Personal
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Most of this week I've been heads-down trying to finish a sample demonstrating the API that's coming for the new Autodesk 360 viewer (of which we saw a sneak peek in this recent post), so today I don't have much to talk about. The sample is pretty cool and involves my favourite car. But hopefully you'll be able to see it in action before too long, so there's really no need to say more about it, for now. ๐ A good portion of this blog's readership is currently grilling meat and celebrating the 4th of July, so I won't beat…
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I woke up this morning thinking "it's about that time of year". Sure enough, it was eight years ago today that I made the first post to this blog. [This reminds me that the blog really could use a face-lift, if only for my photograph: I keep meaning to get a new profile snap taken, as I now have significantly more facial hairโฆ nothing too crazy, just a small part of my ongoing southerly follicular migration ;-). And as I'm bound to look older โ especially as I'll forgo the Photoshopping my photographer friend insisted on, last time around โ…
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I'm nearing the end of my trip to Toronto: our annual internal Technical Summit was a great success โ there were 500 attendees, this year, and as always is a really good opportunity to find out about other parts of the organisation and to meet new people โ and today I've been hanging out at a specially hosted open house at Autodesk's King Street office. To mark the end of the summit, last night there was an event at the Ontario Science Centre, where we had lots of fun experimenting with some interesting "reality capture" technology. They had a special…
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Last week was very quiet for me: starting with Memorial Day in the US meant a gentle start for me in Europe, too, and the week ended on Wednesday evening as we then had our own long weekend for Ascension, here in Switzerland. It was nice to have some time off just before a work trip: I'm getting up before dawn tomorrow to head across to Toronto for Autodesk's annual internal Technical Summit (generally a really interesting and useful event โ I'm very much looking forward to it). Over the last few years โ as those of you who follow…
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My good friend and colleague, Christer Janson, was named 123D's Maker of the Day a couple of weeks ago. This post is to congratulate Christer but also to talk about Christer's background at Autodesk and the key role he plays in the AutoCAD team. I met Christer during the second round interview for my first job at Autodesk, back in 1995. I'd flown across to Switzerland for the interview, although the job itself was to be in the UK: it was a couple more years before I managed to move to Neuchatel for the first time. Back then Christer was…
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It's been a great week of holidays, so far. There's been a lot of driving: we booked our flights in and out of Stansted โ as our main purpose was to attend a good friend's wedding in Suffolk โ but fairly late on we decided to drive up to Cumbria to visit my grandmother. My birthday dinner at The Windmill Inn in Redmile โ a pub used to film certain episodes of the classic UK series, Auf Wiedersehen Pet. As my old friend Charles McAuley used to say, the difference between England and America is that in England 100 miles…
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This is without a doubt the coolest office Autodesk has anywhere in the world. Pier 9, on San Francisco's waterfront, houses the Autodesk Consumer Group, including the Tinkercad and Instructables teams, as well as members of Autodesk Research and visiting artists-in-residence. And it has the most phenomenal workshops, kitted out with cutting-edge technology. I'd been hoping to visit for some time but this was really my first real opportunity since its official opening back in September. I wandered across from our 1 Market office (which is also pretty cool, but relatively lacking in toys ๐ with Gaurav Sachdeva, a colleague…
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It's nice being back in the Bay Area. I got in on Monday night and took BART into the city, checking into the Hyatt Regency (just across the street from our 1 Market office). That first evening I caught up with my old team โ the DevTech managers, now under Stephen Preston's leadership โ for dinner and then went for an over-priced green beer with my former boss, Jim Quanci. It was St. Patrick's Day, after all. ๐ Then it was a short night's sleep before the usual jetlag woke me at 3:30am. On the plus side, it gave me…
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Many of you will have seen last week's announcement about the creation of the Autodesk Foundation. The foundation has been set up to formalise something that's long been part of Autodesk's culture: supporting charitable causes through direct investment, software donation and matching of employee gifts. This formalisation will also bring greater alignment around our support for the broader design community, which is something that's new. I'm particularly excited about changes being made to Autodesk's employee volunteering program. As an Autodesk employee I'm able to spend 4 hours per month of company time volunteering for qualifying nonprofit organisations (political and religious…
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Yesterday I had a really interesting day. I spent it at Geneva's Palexpo exhibition centre, helping Morgan Motor Company set up their stand for this year's Salon International de l"Auto & Accessoires (i.e. the 84th Geneva Motor Show). It was really cool being there before even the press were allowed in (they get to attend today and tomorrow), while most of the cars were still under wraps: I've been to the show โ and visited the Morgan stand โ before, but this year was very exciting for me as it marks the culmination of some months of collaboration between Morgan…