Kinship and Autodesk University

My friends Jose Fandos and Gary Sprague have been working tirelessly to develop a product they call Kinship. It offers an intelligent way to organize, search for and place Revit content and even more compelling to me is the project insight it can provide us. After a couple years of private testing they are opening things up for real.

They were kind enough to invite me along with them to Autodesk University (AU) this year. If you are attending AU please stop by to say hello and find out more about Kinship. If you're not here at AU then let me encourage you to visit their site to learn more.

Autodesk University 2013

Today is the first formal day of Autodesk University 2013 (AU). It is Autodesk's premier customer focused training and marketing event. It has expanded in recent years beyond USA's borders. This year there are roughly 9,500 attendees (photo pilfered from @architectmag Tweet).

I realized this morning that it's my 11th AU. I missed the 2002 event after attending my first in 2001. Initially I was fortunate that past employers found value in sending me. Later my work with AUGI and my own consulting work has made it possible to attend ever since.
Typically AU starts with the Keynote but this year it began with one stream of classes at 8 AM. Technically these days AU actually gets started on Monday with specialized sessions, some of which come at an extra cost.  I spent the 8 AM session working as a lab assistant to Paul Aubin's Family Editor class.

The Keynote Presentation began 10:30 AM and kicked off with Penn Gillete excoriating the usual Disclaimer slide, "Well that's BS!" (Photo from @BrokHoward Tweet).

Then Penn AND Teller selected a "volunteer" (Autodesk staffer) from the audience.

They then engaged in a little magic, taking a pair of glasses from the volunteer and making them appear on Teller who is covered by a box. They turned over the stage to Jeff Kowalski (Autodesk CTO). It's the first time in my memory that Lynn Allen didn't serve as MC (later Scott Shepard reminded me later that she only did the keynote wrap-up piece last year).

The keynote theme this year is, "The Answer is Outside". He focused on four topics; Tools, People, Work and Insight. I suggest you read Scott Sheppard's "Inside the Labs" blog post to read his recap of the keynote delivered by Jeff and then followed by Carl Bass.

Of particular interest to me was the display of Bot & Dolly's Iris, a robot. This image is of it in action after the keynote concluded. If you haven't checked out their YouTube video you should. It's a very cool technique they'd used to animate camera and graphic motion for film making.

The new Aston Martin Vanquish was also on hand closer inspection, check out Scott's post for a picture of that!

Signing off for now, off to more classes and the exhibition hall opening this evening.

Autodesk University 2011 - 02

This morning I was introduced to VEO. Most of what was discussed is still covered by a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). A few things are not. First of all a Twitter feed called @VEO News is not “them”, them being M-Six. M-Six is the creator/developer of VEO (pronounced Vay-Oh, Spanish for “see”). I chose not to take notes because of the NDA so going from my fuzzy memory 12 plus hours later, the letters work out to: V = Visualize E = Execute O = Operate.

When you visit their site you’ll see a simple graphic logo with six VU meters (audio) along the bottom of the page. The first time I saw the logo there were five, now there are six. The fact that there are six isn't really significant though, not aligning with the name M-Six.

These meters are not insignificant as they represent different features or aspects of what VEO will provide, not to mention the musical background of several people involved in the product. If you pay close attention to the meter needles, as in sound engineering the closer you get to “zero” the better. In this case they are indicating the degree of “bad-a$$ness” the feature they represent currently is capable of. Suffice it to say that I imagine you'll want to keep an eye on their progress. Check out and follow their Linked In site to stay in tune with future developments. M-Six

I missed my next session because of getting engrossed in conversation with a few folks, Kelly Cone (Beck Group), Matt Dillon (D|C CADD) and Scott Latch (Autodesk). At some point I suggested that Scott is like the heavy bag that fighters use for training. He takes punches (metaphorically for real criticism and pressure from customers/users) all day and is ready for more. Still not sure who the speed bag is though…

I caught up with Paul Aubin (Author/Consultant) at lunch as well as Matt and Kelly again. Paul teased me for last night’s post ribbing his session. I think it (the nature of the questions and answers we heard) is indicative of the level of proficiency many of the users in the session have reached. They’ve mastered much (or at least are pretty comfortable) of the software and are anxious for it to do more and do it all better too.

