", but it's only when I arrived at the room that I realised she'd been saying "ADA" (Americans with Disabilities Act). It only had a walk-in shower as it was wheelchair-accessible, which was completely fine for me. I was all about the view!

And yes, I had to take a selfie with The Sphere in the background - it was a pure coincidence that the texture at that moment matched my head so well!

On the Monday morning I had some time to pick up a few things at the nearby shops (this is a habit I've picked up from when AU was held after Thanksgiving and always had great Black Friday weekend sales on). It was fun crossing over the street, where I could take a nice snap of the AU hotel but also the in-construction Hard Rock Hotel.

At this stage I know the Fashion Show Mall almost as well as I do The Venetian.

I mainly went by Macy's and was stunned to see them putting up Christmas decorations.

In September!

Back across at The Venetian I picked up my badge.

Then it was off to the Platform Leadership Forum (PLF), where I had the chance to catch up with Michael Beale - who has now left Autodesk for AWS - and Cyrille Fauvel.

I also got to meet Chris Bradley, who many of you will know as "BlackBox" on the Autodesk forums. It was fantastic to put a face to such a well-known name, Chris!

The PLF had an hour of mainstage content, followed by parallel technical and business breakouts.

I like the colourful branding for this year's AU!

At the PLF reception I got to meet up with old friends from CCTech in Pune.

The Enlivened Design team also congregated there for some time. I don't know why my phone switched to a strange mode and blurred Dagmara and Esen, but anyway.

From here I headed across to Flight Club for this year's Speaker Social. It was full of more old friends, including Mr Hurley. It's always a pleasure to see you, Shaan (and thanks for sharing this photo)!

Eitan and Adi used to work at Autodesk before founding SWAPP.AI as CEO and CTO, respectively. It was very nice to see them again after so many years.

Afterwards the Enlivened Design team met back up - this time with Andres - to have dinner at Sushi Samba. The last time I remember eating at one of these was at the OG Sushi Samba in New York with Jim Quanci, back in 2000-2001.

For the Day 1 keynote, Autodeskers were requested to watch via large viewing screens in the Expo Hall. It was actually a nice opportunity to catch up with colleagues from all over the world.

My first Braindate ended up being with Isabella and Richa. It was a wide-ranging and thought-provoking discussion - thank you both so much for taking the time to meet up.

Right after this the Enlivened Design team met with 15 customers from various AECO industry segments at a private event at Yardbird.

We presented about our research focus for around 45 minutes before diving into a collaborative workshop where we explored potential use-cases. It was a really fruitful event - thanks to all involved in organising it, as well as to those who took the time to attend it.

To wrap up the day we headed to an internal mixer event. I was basically shattered by this point, but it was a nice moment catching up with colleagues.

Autodesk has a really cool 1-minute advertisement being shown on The Sphere. I managed to capture a couple of videos of it...