Ev'rywhere you go in the Venetian Hotel and Conference Centers… AU is starting to come together in Las Vegas. Yesterday, folks like me who work on AU year round have started to arrive in Las Vegas. Some of our vendors, those who will manage registration, setup the meeting rooms and network 600-plus computers had to skip their home-cooked turkey, and they have been here for a few days already. This will be my ninth AU, and I am still impressed how the AU staff is able to transform the Venetian Conference Center into the Autodesk University campus—in just a few days. For the most part, I am ready to “get this show started”—but there are a couple of things I still have to put the finishing touches on. On Monday night, we are hosting a Speaker Social. All 2008 presenters, co-presenters and lab assistants are invited. Not only is this a great opportunity for presenters to meet each other, it is also a great opportunity for us to thank presenters as a group for all the work they have put into their presentations. On Tuesday, Shaan Hurley and I are hosting a Blogger Social. The idea for this gathering is to provide a forum for bloggers to meet face-to-face with other bloggers whose stuff they may have read for years. Autodesk product managers are also invited. Later in the week, I will participate in two AU Unplugged sessions—both are of great interestd to the future of AU. First, Jim Meyer and I will lead a session called "Make AU Online Work for You" to find out what users would like to get out of a CAD eLearning website. A couple of days after AU, a brand new AU Online website will launch and we would like to find out how AU attendees use other eLearning sites, and what they would like to see on AU Online. My second session is "Real CAD Managers. Real Ideas." Rich Uphus and I would like to discuss how we could make AU—or an AU like event— address the professional requirements that CAD managers should have.
by Joseph Wurcher November 29, 2008 7:26 pm