Then it was time for Twice Baked Adaptive Components with Robert Manna (Stantec) and Zach Kron (Autodesk). This session is further exploration of concepts they dealt with at last year’s AU. I shared lab assistant duties with David Light (HOK) and Phillip Lazarus (BIM Troublemaker blog). It went quite well considering the subtleties and complexity of the concepts. My side of the room must have been smarter because they had fewer questions than the other side. Either that or they were afraid to ask me for help? We get to repeat the class tomorrow at 1 PM.

At 5 PM I was torn between attending the Vasari class, the family editor session and the AUGI General Meeting. I went to the AUGI meeting, got my AUGI glass and then caught the end of the family session. By the way be sure to VOTE for your choices to form the next Board Members!

It was my loss for the Vasari session, I heard it was excellent. I headed to the AUGI Beer Bash, food and drink and vendors galore. The exhibit floor seemed considerably larger this year and well attended. Navigating wasn't hard but it seemed to have more back alleys to either miss or not get back too. Between running into people and chatting and the number of exhibitors I just didn't see everything. Excellent choice to offer the specialty coffee vendor by the publishing area, I went back for more!

@Case_Inc. held a TweetUp at La Scena lounge and a lot of people showed up. Even Marty Rozmanith (former RTC staffer) turned up! It was good to see him again. We rounded out the evening with a quiet light meal with several long time Revit pals and decided we ought to try to make it an early (depends on your definition of early) evening.

Day three is upon us already. Time seems to stop here, no sense of day or night...but it marches on pretty quickly nonetheless. Just one more day of AU to soak it all in, see friends and make some new ones.

Autodesk University 2011 - 01

How typical, the night before the first day of classes I find myself heading back to the room at 3 AM. The night closed with me having an animated discussion with guys from Spain, Scotland and England, whose favorite teams range from Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea, regarding our desire to see the offside rules in futbol revised. I happen to like the quality of play with Barcelona and I agree that we’d see more productive games if say, the penalty box defined where offside could occur. There are so many situations where a player being offside isn’t really a factor, not a goal scoring, unfair advantage at least. Oh right, AU...

Also last night I met Hideki who made his own custom “fan” that asks “Why Change” on one side and on the reverse shows all the different software that might motivate you to consider doing so. Steve Shell helps him display it in these photos.

Next AUGI Board member Bill Davis shows off his massive collection of AU ribbons. They make him lean forward under the weight.

I dragged myself out of bed to make it to the General Session and Keynote presentation at 8 AM. I was just 10 minutes late which really meant I didn’t have to stand in a long line to get in, but there weren’t many seats. Ran into Steve Shell on the way so we hung out and watched the show together. We saw very interesting presentations ranging from a 27 year old talking about his moon rover project to long time “Reviteer” Jeffery McGrew discussing the things that he’s been doing with his own company Because We Can and wrapped up with a talk with Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine.

My first session was Jeffrey’s “Five Common Pitfalls of Digital Fabrication”. He continued where he left off with his presentation earlier and it was quite enjoyable. His company has done fun and interesting work since embarking on his own. I enjoyed his comment, “Computers can smell fear and false promises by software vendors”. He said that in the context of our needing to test the workflow and methods we use to make sure data transitions properly from one software application to another. In other words don’t rely on the claims made, test and verify.

Time for lunch! Well I spent most of my available lunch time being intrigued by a puzzler set up by Revit QA staff, one called “Where’s my Chair”. They’ve provided thirty six views that you can’t see “your” chair in and it’s up to you to figure out why, fairly diabolical things they’ve chosen to do. If you are at AU be sure to stop by and tackle one or all of the puzzlers. Just keep in mind that they are not necessarily playing “fair”.

