Autodesk Research
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Last week I was in Dallas, Texas, for TechX 2023, Autodesk's annual internal event for technical and design staff. As the technical content shared at the event is company confidential, I'm mostly sharing pictures of people I had the good fortune to hang out with, during the course of the week. There was quite a bit of "real" work going on, too, though, so hopefully you won't come away with the impression that it was just a week-long party. Ahem. As there's no direct flight to Dallas from Switzerland, I chose to fly via Heathrow from Geneva on the Sunday…
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I'm packing my bags soon for another trip across the pond for our annual, Autodesk-internal geekfest, TechX 2023. This year's event is being held in Dallas, Texas, a city I haven't visited in perhaps 20 years. I'm sure a lot has changed – we'll see! Photo credit: Robert Hensley, CC license. In any case TechX isn't about the venue – or even about the technical content, which, while often really interesting, is also watchable remotely during and after the event – as much as the chance to (re)connect with people. In that sense it's similar to the Autodesk University experience,…
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Today is a big day for Autodesk Research – and the Dasher team, in particular – in that the path started back in 2009 has now led to Autodesk Tandem integrating core IoT-centric capabilities in their production digital twin offering. Congratulations to my old Dasher colleague, Hali Larsen, and the rest of the Tandem team! This is all really exciting. 🙂 (For more information about the historical connection between Dasher and Tandem, this post from back in January might be helpful.) But anyway – today is all about Tandem. The feature is looking really good, presumably at least partly thanks…
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It's that time of year again: the Call for Proposals for AU 2023 is now open! This year's event is back in Las Vegas – it's being held at The Venetian from November 13th-15th. Interestingly this is a Monday to Wednesday slot, presumably to avoid overlap with the Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix. I expect it's going to be very hard to find a hotel room in Las Vegas after AU is over, this year! I always find that the best way to be sure to get to AU is to get a class accepted, something that didn't happen…
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After an interesting start of the week in Copenhagen, I hurried back to Switzerland on Thursday afternoon to attend the opening of an exhibition and a following full-day symposium with many of the artists involved. The exhibition in question is called "Lighten Up! On Biology and Time" and is at the intersection of Art and Chronobiology. It's running at the EPFL Pavilions until the end of July. The opening was in the Rolex Learning Center on the EPFL campus, and the auditorium was nicely full. In his keynote address Till Roenneberg had everyone close their eyes – a risky strategy…
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On Sunday night I headed to Geneva airport to take a late flight to Copenhagen for a special Sustainability-focused APS Accelerator. I knew something was up with my flight when at 7:49pm the gate information that was promised to be shown at 7:25pm still wasn't posted. (This is Switzerland. Something was badly wrong with this scenario.) It turns out the inbound flight from Nice was delayed by an hour, which meant our flight to Copenhagen would arrive at midnight rather than 11pm. Walking through Copenhagen's beautiful airport at that time of night was highly surreal. It was completely deserted. After…
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Last week Rhys Goldstein and I had a blast joining Sol Amour and Jacob Small during the Dynamo Office Hours session on Packages of Note, something I mentioned in a recent post. We spent some time stepping through a few samples for both Space Analysis and VASA, to give a rough sense of what's involved in using each. Next week I'm heading over to Denmark for the first half of the week, where I'll be attending the APS Sustainability Accelerator in Copenhagen. If you're going to be in Copenhagen next week and want to meet up for a…
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Over on Instructables there's a student design challenge featuring the 5m Dar Smart Bridge. It's called "Make It Bridge", and the idea is that contestants – who have to be students aged between 13 and 21 and based in the USA or Canada (excluding Quebec, for some reason) – can place the geometry of the Dar bridge, or another bridge of their choosing, in surroundings to which it adds value. It sounds like a lot of fun. I like the guidance given: In choosing the site for the bridge, you might consider what it would look like from below and…
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During the next Dynamo Office Hours – being held on March 9th, 2023 at 1pm EST – Rhys Goldstein and I will be joining Tiana Dame, Sol Amour and Jacob Small to talk about "Packages of Note", which will include an introduction to the Space Analysis and VASA packages. I'm sure it's going to be a fun event – it's always a blast catching up with Sol and Jacob – and a good chance to learn about a few Dynamo packages developed and maintained by Autodesk. The focus will be on introducing the various packages – rather than going into…
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There's been a lot of talk in the news lately about 15-minute cities. This – along with the accompanying term, 20-minute neighbourhoods – is derived from a proposal by the urbanist Carlos Moreno to make cities and neighbourhoods that have all the important amenities accessible in a 15-20 minute walk. Carlos makes a number of points that resonate greatly with our own architectural-scale efforts: We need to rethink cities around the four guiding principles that are the key building blocks of the 15-minute city. First, ecology: for a green and sustainable city. Second, proximity: to live with reduced distance to…