Personal
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Some weeks ago I joined Evan Troxel for a couple of hours to chat about my journey and some of the projects I've worked on. I've enjoyed the TRXL podcast for some time, so it was a real honour to be invited on. Our discussion has just been published as episode 152. If you prefer video, here's the version from YouTube: Evan's a great interviewer: I enjoyed the session a great deal and I hope you do, too. Listening back to it I realize there's a lot more we could have talked about… hopefully Evan will…
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I woke up this morning to the sad news that Autodesk's founder and first CEO, John Walker, has died. You can find the announcement and brief obituary here. I can't claim to have known John very well, despite us living less than 15km from each other in Switzerland. I did spend a very memorable evening with him back in September of 2008, which led to this series of posts about Autodesk's early history: Part 1 - Autodesk's early history Part 2 - AutoCAD's architecture & APIs Part 3 - Autodesk's eco-system and strategy Part 4 - Past and future opportunities…
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The awesome AEC Hackathon folks are running an event near Zurich this weekend, February 2-4, 2024. This Hackathon will actually be at the ZHAW campus in Winterthur - which is actually a completely different Swiss city that's admittedly only 20 minutes away from Zurich by train. So the branding isn't completely off, in a global sense. 🙂 We're in the middle of the snowy season, here in Switzerland, so I'm "committed" to being on the slopes with my family. While I won't be there for the weekend itself, I will be stopping by Winterthur for the Friday afternoon talks on…
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I talked in the last post about the fact I grew up in Norfolk. A few years before he passed, my Dad moved to the Newmarket area, but prior to that I grew up in a small town on the edge of the Cambridgeshire fens called Downham Market. For the first time in over a decade I had a good reason to head back to Downham. (While I've called it "home" in the title of this post, it really isn't anymore.) Two old school friends managed to coordinate being back in the UK - from New Zealand and Malaysia, so this…
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This post is a bit different from my usual fare. Susanna Holt, a colleague I've known for more than two decades - and have a huge amount of respect for - recently posted on LinkedIn about an encounter we had soon after we first met. She was amazing throughout the process of sharing the information: she made it anonymous, was unnecessarily complimentary and even made sure I was fine with it being posted. So I have no idea why I feel the need to post something here. It's just a bit of an itch I feel like scratching, I suppose. I'll…
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This may well be my last post of 2023, so I thought I'd take the time to say a quick thank you to all of who have read and commented on this blog (whether here or on social media channels) over the course of the year. I don't post as much as I once did - due to the nature of my role, these days - but every interaction with the broader community is precious to me. So here's a little GIF of Autodesk's seasonal greetings cards to say "thanks". 🙂 Looking forward to next year… we've just heard that…
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It feels good to be easing into the end of the year after a hectic - but fantastic - AU 2023. For me it started with the Autodesk Switzerland holiday gathering in Bern.I was able to catch up with Jeremy Tammik, who I'm happy to say is recovering very well after a 6m (!) fall. The week after I was invited along to the Lausanne Christmas Market for some hot wine and fondue with the team - and other fellow interviewees - from the Conversation Constructive podcast. (My episodes will be airing in the new year, in case you speak…
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After a great trip to Stanford on Friday, we had some last-minute preparation to do for our AU exhibit at Pier 9 on Saturday morning. We headed into the office - after having to explain our way through a security cordon along the waterfront due to APEC 2023 - and printed out a bunch of legal waivers for study participants to sign. It seems APEC will be impacting our SF employees, with the offices being closed during the AU week.Enough people had warned me about craziness at SFO that I ended up at the airport well ahead of my flight…
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On Wednesday I headed back across to Zurich airport to fly to San Francisco for a few days ahead of Autodesk University 2023 in Las Vegas.The flight was direct and largely uneventful: I didn't sleep but did feel moderately sane when I arrived in SF. I hopped on BART from the airport to Embarcadero - it's really the best mode of transport if you arrive around 5pm.My room in the Hyatt has a view across SF's financial district. Here's a picture I snapped before sleeping... … and one on waking. I always like seeing the view towards The Bay,…
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On Saturday we packed the car and headed through the Grand San Bernard tunnel from Switzerland to Italy for a 6-day break. Our first stop across the border was in Aosta, where we started the carb-fest in earnest. (Our eldest son has just started his 2nd year at university, so wasn't able to join us on this trip.) After driving for the best part of 6 hours we arrived in the seaside town of Riva Trigoso, a suburb of Sestri Levante. I'd booked this place (the weekend before, so cutting it fine!) based on a few criteria: it had to…