When I sat down in Jeffery’s class I had a sudden thought that I’d see Scott Womack’s smiling face wander in. Then I remembered that’s not to be, as he passed away recently. It’s a real loss for the Revit community at AUGI, his work place…and of course his family and friends. His pal Rick caught up with me to reiterate how much the Revit community meant to Scott. He is and will be missed.

I missed my next session to deal with some work stuff so I’m hoping the handout does the job w/o hearing the session in person. Then I was off to the Ask the Experts session with Revit MEP authors Paul Aubin, Darryl McClelland, Martin J. Schmidt and Gregg Stanley. Unfortunately this session turned out to be mostly apologetic, "yeah we know about that issue", "sorry, no way to really do that yet", "you should consider applying for the alpha/beta program"...

The exhibition hall opened up tonight and there is a plethora of firms to visit. I did a couple passes to just get a sense of who, what and where. Then I started to visit some and naturally ran into folks too. I left the exhibition hall when it closed chatting with Cyril Verley (CDV Systems).

Autodesk University 2011 - 00

It's that time of year again. Jim Balding (The ANT Group) was kind enough to let me ride along with him on Sunday morning. We arrived a little after 1 PM. We ran into Robert Yori and Roberto Mencarini (SOM) almost as soon as we started wandering. We headed to the Speaker Ready room and chatted until registration opened at 4 PM.

During registration I saw David Harrington (AUGI's current president), Mark Kiker (AUGI's Executive Director) and several HOK staff. One, David Ivey, invited me along to a group trip to Fast Lap for some racing! After taking the pole position during the qualifying race I came in second to my long time Revit pal, Chris Zoog. It was a lot of FUN! Thanks David and the rest of the HOK gang for inviting me!

At the La Scena lounge I spent some time chatting with Revit content guru's Jose Fando, Gary Sprague (Andekan) and Stephen Germano (BIM Advent). Nice to finally meet them face to face. It's certainly one of the really great things about AU.

Monday (today) is going to be a long one, starting out with visiting friends with HOK and later trying to squeeze several events into a few hours, AEC Mixer, Blogger/Media Mixer, RTC meetup, HOK BIMie Awards dinner...and some other things I've probably forgotten about. Need a way to attend them all at the same time.

For your racing viewing pleasure...

HOK racing at Fast Lap, Las Vegas from James Vandezande on Vimeo.

I thought I'd claim that I threw the race so HOK staff would win...but I didn't, too competitive. Chris won fair and square by being patient and waiting for me to make a mistake!

Autodesk University - Early Registration Open Now

Just got an email announcement. If you are planning to attend the "tickets" are on sale now!

From the email: AU members are invited to register now, one week ahead of general registration. Take advantage of early registration to secure your spot today in the classes you want.

Register - Classes - Schedule - Explore - Exhibit

Autodesk University 2011 - Call for Proposals is Open

Dept. of Echo - Autodesk University - stole their post entirely...

...snip
The 19th annual Autodesk University is coming up at the end of November, and if you’d like to teach a course, now is the time to submit your ideas. The high-quality classes and large number of knowledgeable instructors at AU are some of the best to be found anywhere—and this is your opportunity to distinguish yourself and share your expertise as an industry leader with like-minded professionals.

Submit Your Proposal Now

Proposal Deadline: May 6, 2011
For AU 2011, we are looking for proposals that address:

• Design leadership and advanced technology trends
• Workflow and process across multidiscipline project teams
• Techniques and processes that help BIM and CAD Managers improve efficiency
• Practical application of products for beginning and intermediate users
• Advanced product features
• New capabilities and features in the latest Autodesk products and design suites

To learn more about what we want and to get information on speaker benefits and deadlines, please visit the Call for Proposals website (http://autodesk.com/aucfp).

