Dynamo
-
This week I've finally accepted the winter is over… here's a snap from yesterday, my last day on the slopes for this season. It's now time to think about spring, and where better to do that than Amsterdam? Alright, there's no need to mention say Paris or Osaka… spring is lovely in lots of places, but I happen to be going to Amsterdam. So there. Next week it's once again the Autodesk DevCon at the excellent and iconic Beurs Van Berlage conference venue, a short walk from Amsterdam Centraal station. In fact I'll be walking across from there on Tuesday…
-
I'm starting to get quite excited about Autodesk DevCon 2026 in Amsterdam. Just getting there is going to be an experience: I'm taking the NightJet service - a sleeper train - from Basel to Amsterdam, arriving the morning of the pre-conference day, during which I'll be hanging out at the Dynamo Hackathon. I've taken night trains in the past - several times in India and once from London to Edinburgh - but this will be my first time taking one in mainland Europe. I do hope I arrive rested. 🙂 Anyway, the Dynamo Hackathon is going to be a really…
-
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…
-
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…
-
If you're planning on attending AU 2025 in Nashville - and have an interest in software development, whether via code, low-code or no-code - then be sure to plan on being there for the pre-conference day on September 15th. There will be something for you. The Autodesk Platform Services team have organized their first Platform Leadership Forum, which will be held during the afternoon of the Monday before AU. You can find out specific details - including how to buy your ticket - in this blog post. If you're more interested in rolling up your sleeves and building something -…
-
Last week prospective speakers who submitted class proposals for AU 2025 - which is being held in Nashville from September 16-18 - were notified whether the sessions were accepted or not. For this year's AU I'd submitted two classes. One was a look at various technologies we've been exploring to capture the human experience of the built environment, going back to projects such as the one we did with The Bentway, but also looking at more recent efforts involving crowdsourcing, EEG and VR. Unfortunately this class was declined. My other proposal was to repeat the session I delivered at the…
-
This week I'm spending time in Amsterdam and London. On Sunday I headed across to Geneva airport and checked into a hotel that's a gentle 10-minute walk from the terminal. It was the first time I'd stayed there, and I admit I was pleasantly surprised. The atrium was nice and I even had a cheeky sauna before sleeping. The alarm going off soon after 5am was a bit of a shock, but I felt rested enough. The walk across to the terminal was pleasant, considering the early hour. There weren't yet cars on the roads. Security was really quick, so…
-
In Europe we're about to celebrate the long Easter weekend, so things have been a little busy finishing up work in a number of areas, especially as soon after I'll be heading across to the US for the rest of the month. I managed to submit two Autodesk University 2025 proposals - let's hope that at least one of them gets accepted. I was also (apparently) the first DevCon presenter to record their session ahead of next month's event. I'm very happy to have gotten that one out of the way before my travels. I haven't had time to properly…
-
While at the time of writing I'm not yet on the official speaker list, I'm happy to say that I will be presenting a session at the Autodesk DevCon that's being held in Amsterdam from May 20th-21st, 2025. I'll also be attending the Dynamo Hackathon on May 19th as a warm-up. My session is entitled "Supercharge your browser-based APS applications with WebAssembly" and will explore how you can take C++ libraries and build them into WebAssembly modules to bring impressive capabilities to your browser-based Autodesk Platform Services applications. Over the last few years I've spent quite a bit of time…
-
On Friday I did my annual (well, it's actually only the second time, but I get the feeling it's becoming annual) trip to Winterthur for the Friday-night kick-off of this year's AEC Hackathon Zürich. The focus of the first set of Friday afternoon talks was on the wood industry and its challenges - a fascinating topic to hear about first-hand. I was actually more interested by the second set of talks, which were focused on digitalization challenges, including a really nice session by Michael Drobnik from Herzog & de Meuron. As last year there were lots of hackers present, and…