Through the Interface

On Sunday morning I headed across to Geneva Airport for my trip to Autodesk University 2024 in San Diego.The trip itself didn't start very smoothly: I couldn't check in online - I suspect having two passports, only one of which has a valid US ESTA - meant that the airline flagged me for manual review. I really need to be more careful with my API (not the one I work with usually 😉 in future.Anyway, this check-in fail led to a cascade of irritations, from having to pay for a seat (to avoid being assigned a middle seat on a long-haul flight) to going earlier to the airport than I would have otherwise (and buying a new train ticket, as the advance one I'd bought wasn't valid on the earlier train) and then having to check my carry-on (I was in boarding group 9 for my first flight - I'd snagged a seat near the front - so the check-in person absolutely insisted he couldn't let me take my case on the plane). With a delay on the flight out of GVA I was paranoid about being stuck without my luggage in San Diego.

The flights themselves were comfortable enough.

The connections was super-tight in Heathrow - despite not having to change terminals - but I made it, just. And my seat on the second flight was in the last row of the cabin, so I could stay reclined with zero guilt.

It was early evening in San Diego when we arrived, and the light was lovely.

My suitcase was one of the first ones out (presumably hold luggage works on a LIFO system), which was a huge relief.

We then took a Lyft to the Marriott, snapping a couple of photos of the ocean front, along the way.

After a quick dinner I had a very decent first night's sleep before the Dynamo Day Hackathon on the day before AU itself (let's call it Day 0).

The Marriott Marquis is right next to the San Diego Convention Center, where this year's AU is being held. The Dynamo Day Hackathon was held in the other hotel near the Center, the Hilton Bayside.

The Dynamo team had some temporary tattoos printed, that apparently work very well on shaved heads. (In fact they work almost too well - I'm started to wonder just how temporary they are, two days later.)

The Dynamo Product Management team introduced the day.

Sol announced the Beta availability of Dynamo as a Service (DaaS), and the fact that VASA is one of the few packages currently available for it. This is something I'll dig into in a future post - it effectively allows developers of Dynamo graphs to deploy them to their users without them having a working local Dynamo host… this is hugely valuable when working with browser-based Dynamo clients such as Forma. Really, really cool!

I think Sol secretly wants to get a sleeve tattoo. It would look good on him!

The energy in the room was fantastic. I was mainly there to support teams choosing to use VASA - of which there didn't end up being any - but I did appreciate having the time to re-connect with people and get over my jet lag.

At 3pm the shareouts started. I'll share the photos I took of the (spoiler!) winning teams.

The special mention for innovation went to the InFORMAnts, who created an LLM-driven prototype that iteratively generates Dynamo nodes to solve a problem expressed as a text prompt.The special mention for the most fun project went to Let's Play a Dynamo Game, who created an awesome quiz to test Revit user's product knowledge, with some nasty consequences if you got the question wrong.  

The third place team was ?ext:daas, who used Dynamo to move data between Civil 3D, Forma and Revit.

The second place team was the Utah Teapot Programmers. They did something related to acoustic analysis (I think, anyway!).

The first place team was EcoMatic, who worked on the problem of sourcing imagery and materials for architectural projects.

Here's the announcement of the special mentions.

And the winners.

After the day was over, everyone went out to a nearby balcony space to catch up on exposure to fresh air and ultraviolet radiation.

It was a super fun day. I really enjoyed catching up with members of this really vibrant community!

After this was over we headed back to the Convention Center for the AU welcome event.

It was held in the Community Zone. One of the popular exhibits related to creating with LEGO bricks.

After this I headed to the Speaker Social event, where I ended up having some really interesting chats with fellow AU speakers. By this time I was getting really tired, so opted to head back and maximize sleep before presenting the following day.

In the morning I joined the General Session of AU Day 1.

I'd been chatting outside with a member of our Sales team and a customer of his, and we somehow found ourselves in a queue to get into the General Session. It was quite surreal - one minute we were alone and the next minute there were people to our left and to our right. So we did the only sensible thing and followed the flow of people into the enormous mainstage space.

It's always nice to see my Research colleague and friend Pete Storey show up in the AU mainstage visuals.

The Autodesk Research efforts around AI - especially Project Bernini - got a lot of airtime.

I enjoy seeing images that refer back to our long history. Part of me wishes I didn't recall so much of the stuff to the left of these image, though.

Leaving the General Session the event space suddenly seemed really full.

The session area was really long. When I first went looking for the room we'd be using, it seemed to go on forever.

I later realized there was a quicker way to get there - I'd just taken the wrong escalator.

The configuration of our room was interesting. In Vegas it feels as though this would have been a long, narrow room rather than a short, wide one. It wasn't a bad layout, though!

I was really happy to be presenting with Håvard Høiby from the Forma team. He's not only extremely talented and capable, he's also a thoroughly nice chap.

Håvard did a lot of live-coding during his part of the session, which I always find a super-effective way to communicating the value (and above all simplicity) of an API or SDK.

I found Håvard's segment really engaging.

A nice surprise was catching up with Thilak Rao, one of the people I worked closely with after the ADN team recruited him and his colleagues in Bangalore. I'd seen Thilak enter the room, but hadn't immediately recognized him.

The next session I attended was the APS mainstage.

One of the key announcements was the date and location for next year's Autodesk DevCon: it'll be held in Amsterdam from May 20-21, 2025. The last time I attended an Autodesk Developer Conference in Amsterdam was just after I joined the company, back in 1995. I hope I get to attend this one, too!

If you're interested in participating - and develop actively with APS - then be sure to submit your class proposals. These are being opened up to the broader community for the first time.

Another old friend is Fernando Malard. I was very happy to get to hang out with him for some time.

We wandered around the Expo for some time.

It was great to see the Workshop XR booth getting a lot of attention. The tool has just been released, and we're hoping to use it to supercharge our human experience research efforts.

The Autodesk AI booth was worth a visit, too.

It was possible to take Project Bernini for a spin or simply check our some of its output in 3D-printed form.

I also got to catch up with my friends from CCTech in Pune.

After this I headed with colleagues to Oceanside.

It was really refreshing to hang out by the ocean for some time. A big change from Vegas!

We stayed for a few local beers on a rooftop bar.

Some of us headed briefly to a karaoke bar for one last drink - a lot of Autodeskers were singing, but I decided to head back to the hotel and prioritize sleep once again. By the time Thursday night's party comes around I'll be in great shape, no doubt!