To see some of the classes and content offered at Autodesk University last year, visit the Autodesk University website. You'll find class handouts, datasets, and presentations, including screencasts of about 2000 sessions presented at recent AUs.
And don't forget—the deadline for proposals is May 6, 2011.

The Autodesk University Team
Email: autodeskuniversity@autodeskevents.com
...snip

Autodesk University - Neat Item of the Show

While people were having their heads scanned and visiting other sundry exhibit booths I visited the folks at Infinite Z. They were right on the back of the Imaginit booth.

From their product page
...snip
Infinite Z’s revolutionary virtual-holographic computing platform is an intuitive way to experience information, using virtual-holographic imagery and a multi-purpose stylus to directly explore, examine, explain and exemplify. The zSpace platform is comprised of innovative hardware and software, working together to greatly expand human perception by presenting unprecedented lifelike images appearing above and below the display surface.
...snip

You don a pair of glasses, grab a stylus, (laser sort of pen) and you point the pen's beam at the 3D holographic object on screen. It appears to be right there in front of you, floating. In the example I saw they had a robotic hand assembly loaded and I could select different parts and move them around, spin the part, zoom in and out to get a closer look. You pick different tools by pointing the pen's beam at them. Imagine your holding a pen and a yellow shaft of light extends from the tip toward whatever you point it at.

What can I say other than my words aren't doing it justice, wow!

It is still early days for their product and they weren't even sure how much it might set you back yet. Keep an eye on them!

Autodesk University Virtual - Four Free Premier Passes

Counting down: Four Three Two One No Passes available - Well it didn't take long but I'm out! Thanks and all the best to each virtual attendee!

Last year I received four free passes to share with others as a result of attending AU physically. They've (Autodesk) continued with this tradition so I now have four new codes for AUv ($139 value). When I offered them last year I wasn't sure how best to pass them along. I thought about some sort of odd contest but we're all busy and I don't need to distract you anymore than this already has.

To get one of the free Autodesk University Virtual Premier  passes you need to send me an email and ask. The tricky part is figuring out how to get my email. It's a test! Only the quick and smart will win *-).

Remember AU Virtual premier is a bargain if you can't get to Las Vegas and attend this year. You get access to much more content because there are more classes than last year. It's the same great presenters giving you your own "private" class, if you just disregard the other hundreds of people tuning in.

Autodesk University Content - Prior to 2006

When you visit the Autodesk University site you can review the classes that are archived back as far as 2006. The classes from 2005 and as far back as 2000 are archived at AUGI (Autodesk User Group International). I received a comment on an older post of mine letting me know that the links I provided back then were no longer working. I fixed them this morning and also thought I might as well post about it too.

Autodesk University Content - 2006 to Present
Autodesk University Content - 2000 to 2005

If you are curious about what you find at AUGI these two images might help. You start by visiting AUGI and clicking on the Education menu item, then click on the AU Class Handouts link on the left side bar.

Now you need to select the year, the industry and finally click Go!

You'll receive a long list of classes to peruse. It would be nice if it could be searched by Author or product but this is what we have for now.

Happy New Year!!

Autodesk University 2009 - Missed It

Apparently I missed AU2009? I thought I was there but maybe it was just a dream compiled from previous trips? My wife and kids would like to know where I was for the week though... I received this in an email the other day and it made me chuckle. I imagine that many other attendees got the same message?

I know Autodesk is a big company and putting on AU isn't a simple task but I'd like to think that they'd at least know that I attended AU. I feel soooo like just a number right now. I DO understand that they are just trying to make sure that I understand I can access all that learning even though AU is over.

No worries...I got to talk to both Lynn and Shaan so I KNOW I was there!!

Autodesk University 2009 Day Four

A bit overdue but here it is...

I started out with another early morning meeting after getting far too little sleep the night before. A certain group of Australians (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) kept beverages appearing in front of me. It would be rude of me not to accept their offering(s) so I found it necessary to indulge their kindness. Thanks Shane, you aren't as mean as I've made you out to be before! It was good to see Bruce again too and I hope he had a blast motoring in Nevada after AU.

