The Autodesk Gallery at One Market in San Francisco celebrates design — the process of taking a great idea and turning it into a reality. With more than 20 different exhibits regularly on display that showcase the innovative work of Autodesk customers, the gallery illustrates the role technology plays in great design and engineering. I am one of about 80 gallery ambassadors. As I have mentioned before, we chose the job title "ambassador" instead of "docent," because the correct way to address an ambassador is "your excellency" yet this never happens.

Amy Russom is a Customer Briefing Program Manager at Autodesk. She helped train me as a gallery ambassador. She was recently part of a team that help created a temporary instance of the gallery in Tokyo, Japan. A team of people packaged up some of our exhibits from San Francisco, shipped them, set them up in Tokyo, took them down, and returned them to San Francisco. In this way, the gallery pops up, visitors experience it, and then its gone. Amy shared some info with me about it.

By the numbers:

• Over 4,400 total visitors
• Over 700 visitors participated in hands-on workshops
• Over 1,100 people at 17 evening events including the Future of Tokyo, Hardware Start-up Meet-up, Student Design Night, PechaKucha, films, architecture, and 3D printing
• Over 150 students + educators

Some of the visitors were heard to say:

• "You can find and experience products with the latest ideas and arts.”
• "You will find real on-going future of products and projects here.”
• "You guys are from the Gallery? You’ve changed my life!"
• "The gallery popup was really cool. I learned about 3d printing. Our firm uses some Autodesk software, but I just heard of Fusion 360 today."

Thanks, Amy. Thanks to everyone who made this happen. The Autodesk story is indeed best told through the work of our customers.

Pop up exhibits are alive in the lab.