Christopher Benner
In case you haven’t heard yet, Autodesk University 2021 is right around the corner and registration for the English language conference is open!
Like last year’s conference, this year Autodesk University (AU) will be held virtually, and will once again be free to attend. I don’t want to repeat all of the details that are in the blog post I have linked above, so instead I will encourage you to read that and follow the AU site for details as they become available. For this post, I will give you a more personal perspective on the conference, for those of you who have never attended AU before.
I attended my first AU in 2010. I was a fairly new Inventor and Vault user and had just switched over from using Creo for several years. My company decided to send me that year since I was working on a lot of our conversion back to Inventor. I didn’t enjoy the conference much, since I did not know anyone at all, and felt very lost all week. But it just made me decide that I needed to meet some people in the community, so that the next year would be better. I did that by getting involved in the forums and social media. I have attended AU every year now since that first conference in 2010, and it has become one of the highlights of my year.
I have made many great new friends over the years at AU, as well as professional contacts. It was at AU that I first decided I wanted to work for Autodesk someday, and at AU that I was inducted into the Expert Elites in 2012. I decided to try presenting for the first time in 2014 and was surprised when my class was not only accepted for AU in Vegas, but also for AU in Russia! I flew to Moscow that fall and gave my very first AU class at AU Russia 2014. Since that year I have presented at least one class or meetup at every AU.The classes are always great, the keynotes are very interesting and in some cases, eye opening about industry trends and emerging technology. The exhibit hall is usually packed with exciting tech to view and sometimes play with… but the best part of the conference for me is the networking. The pandemic has changed the face of the conference in many ways, but the virtual platform still offers many great ways to learn new things and make new contacts. If you have never experienced AU before, this is the time to do it. Since it is free to attend and virtual again this year, you really have nothing to lose. And you can find out for yourself how great it is and can use that to convince your boss to let you go to a live event someday when they return.
Follow the link I included at the top of this post and bookmark the AU website so that you will not miss out on announcements coming up about Autodesk University 2021 classes and registration. Wether you are an AU veteran, or this is your first time…. I hope to see you all there! Enjoy!