I made sure to prepare for the labs that I was assigned to as an assistant, three of them as I mentioned in my previous post. The first was a family editor focused lab presented by Joel Londenberg and Jarrod Baumann. Lots of good information for Revit MEP users as they went through the process of creating a nice air terminal family.

As many lab presenters experience there just wasn't enough time to really cover all the material (been there done that myself). I think my old boss Jim Balding once gave me the sage advice that you can cover about one-third the material you think you can. Mock-up your ideal class and then cut two-thirds...that's how much you'll actually cover. Their example of a built-in warning to indicate when the airflow is out of a specific range is a nice touch and would be a good topic for a future video post.

The second lab was Duct Duct Route Route by Michael Schinn with BIM Solutions. This lab ran out of time too but could have made it if the power point about "what we are going to do" was cut out in favor of a simpler summary. It might seem like I'm being critical, I'm not...labs are very hard to do. A typical training lab class at a firm or reseller is six to twelve, maybe a few more. When at AU it is 80-100 sharing 40-50 computers, a completely different animal. The thing that makes it really hard for students is that we tend to expect them to watch the presenter and do something at the same time.

This is why less is more in a lab. To Paul Aubin's credit his family editor lab last year was the first I've been a part of that not only covered everything but did so at a comfortable pace and seemed to keep everyone on track. Not an easy feat.

My last lab was for Jeffrey McGrew's repeat performance of his rendering class, "From Model to Marvelous". He's got a natural comfortable speaking style and his session has a nice balance of tasks and explanation. This class had fewer students than the first so it was a lot easier to assist and we had only one crash during the session (that I observed). It also ran out of time but deliberately so by choosing to leave the interior portion of the session for exploring on their own time after AU. The key to mastering this stuff is to keep using it later anyway.

After the last lab wrapped I had just enough time to hang out in the AU wrap up party for a little bit before heading off to a very nice CDV dinner at Aureole, thanks CDV!! The next morning I met with a few folks for breakfast before hopping into Jim's truck for the return trip to Southern California. The trip home was smooth sailing with none of the miserable traffic we saw heading west on our way to Vegas. Driving home from Vegas on Friday is a BIG difference from Sunday, everyone is heading TO Vegas on Friday.

As usual for me AU was gone in a flash, a blur of seeing old friends, meetings, trying to attend classes (only made half of one this year), participating in classes and late nights (too late nights). Only 11 months till AU2010...

Autodesk University 2009 - Day Three

Started out the day with a 7am meeting that wrapped up shortly after 8am. I ran into David Driver of 4D Design and we decided that we both needed some breakfast. I then wandered up to the speaker ready room to do some prep work for the labs I was scheduled to assist with (lab assistant). It was a bit hard to concentrate because Paul Aubin and I kept distracting each other with conversation...work kept getting in the way!!

The first was Jeffrey McGrew's (Because We Can) From Model to Marvelous rendering class. It went well but we did see some random crashes while working with the materials dialog and several computers lost their licenses toward the end of the session, odd.

The second lab was A Quick Spin on Curtain Walls with Reid Addis, an applications specialist with Microsol Resources. We didn't see any odd crashes during this one and it was in the same room.

Three more lab assisting assignments tomorrow, a repeat for Jeffrey's class and two MEP related sessions, one called Duct Duct Route... and another about MEP content.

At 5pm AUGI had its general meeting. The board discussed AUGI's current status and the planning for the future. Looks like CAD Camps are coming back strong in 2010, hope that the economy supports them! They also turned over the latest top ten wish lists to the product managers for AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Revit Architecture and Inventor. The financial report shows that AUGI came in about the same place they did at the end of the fiscal year for 2008 based on the tax returns for that year. Not bad considering how the year started, with just 0.88 in the bank!

