The second day Autodesk University is now over and we are into the 3rd and final day. The event has been cram packed with activities, classes, Innovation Forums, exhibits, mixers, beer bust, and so much more.

It is not burning the candle at both ends for me but really like dipping a candle in jet fuel and lighting it.

For me it was a blur after working to rebuild a laptop from scratch. I made my sessions, but only had a one hour power sleep all Tuesday night and while there were no tears shed there were some loud curses from my room at 3:30am. Imagine starting from a new machine and clean operating system a mere 12 hours before your class and having to download over 300mb of Windows updates before even starting to install some applications. I did joke with some people that had it not been just a 5 foot drop to HVAC from my hotel room window I might have just jumped. I am not back to where I was before the machine went poof as that will take quite awhile. Being super tired, on new hardware, and having to build datasets and slides in record time left me feeling less than ideal for my session but overall it was good and I received some great support, feedback, and understanding.  Thank you for all who attended the Autodesk Labs session.

I am so very grateful for the Autodesk hardware support team that jumped in and gave me a loaner machine and their working late hours to help me recover from my laptops sudden hardware death at 8:06pm. Thank you Jess Owens, Scott Hill, Jeffry Asbury, Francis Wall and Claus Wolthers of Autodesk, without you I would have been up a creek without a laptop. These guys are getting pizza and beer delivered by from me tonight since they are working during most of the events and they deserved it.

The suspected cause at this point is that it was partially related to the static electricity that is really quite a shock in the dry climate and miles of carpet. I was not the only attendee that had a laptop get fried by static discharge. In the future I will have another item to add to my AU Tips and Tricks list beware of the static electricity build up. This got me to thinking, in a large conference with great amounts of static electricity is there an opportunity to use captured static energy. With all the shocks I received it might not be too far fetched to think that you could power some of the conference with captured static electricity.

We held an AU Huddle and gave away some great prizes like Amazon gift certificates, Techsmith Camtasia and SnagIt as well as a Revit 2012 book by Patrick Davis. It was experimental as I mentioned in a past posting about the idea but it turned out well and we learned what to do in the future to make it a potential for future events. Key findings were that social media works to gather a crowd but the pocket project needs a little darker area and more battery or plugged in. Also in the future we should do it in a lounge or dark restaurant where we can all sit around and talk in a relaxed environment instead of standing. The generated conversations were great as was Autodesk Social Media maestro Dan Zucker who was the first huddle guinea pig presenter sharing some behind the scenes social media information.

Some photo highlights I uploaded to the AU 2011 Photo Group Pool

Highlights for today the Day 3 and final of Autodesk University

• Final day of the exhibit hall. Get in there and see the exhibits and vendors. Last chance to see some great things including the 123D Catch 3D Photo Booth in the Autodesk Gallery exhibit. It is only open 11:30 to 2:00. Several exhibitors give away more goodies in the last hours of the exhibit hall so they don’t have to take it with the.
• The AU Mixer party tonight. This will be great because people can finally relax and not have a class first thing the following morning. This has typically been the late night for many.
• Final day of great classes including a hands on lab and lecture on 123D Catch (formerly Project Photofly).
• Don’t forget to complete your attendee survey to get your AU 2011 shirt. The shirt I modeled on stage at the AU Freshman event.

I hope you are enjoying and learning at AU whether AU Virtual Online (free) or here in Las Vegas.

Cheers,
Shaan

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