It was a great day in terms of Autodesk University classes, presentations, and the keynote. Sadly the evening did not go so well for me and my laptop. Currently I am reinstalling all applications from scratch on a new computer. My trusty laptop hardware decided to completely fry tonight both motherboard components & the hard drive. Some may ask “Shaan will you make your session tomorrow with a working laptop” yes I will even if I have to stay up all night to make it happen. It was unfortunate the computer failure happened just as we were readying to start our first AU Huddle sessions using the pocket projector outside the exhibit hall. We will give it a go again tomorrow night and have plenty of goodies and great topics such as AutoCAD WS, Social Media and more.

The General Session Keynote was huge on the single 200' wide x 25' tall screen with the presenters Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, CTO Jeff Kowalski, Lynn Allen, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, Mark Hatch, CEO of TechShop, a membership based non-profit venture encouraging creative design Jeffrey McGrew, representing BecauseWeCan.org, a bespoke design and build studio, and E.J. Sabathia, from Moon Express, One of my most memorable moments outside the normal topics was when Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski showed some bacteria that had been modified to make feet smell like bananas.

AU 2011 Gen. Keynote is now on AU Virtual under AU TV. Including the Crowd Sourced Legal Disclaimer. http://autode.sk/t2kVHF.

The legal disclaimer leading into the keynote was enjoyed by all who saw it. It was the Crowd Source Project started on this blog a few weeks back to get customers to create words that would be used for a special AU big screen surprise. We knew our customers would be up to the challenge and have the abundance of wild creativity.

I will try to record a video of the PowerPoint to share with everyone as it was a big hit especially since it involved our creative customers and Autodesk products.

We received so many great submissions but could not use all of them but in a later post I will detail all submissions. I only wish there had been an announcement the keynote was starting so more people would have noticed it was beginning.

I did notice several people left their coffee cups when leaving.

I enjoyed and was honestly inspired by the Innovation Forums today. I attended the Creativity 2.0 session. This event was amazing with speakers Sir Ken Robinson, creative expert, educator, author, and British knight, Mark Foster Gage, principal and architect, Gage/Clemenceau, Louise Leakey, paleoanthropologist with the Turkana Basin Institute, Alex McDowell, acclaimed artist and Hollywood film production designer, and Saul Griffith, inventor and recipient of a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation.

I got to watch the beginning of the Grey Matter / Innovation Cage Match where industry leaders entered a mock fight club for a debate with point - counterpoint format in three rounds on various topics related to design and innovation. Emcee Tom Wujec had one of the most unique jackets I have seen, and did a stellar job.

Well I need to get back to installing several applications and configuring my system for my session on Autodesk Labs tomorrow err today.

Cheers,
Shaan