And the Winning Speakers Are...

Maintaining the high-level of quality that attendees have come to expect from AU sessions is very important to us. Since the very beginning, we have asked attendees to provide us with feedback on every single session they attend. We want to know how attendees feel about technical content, speaker preparedness, and session materials (among other things), and we ask them to rate each category from 1 to 10. The highest possible rating is 10.

This year, we received feedback from 49.7% of all attendees of all sessions and the average speaker rating was 8.44.

The AU team takes these results seriously. Generally, to be invited back as an AU speaker, the presenter must receive at least an 8.0. We do make exceptions to this rule if comments clearly indicate that something beyond the control of the presenter happened, such as a fire alarm (which happened a few years back) or software installation issues.

The highest rated speakers are recognized with the AU speaker award and this year’s five categories were Hands-on Lab, Small Lecture (< 200), Large Lecture (> 200), PowerTrack, and First Time AU Speaker. All presenters received a near perfect score. So without further adieu, the winners are:

Category	Speaker	Session	Rating
Hands-on Lab	Jeffrey McGrew	Model to Marvelous Goes Mental: Realistic Approaches to Photo-Realistic Design Visualization with Revit® 2009	9.77
Small Lecture	Jerry Winters	Creating AutoCAD® Jigs in VB.NET: An Introduction	9.71
Large Lecture	Lynn Allen	90 AutoCAD® Tips in 90 Minutes	9.60
PowerTrack Session	Matt Murphy	Blockbusters: Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Blocks in AutoCAD®—Revealed!	9.75
First Time AU Speaker	Jarrod Bauman	From Contract to Construction Documents with Revit® MEP	9.46

Congratulations to these outstanding presenters. I would also like to congratulate JC Malitzke. JC had the highest-rated session at this year's AU: 9.80 for his “Compelling 3D Features in AutoCAD” hands-on lab. A minimum of 25 responses are required to qualify for the AU speaker award, but only 24 were turned in for JC’s session. Sorry JC...but you know you still rock.

Interested in becoming a speaker next year? Provide us with your contact information by filling out this VERY SHORT form and you will be in the loop when we kick off AU 2009 sometime in early March.

The New AU Online

Little over one week since AU, and this is my first blog posting. Usually, I take a week's vacation at this time of year—one week in Mexico or something like this—to recuperate from AU. I work on AU all year, and the last few months before the event usually require “a little more” than eight hours per day. This year, I did not go to Mexico because we also launched the new AU Online website. Many of you have experienced the new site already, (we've had 38,758 unique visitors since it launched last Monday) and I trust you have seen the improvements.

Those of you who have used AU Online since the very beginning—which was about five years ago&mdashmay remember that when we started out, we simply posted AU handouts to a pretty simple FTP site. Over the years, we've added more content that we've captured at the conference, including screencasts, which became available starting four years ago.

Three years ago, we moved AU Online onto the Autodesk community platform and we started to enhance the educational content by adding more aspects of the live event into the online experience. The NEW AU online is taking this idea one step further by taking what happened at the event to create a better experience online. Similar to your favorite online video rental site, the new site pays attention to what users like you find useful, and then recommends other content that you may find useful. Currently, AU Online is loaded with class handouts, presentation materials, and data sets that are available to any AU Online member for free. Over the next few weeks, we will also add audio recordings to AU Online. Screencasts for 400-plus sessions are available only to AU 2008 attendees and Autodesk subscription customers.

We have tried to add not only intelligence to the site, but also to make it much more user-friendly. We were looking for a vendor who understood the learning requirements of professionals and how to build a website that could deliver that experience. Although we were not able to give the vendor the time needed to develop a site that contained the entire feature set for a post AU launch, they were able make a very good start. I believe the user interface and functionality has significantly improved. Over the next few weeks/months, you will see features added to the site that we believe will help AU Online truly become your year-round learning destination.

I encourage you to provide feedback to anything you see on the site—or would like to see on the site—directly to me. Please reply to this post, use the feedback feature on the site, ping me at AU Online, or email me directly at my Autodesk email address. The goal of AU Online to deliver the highest quality learning and professional networking experience we can during those 361 days that you are not at the conference in Las Vegas—and to also deliver that experience to those users who did not make it Autodesk University in Las Vegas this year.

AU As It Is

Today, Jim Meyer from Solidvapor guided an AU Online/AU event customer focus group. Five participants shared their insights about the event and the website, and I found it incredibly insightful. We are working on getting a new AU website launched next week—and several of the comments we heard today will appear on the new site. Two items that struck me most were:

• Users did not know handouts are free to anyone
• The perception of what AU Online is

On Monday, with the launch of the new site, we will not introduce a lot of new functionality, but I am excited about the features and improvements we have mapped out for the future AU Online. Our customer focus group was part of AU Unplugged. Tomorrow is the second and final day of this AU unconference. Live from AU During this AU, we are streaming several sessions live from the AU show floor. Yesterday's and today’s sessions are now available on demand.