I shared a beverage with Chris Needham of C3 Consulting (Melbourne, Australia) and we caught up with what each other has been doing since we last saw each other at the RTC Conference held in Melbourne last June. Thanks for the beverage!! I finally got to spend some time chatting with Simon Whitbread from New Zealand during the AUGI Beer Bash.

I spent the rest of the evening on the convention show floor visiting various vendors, running into friends and hanging out at the AUGI booth. I got to take a look at the new site tools from Eagle Point for Revit which I hope to be able to play with a bit during the next couple weeks. Naturally I spent some time hanging out at the CDV Systems booth since I do so much work with them.

I wrote this from the AEC Lounge wireless zone practically alone except for a couple others chatting on the other side of the area. Must remember to take pictures...

Autodesk University 2009 - Day Two

The second day at AU started out with a trip to a class presented by Danny Polkinhorn (with WATG) about the Revit API. I only made it halfway through before getting a text summons to join an impromptu meeting. Once that wrapped up we went to the General Session where Elvis sang the legal disclaimer and gave Laura Wood (The AU Video contest winner) a peck on the cheek. I also got to meet her after the session wrapped but since I lack the gene that takes pictures...no picture.

Amory Lovins discussion was inspiring and though provoking, people need to hear what he has to say more and more often. The notion of design the whole system makes sense in a "duh, no kidding" way...but why aren't we already doing these things if it is so obvious?

The first airing of my AU Virtual class went live at 1:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time) and was marred by over-modulated audio (distortion). They discovered that my class and a few others suffered from this issue too late to fix mine for the first round. Nearly all the comments were focused on the audio and the goal of appearing live was very successful since most assumed that I could fix the issue by moving my microphone or talking more quietly...except I taped the class on Sunday night! *-) Apart from audio most attendees seemed pleased with the work. There were 1750+ attendees signed up for the class when it started and 1850+ after it ended. Today there are just under 2000 signed up.

The second airing of the class went live at 9 PM (Pacific Standard Time) and no audio issues!! Four comments at the end of the class and a few questions since so it went much smoother the second time around. For those of you who attended, thanks for making it successful for Autodesk to deliver this kind of learning opportunity.

I attended the special event after dinner that previewed the upcoming Avatar movie, pretty amazing 3D technology behind the movie!! The Marriott Hotel chain design story was pretty interesting too since I spend a fair bit of time in hotels and worked for a hotel/resort design firm in the past too.

I ended the evening attending Phil Read's "Order of the Drunken Leprechaun" get together at the Mix Lounge. Enjoyed getting to catch up with many people I only see once maybe twice a year.

Off to assist Jeffrey McGrew's rendering lab now...more later!

Autodesk University 2009 -Day 00

Technically this post is Day 00 and 01...

We chose to drive this year when Jim Balding suggested that we car pool this year and our Aussie friend Wesley Benn arrived in LA in time to make the ride more "international". We spent the four hour drive shooting the breeze. I dozed off for a little while, a habit when I'm a passenger unfortunately.

We arrived in Las Vegas on Sunday night around 5:30pm. We sorted out my confusing hotel situation which ended up working quite well after all. We registered and got settled in. I then ran down to visit with the AUGI board dinner meeting but couldn't stay because I needed to prep for my Virtual class taping. I wrapped up the taping just before 10pm and Wesley and I grabbed a bite to eat. What should have been an early evening became a late night gab fest, late but good fun.

Monday started out slow because of the late night but got busy as we caught up on various things and kept running into people to talk to. I made it to the blogger social hosted by Shaan Hurley and then rushed off to the AEC Mixer. It was good to run into old friends and meet some new folks too!

Wrapped up the evening with a nice late meal with a few good friends. Tomorrow AU begins in earnest with classes galore. I'll be available for Q&A at 1pm and 9pm as part of my virtual class sessions. I'm spending a lot of time as a lab assistant (5 sessions) for the rest of the week. Should be interesting.

Overanout!

Autodesk University Virtual - Shared Coordinates Class Handouts

If you've signed up for my virtual class and wondered where the handouts are, I've posted them today. I was holding off posting them so that I could rehearse (up to the last minute) and not discover some horrible mistake, at the last minute.

