Autodesk
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There was a lot of excitement, last week, when Autodesk announced a $200 million investment in Dr. Fei-Fei Li's World Labs startup. Just to get this out there from the get-go: I have no special information about this investment - I heard about it at the same time as anyone outside the company, and was in no way involved in negotiations or discussions relating to it. I just thought it helpful to gather together a few references to public information that might be of interest (and of use) to people. The first reference I found worth a read is this article…
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My team's research focus is on "simulating the human experience of design" (with respect to the designed space or object, rather than the process of designing). We call this "Enlivened Design", which is intended to indicate our interest in simulating and predicting how design can support human flourishing and well-being. The Enlivened Design team is delighted to welcome our first Visiting Scholar to Autodesk Research. Dr Fiona Zisch, with whom we've been collaborating for quite some time, between the 100 Minds in Motion project and our Encoding Experience events, has joined the Enlivened Design team for a period of several…
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Registration for DevCon 2026 is now officially open. The event will be held from April 15th-16th 2026 in the historic Beurs van Berlage conference centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. There's an additional pre-conference day on the 14th, so make sure to plan on attending that, too. Register today to save your spot and take advantage of early-bird pricing until February 20th! I said some time ago that I wasn't planning on presenting at this year's DevCon, but, well, I changed my mind and submitted a talk just before the deadline. I'm happy to say it was accepted. I'll be presenting…
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Yesterday I felt well enough to get myself out of bed before the sunrise to head across to Basel for this year's Swissbau, a biennial construction conference for the Swiss market. It was easier than in past years, as there's now a direct train from Neuchatel to Basel. (We used to have to change in Biel/Bienne). The journey was spectacular: as we skirted the Jura mountains, we went from dark and foggy to sunny and frosty (even snowy, in places). Arriving at the main station in Basel I had a few minutes to catch the tram out to the Messeplatz.…
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There's a public Call for Proposals now open - and will stay open for much of the month of December, closing on the 28th - for people to speak at DevCon 2026 in Amsterdam from April 15th-16th, 2026. I actually don't think I'll be submitting anything for this year's event - somewhat frustratingly I don't feel I've been working on anything that makes sense to present there - but I'm very much hoping to come along to attend sessions and meet with members of the developer community. If you're motivated to speak at DevCon, be sure to check out the…
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The last post talked about the trip across to Santa Fe and the first few days settling in. Now that I'm back from the week away, I've written up the second part of the mini-series, which covers the main part of the trip and the return. As I was up early with jet lag on my second morning in Santa Fe, I headed across the car park to "the gym" at the resort. I use inverted commas because it really wasn't much of a gym, and by the time I arrived it was already full of Autodeskers (three of my…
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On Saturday I went to the station in foggy Neuchatel to take the train to Zurich. From there I was heading to the town of Santa Fe in New Mexico - somewhere I'd never been - for our annual meeting of the leaders working on our various research areas. There are no direct flights to Santa Fe - it's a very small domestic-only airport in the US - and the best I could do was fly to San Francisco and take a smaller plane to Albuquerque. Which is only an hour's drive from Santa Fe. I was really apprehensive about…
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I was up early all three days I stayed in Nashville, irrespective of how late I ended up staying out the night before. I was pleased with myself for getting to the gym on Days 0, 1 and 2 of this year's AU. I was staying in the Omni Hotel, which happened to be the location of my Tuesday afternoon session. Which meant I could check out the room before I even made it across to the main conference venue. This year's venue - Music City Center - was really quite nice. The AU team did a solid job of…
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On Sunday I took the train across to Zurich to start the journey to Nashville for Autodesk University 2025. Everything went smoothly, to start with - I was through ZRH security in very little time, which is always nice. The person who checked my passport at the E gates (a special check specifically for people flying to the US) was an engineer who seemed very excited to speak to someone from Autodesk (despite being a SolidWorks user himself). Anyway, I eventually boarded the first leg to Chicago. My first movie choice for this trip was The Salt Road, which had…
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On Sunday I'll be heading to the US for a pretty full-on week, split between Autodesk University 2025 in Nashville, from Monday to Wednesday, and the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) 2025 conference in San Diego, from Thursday to Saturday. I asked AI to create an image morphing Nashville with San Diego and it came up with this. I know neither city well enough to recognize whether it succeeded, to be honest. There weren't any direct flights available between the various legs, so this is what I ended up with. It could always be worse, I suppose. On Monday…