Myself and numerous other CAD and GIS editors will be heading to Orlando FL this weekend for the annual Autodesk Grouphug University, AU.
The idea is to cloister four or five thousand fanboys (and a few girls) into a single hotel conference center to hear for four or five days about the wonderfulness of "our" software(*). The same, of course, happens at SolidWorks World, Bentley's BE (name reminds me of the Be-in of the hippy era), IntelliCAD World Conference, and the other vendor-specific user conferences. Which is why they are so popular.
The one thing different at AU, of course, is that you don't hear the kind of AutoCAD bashing that sometimes can go on at other events. When you're #1, you've got no one to complain about -- or blame for not being #1. (I was pleased that AutoCAD-bashing was eliminated from this year's IntelliCAD conference.)
Enough of my cynicism. Randall Newton writes on What I Hope to Learn at Autodesk University at his aecnews.com Web site. He is hoping to learn of what's happening with:
- Civil 3D's challenge to Bentley
- The use of Inventor for AEC, a la SolidWorks
- Further effects of OpenDWG on Autodesk
- Changes to the DWG file format (scheduled for the upcoming release)
- Can Revit major projects run without major tech support?
- When will Revit superceede Architectural Desktop?
- The possible effects of Web 2.0 on CAD practices
Me, I'm going to hear what's new in AutoCAD 2007 (due out 15 March), catch up with the other editors, meet attendees, check out the exhibits, and have dinner with other Autodesk Press authors. For us media, Autodesk has lined up a tour of the Jet Blue facilities.
What with WiFi and blogs, you can expect numerous editors and non-editors writing up the conference on a daily basis. I recall one of the earliest attempts to produce a near-instant report: in the mid-1980s, David Cohn was editor of the Memphis AutoCAD User Group's monthly newsletter, at the time the third-largest (in page count) AutoCAD magazine. Each day, he telephoned a report from the AEC Systems show to the MAUG staff back in Memphis, and then the report was supposed to be spread (I forget how, through BBS?). It didn't work. Which reminds me of my plan to blog live from the IntelliCAD conference last month, except that my notebook computer wouldn't connect with the hotel's WiFi. Different technology, same result.
(*) It's not "our" software; we only get a license that permits us to use it under closely-guarded conditions.
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