• Autodesk Inventor®: Best Practices for Working with Large Assembly (Digital Prototypes)
• AutoCAD® 2009 Tips and Techniques
• Labelicious! Label This, Label That, Labeling Through Xrefs is Where It's At!
• Map Import and Export: Breaking the Format Barriers

We are recording over 400 sessions at this years AU, and they all will be posted to AU Online. by Joseph Wurcher December 4, 2008 2:32 am

AU 2008 Updated: Monday

The Monday before AU may be my favorite day of AU. A ton of people arrive on Monday and as of right now 7203 (77%) have checked in. It is great to see everyone, and particularly the presenters, many of whom I have worked with over the last 9 years. As for others, it is just nice to put a face to those hundreds of emails we exchanged since the “Call for Papers” got AU 2008 started, sometime back in March. This evening, we had the Speaker Social and approximately 250 speakers were thanked by Chris Bradshaw and Lynn Allen for all their hard work. Chris mentioned that one of the greatest challenges to having an equally successful AU outside the US will be to find as many dedicated and hardworking presenters. The Speaker Social was held outside on the Bouchon Terrace—Las Vegas evening weather was great—and the only disturbance was planes trying to land at Las Vegas Airport. We have had very few cancellations up to this point. One speaker from Germany was in a car accident and had to cancel his session. We had a few mix-ups with lab assistants—but otherwise we are good. All class changes are being tracked and attendees are being informed via email. We are also using the AU Daily to keep everyone up-to-date on cancelations and changes. Today I also met John from Cut&Paste who will produce the AU Design Slam. I believe the AU Design Slam will be one of the most exciting events happening at this year's AU. I did run into a few of the competitors and they seemed to be just as excited as I am. Last week the competitors were given their design challenge at a very high level, and ideas are brewing. Tomorrow, John and his team will do final rehearsals and setups, and we all expect a great show on Wednesday and Thursday. Last week, we also announced the competitors and judges. by Joseph Wurcher December 2, 2008 2:13 am

It's beginning to look a lot like AU...

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

The Autodesk Geospatial Customer Council

My colleagues over at the Geospatial division asked me to help them spread the word about their council, and what they are doing at AU. The Autodesk Geospatial Customer Council (AGCC) is a web panel that consists of hundreds of Geospatial product users. It is designed as a forum that the Autodesk Geospatial team uses to elicit feedback on any number of subjects. Council feedback is received directly by the Geospatial product teams and provides valuable insight on new product concepts or developments. From time to time council members will hear from Autodesk on any number of topics. Autodesk may email an invitation to participate in a web survey, participate in an online discussion covering a certain theme, or an in-person event. As a member of the Council, you will receive quarterly newsletters summarizing the research you’ve been involved in, and providing information on product offerings that were impacted by it. In the recent past, we have conducted surveys on LiDAR Awareness, Sustainability Activities, and Mobile GIS needs, just to name a few. Interested? If so, please visit the Geospatial Lounge on the 4th floor. You can drop off a business card and, if you like, you can sign up right there at AU or you can email us at agcc@autodesk.com. by Joseph Wurcher November 26, 2008 4:02 pm

Live 3D Design Competition to Take Place at AU

Industrial and Architectural Designers Will Go Head-to-Head in Live Competition in Las Vegas December 3 and 4. The nation's top designers are entering a new dimension—a third one, to be exact. Cut&Paste (www.cutandpaste.com) is bringing its live, on-stage competition to Autodesk University, the world's largest gathering of designers, engineers and Autodesk customers worldwide, in Las Vegas this December, but this time around, competing teams will be working in 3D. Contestants in the AU Design Slam, powered by Cut&Paste, will use the latest in 3D software, including Autodesk Maya, AliasStudio, SketchBook Pro, and Revit Architecture software for an unprecedented competition. Inspired by the global success of Cut&Paste's annual Digital Design Tournament—which brings designers from around the world to compete in live, on-stage competitions—the AU Design Slam marks Cut&Paste’s first foray into 3D technology, an element they’re introducing to their 2009 global, 16-city tour. The live event will showcase contestant teams as they create original designs in rounds of 20 minutes. The fast-paced format tests their skill, speed and stage presence, all while an audience of more than 8,000 thousand watches them produce their work in real-time on large-scale projectors. Not only does the AU Design Slam promise to be a heart-pounding contest of slick computer tricks, quick-witted design, and high-energy showmanship in digital industrial design and architecture, but the teams will break new ground in digital Industrial Design and Architecture. Competitors were drawn from the nation's top industrial design and architecture firms, and the event will be judged by industry experts, including: Tatjana Dzambazova, Autodesk; Frank Tyneski, IDSA; Gray Holland, Alchemy Labs; and Jay Shuster, Pixar. The AU Design Slam kicks off on December 3, when twelve competitors—working in teams of two—will compete in preliminary rounds. The competition will culminate with the finals, which will take place at the AU Final Night Party on Thursday, December 4. by Joseph Wurcher November 25, 2008 1:30 pm