Autodesk AEC Technology Day

I received a pleasant surprise invitation to attend this event, taking place on Tuesday, April 6th at Autodesk's Trapelo Road office in Waltham. My flight left the west coast early from LAX. It was filled with greater LA college bound high school students taking a east coast tour of colleges. LAX was a bit nutty today, a lot of people and traffic. There were longs lines every which way I turned. I also happened to pass by and be passed by none other Stevie Wonder. I'm not sure if he has any opinion about Revit and I didn't get a chance to ask. Maybe next time?

I arrived in Boston a little after 4pm and caught my ride to the hotel. I ran into David Harrington in the lobby (AUGI Board member and blogger). We gathered in the lobby to wait for our ride to the office for a reception. It was a very nice surprise to see David Light join us. Ed Goldberg, Lachmi Khemlani and Martyn Day were also present. There were others that I haven't met yet so I don't dare name drop just yet.

Once we arrived at the Autodesk office I was pleasantly surprised to see Robert Manna too. Greg Demchak and Erik Egbertson made a brief appearance though the plan has us spending more time together tomorrow (Hopefully something that can be written about). Anthony Hauck was present (contributed an article to the first issue of AUGI | AEC EDGE). My host David Mills was naturally there to greet us. This is a photo of the atrium looking up toward the skylight.

I was able to take part in a tour of the facility with Phil Bernstein as our guide. It provided excellent insight into their experience with Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) along with Kling Stubbins and Tocci Construction (you may have read Laura's blog posts?) After hearing the tale and seeing the work you have to wonder, "Why not? Why wouldn't everyone want to do projects this way?"

It was a nice reception and we got to examine a variety of examples of customer work as well as see some software in action. As often happens it was over too quickly and didn't get a chance to meet everyone. Looking forward to tomorrows sessions!