I made it back from San Francisco for the Autodesk World Press Days but took 4 hours longer due to an engine not starting on the plane (commercial airline), then after an hour and a half of them working on it we took off headed for Salt Lake city only to circle for over an hour over the Western Utah desert while the Salt Lake City airport was closed due to heavy snow. While checking ion for the flight I was talking with a few people about my travel curse passed onto me by my former boss Shawn Gilmore. My travel curse has been fairly unique in many respects like North Korea firing misses over the China Sea while I was above, trapped in Queenstown New Zealand, luggage being lost and once right before meeting Autodesk founder John Walker in Switzerland, jets loss of fuel while over the Atlantic and an emergency landing in New York, computers stolen, police raid on a jet for a passenger smoking in the bathroom, several inches of snow in Tokyo before I landed and it does not snow there too often, stuck for 7 hours in custom while Brazilian customs agents went on strike, detained in Canada only to be told a few hours later "it must have been an American security database issue", Been in too many storm of the century examples like in Vancouver last year when it seemed the world and all trees were being rearranged and all power out and water contaminated, and many more unfortunately. People now ask me to email them before I travel to allow them to escape the region or avoid the same flights.

I had a few sessions and meetings yesterday. I had a good discussion with Ralph Grabowski, ran into Martyn Day for only a second but long enough to get his picture, attended a lunch presentation from an auto designer from China's NAC. On the way to the airport I shared a cab with a journalist and had a great discussion about the worlds eroding infrastructure such as bridges and utilities and how their continued lack of attention after construction will result in a poor future.

-

One thing I took away from the World Press Days that I was not really aware of was how critical NavisWorks was to the large projects  in the entire AEC Industry and BIM projects to save time, resources, and costs by showing a project in 4D where time is considered in the 3D project so you can plan project flow or all design data in 3D for collision detection and multi discipline coordination. NavisWorks was shown in most of the AEC presentations from large buildings and their piping or overall construction to the new span of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.

Ok onto the links for 2009 and World Press Day Presentations:

Cheers,
Shaan