As I mentioned last week, on Friday I headed across to this year's AEC Hackathon Zurich Edition in the city of Winterthur, about 2 hours from my home.
The event was held in one of the buildings on the ZHAW campus.
The space was fantastic: an old factory that was once used to maintain trains (it's just next to the train tracks going through Winterthur).
I was only able to come for the first evening of the weekend's event, as I had a prior personal commitment during the rest of the weekend.
Friday had a number of talks focused on the use of open source in the AEC industry. One of these talks was given by Tom Van Mele, who I've known for many years through his work at the Block Research Group at ETH Zurich.
Tom talked about some of the projects developed using the BRG's open source technology, which included the NEST building in Dübendorf.
Later on in the evening was the official opening of the AEC Hackathon. My old friend Damon Hernandez - who I've now known for a decade, I realise - talked about the history of AEC Hackathons around the world.
There were a number of challenges presented by sponsors, including this one from the SIA (the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects).
There was a lightning round where people could pitch their ideas and start the process of forming teams.
Attendance and engagement was really strong: I could already tell it was going to be a productive weekend (for those who stayed to participate).
My main purpose was to reconnect with some old friends. It was a nice surprise to get to hang out with John Egan, who was also passing through for the evening. I've also had many discussions with Aske Strandberg, over the years, but we'd never actually met in person.
I was really happy to reconnect with Alex Walzer, who has been an Autodesk Technology Center Resident in San Francisco and was at CAAD Futures 2023 in Delft.
Another blast from the past was seeing Christopher Diggins, who used to be involved with Media and Entertainment at Autodesk many moons ago. I was really not expecting to bump into him here!
It was a whirlwind few hours, but really fun. I hopped back on a train to head to the mountains (this took me a little under 3 hours), ready for the weekend's fun. Part of me was a bit disappointed about not being at the Hackathon, but I got over it pretty quickly.
To find out more about the weekend's goings-ons from people who were there throughout, I recommend these posts on LinkedIn: Damon Hernandez, Maximilian Vomhof, Aske Strandberg. Congratulations to the whole team for putting on such a successful event!
The next AEC Hackathon is in less than a month in Copenhagen - Aske is busy coordinating that one, right now - and I do expect some of my colleagues from Oslo to participate. Now's a good time time to sign up, if you're interested in joining.
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