There is one handout, one power point summary (I don't know if I'll actually use the power point, hate them) and two dataset folders: Large Project and Small Project.

I dredged up this old building model, to use as part of the class, that I did with 5.0 maybe? I was curious to see how it upgraded to 2010, no errors, cool! It was back when I was more patient and I modeled in-place standing seams on the roof.

The class is: AB9114-1 Autodesk Revit Collaboration: Shared Coordinates for Projects Big and Small

It is schedule to be aired:

1:00 PM Tuesday, December 1, 2009 (Pacific Standard Time)
9:00 PM Tuesday, December 1, 2009 (Pacific Standard Time)

P.S. If you download the dataset and find a horrible mistake, please let me live in bliss for a little while and don't tell me right away. Maybe a little before the first class though? I am taping the class on Sunday night. Have to practice my mime routine and puppet show intro, maybe I'll have enough time left over to talk about shared coordinates too?

Edit: I updated the path the handout in the link at the top of the post. I have to sort out the dataset files since they are very old files now. Keep in mind that this class is based on a very old version of Revit now.

Project Templates Class - Robert Manna at Autodesk University 2009

Robert recently posted that he is conducting a survey about his class subject, project templates. He asked me to help him get the word out. He wrote this on his blog:

I'm teaching a course on Project Templates this year. I'm really interested in getting feedback from many users. I've had several conversations and calls with folks from around the world about project templates in an attempt to gather as many points of view as possible. But I'm not done!!! Even if you can't make it to AU this year, take the survey now!

If you want to read about his class:
Good Autodesk® Revit® Project Templates: Keys to Efficiency

He is also moderating an UnConference for Project Templates.
What Makes a Good Autodesk® Revit® Project Template

Laura Gets to GO!

This was my First Post about Laura wanting to go to Autodesk University. I also made these posts later on, Second Post, Third Post. I also mentioned that Bruce made a video in this
Related Post.

The votes are in and the results are in! (even though I didn't vote at Facebook, the non-joiner that I am). Laura Wood wins! She gets to go! Congrats!!

The other two winners are Joe Lee and Thomas McMillin.

Update the Update to Autodesk University 2009

As a follow up to the post that I shared my class schedule with, there is now a list of Virtual Classes to review but no sign of how to schedule for attending yet.

I imagine they are working feverishly on that bit.

Laura Wants to go to Autodesk University 2009

Laura created this video because she wants to go to Autodesk University. I liked the video, it is well done, I appreciate the effort and initiative. I think you should watch it and help her go too! I've embedded it here so you can listen and watch NOW!

Why did she do it?? Autodesk is running the AU 2009 YouTube Contest: Enter to Win!

Here’s your chance to win one of three (3) AU 2009 Las Vegas 3-Day, All-Inclusive Passes, each worth US$2,395 (regular rate). The All-Inclusive Pass includes conference, classes and hands-on labs, hotel, meals, and social events.

How to Enter
To enter, all you have to do is create and upload a “video response” to the YouTube video “Reasons to Attend Autodesk University”. In your video, tell us why you want to attend AU 2009 in Las Vegas.

How Winners Will Be Selected
On October 12, 2009, the five (5) most-viewed video responses will be posted to AU's Facebook Fan Page. AU Facebook fans will then vote for their favorite videos by using the "Like" feature.
On October 16, 2009, those individuals with the three (3) highest number of "Likes" will be declared the winners.

Each winning contestant will receive an AU 2009 3-Day, All-Inclusive Pass.

The more creative and entertaining your entry, the more likely you are to win!

Learn More
Visit the official Autodesk University 2009 YouTube Contest page for more information. Then get out your cameras, tap into your creativity. and go have some fun.

BTW, to vote for your favorite video submissions, be sure to become a Fan of AU on Facebook. Follow AU on Twitter for real time updates and contest announcements.