In Dublin for the APS Accelerator

On Wednesday I came across to Dublin for the latter part of the APS Accelerator being held, here.

Jaime Rosales – who has been here with Sergio Leone and Adam Nagy from the APS Developer Advocacy and Support team – has taken some lovely pictures during this trip. The better ones in this post were taken by him.

I unfortunately just missed Peter Schlipf – who was here for the first half of the week – which was a great shame.

Here are some pictures of the city. We were mostly staying in the Hilton Garden Inn, so to get to the office we crossed the River Liffey on a footbridge that runs parallel to the Samuel Beckett Bridge.

This is the bridge we cross to get to the office, as we look back across towards the hotel.

The weather has been sunny – but very cold – since I arrived.

The Samuel Becket Bridge is lit up at nighttime with an animated display.

The famous doors of Dublin are still here, I'm happy to report.

Food in the city is as good as I remember. We went to the Pig and Hiefer Deli on my second day here: very good indeed.

The mood in the office – and the rest of Dublin – is festive.

In the office the mugs are all brand-compliant.

And the breakfasts brought in each day were good and nicely varied, too.

It was a hybrid Accelerator, so there were people attending in-person and remotely.

As I was here to help, I did spend some time giving a talk to attendees (both physically and virtually present) about Autodesk's Research into building digital twins using Forge.

On Thursday night we had an outing with the attendees, heading across to the Guinness Storehouse. I've enjoyed Guinness since becoming an adult, and it's still amazing to me that this was my first pilgrimage to the source of it all!

Here's a nice pic of all of the attendees.

The Guinness Experience starts with a fairly standard introduction to the brewing process, but gradually becomes more interesting and impressive.

One of my favourite parts was actually the area where they displayed old marketing material.

We started the consumption part of the to
ur – admittedly what we were mostly there for – with a small tasting, just to whet the appetite.

They did seem very small, but hey.

From there we headed to our Guinness Academy session, which was where things got more fun (and interesting).

We learned about why it's important to have the right glass for Guinness…

… and how to pour with the proper taps that are now used.

Obviously a big part of this is finding out when to let it settle.

Some of us were more patient than others.

Of all of us, it was decided that Adam Nagy had poured the best-looking pint. In fairness none of them looked bad to me.

Our last stop in the Storehouse was up in the Gravity Bar with its 360 degree view over Dublin. We picked up our last "included in the entrance fee" pint, without sticking around for too long… Jaime, Sergio, Adam and myself will be back there for the Autodesk Ireland Christmas Party tonight, which I'm expecting should be a lot of fun.

It was a bit surreal taking the elevator down holding our pints: for perhaps obvious reasons (which I assume relate to cleanability) they don't want people taking the escalators with drinks in their hands.