As I wish a farewell to a good year 2006, I look forward to a much better year 2007. I made so many new friends around the world and visited a great many of them logging around 80,000 air miles in 2006 or about 180 hours just on a plane.

Countries Visited: US, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, China, and Singapore.

Some Photo Highlights of 2006:

    

Some photos of friends that I met in 2006:
      

     

    

Blog Stats thus far:

• 1070 posts
• 216 comments
• 3.9 Million page views and 538,175 unique visitors from over 150 countries

I hope to visit many more in 2007 and have already been scheduled to present at AUGI CAD Camp in Seattle and perhaps other Camp Camp locations. If you have a large CAD user event, please email me details well in advance and perhaps I can attend, present, and answer questions.

A few goals for 2007

• A new MyFeedback.autodesk.com portal upgrade to a new look and changes based on feedback from customers involved in beta testing Autodesk products. We will globalize the MyFeedback portal in multiple languages so all customers regardless of their language will be able to participate more easily in providing their feedback on Autodesk products. We now have over 12,000 active beta customers and 373 private discussion forums.
• Continue to spread the word to get customers involved in beta and non beta feedback projects to improve the products they use and we develop.
• Present live over the Internet to local user groups and events.
• Start producing some podcasts, and screencasts aka vodcasts.
• Increase the visibility and success of the team I manager the Autodesk MyFeedback team which consists of Shari and Nate at this time.
• Continue to be passionate about Autodesk products and customer feedback.
• Get involved in worldwide educational projects with students to assist them with CAD, visualization, and engineering knowledge.
• Travel to Brazil, New Zealand, and Japan for business or vacation. I just love those places and the people. I want to do another Amazon jungle trek in the next 5 months. I also need to get back over the pond to Europe again.
• Write more detailed technical, tips/tricks,and tutorial posts on this blog like I have in the past such as the 64bit topics posts but have been unable to recently due to time.
• Reward more Autodesk Beta participants for their active participation at http://myfeedback.autodesk.com
• Teach some classes at Autodesk University 2007.
• Continue to volunteer some of my off time to assist Autodesk customers as I really enjoy that and it helps me stay connected with customers in the real world.
• Improve my writing and speaking skills. :-)
• Lose some weight and start biking and hiking more.
• Spend more time with friends and family.
• Improve my photography skills and style and perhaps get more images published in magazines.
• Continue to blog and encourage more Autodesk teams to blog.
  

My many friends down under in Australia and New Zealand and in Asia such as Japan (Oshogatsu or Shogatsu) are already celebrating and have entered the new year.

AP Photo: Fireworks over the Sydney Harbor Bridge

 Happy New Year!
Shaan email me