Autodesk Manufacturing Media SummitParis T-1

Autodesk decided to impress the CAD media by inviting them to Paris for its annual Manufacturing Media Summit. Last year, the event was in the manufacturing software division's head office near Portland. This year it's in Paris, head office of Dassault Systemes. Coincidence? Probably.

Not.

This should be an easy trip. Autodesk's travel agency books the flight, hotel, and airport limo. Autodesk's pr firm arranges the two days of meetings, meals, and special events. I fly in, take notes, get entertained, fly home. Eight hours there, thee nights in Paris, and then eight hours home again.

If only it were so simple. For one cannot fly to Paris without taking along one's spouse. Who is travelling on points. Whose airline must take the most difficult routes between here and there. Which means I tag along on the same time-consuming routes:

To Paris

Get up at 4am.
Fly from Vancouver
To Toronto (wait five hours)
To Paris

Door-to-door travel time: 21.5 hours (est.)

From Lyon

Get up at 3am.
Fly from Lyon
To Frankfurt (wait six hours)
To Montreal (wait two hours)
To Vancouver

Door-to-door travel time: 28.5 hours (est.)

It's Not All Awful

While in Europe, we'll visit aging relatives of mine in southern Germany near the French border, and then travel via Switzerland to Lyon to visit the French exchange students we hosted in years past. I'm looking forward to the rail travel, including riding the TGV (tres grand vitesse -- very high speed) train between Paris and Strasbourg. Second class on a European train feels better to me than business class in an airplane.

Seats on the TGV have to be reserved ahead of time, so I did that online through the Deutsche Bahn web site. The translated English wasn't clear, but it seemed to me that DB would mail me the reservation confirmation, and that I would pick up the tickets at the Paris Est train station. Particularly, because the DB Web site was unable to give me a price for the French portion of the trip.

Imagine my surprise when the train tickets arrived in the mail, just two days before we leave. Imagine, I though in horror, if they had arrived after we left.

What is awful is trying to communicate by email with hotels in France. The hotel we picked in Lyon typically takes a week to respond. (When I attach return receipts, I see that the email is opened and read.) At least I have the confirmation of our reservation. I'm still waiting to hear from them how best to get from Lyon Part Dieu train station to the hotel. Sigh.

Comments

[Sylvain]

Hi,
You could use www.mappy.fr service (change from fr to en in the upper right dropdown) to give you the shortest route from the train station to to hotel (provided you have the hotel address)

Sylvain
(a french guy trying to apologize for the lousy french hotel rep's...)

[Evan Yares]

Awful. Terrible. Autodesk is so thoughtless, asking you to travel all the way to Paris.

Tell ya what. I know a few CAD/CAM/CAE companies that have product lines a lot more interesting than Autodesk's. I think I could get some of them together, and sponsor a trip for you and some other media types down to Puerto Penasco, a funky old fishing town on the Sea of Cortez, about an hour by car across the Arizona border into Mexico. You could spend your time on the beach, drinking cervezas and eating ceviche, rather than listening to hype in a big hotel conference room, chasing around to visit relatives, or waiting in airport lounges.

We'd even tell Autodesk about the trip, so they could conveniently set up a big media event right down the beach.