Last Friday and Saturday Autodesk participated as a sponsor in the Kairos Society Summit in New York City. The Kairos Society is a non-profit organization founded to foster innovation and entrepreneurship by students. “Founded in 2008, the Kairos Society is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization based in the United States. We work to find and empower the young pioneers who will push the world forward through entrepreneurship and innovation - we do so with the support of the top universities, mentors, and corporations across the globe. At the Kairos Society, we view today’s global problems as opportunities for entrepreneurs to focus on the meaningful businesses and innovations that will radically change the world for the better. Not only for our generation, but for the generations to come.” Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski were at the event as were about 6 Autodesk employees including myself presenting on the subjects of 3D design and 3D Printing. Many of our 3D printing friends like Stratasys and Shapeways were also at the event. Christian, Jesse and Shaan at Kairos Shaan at Kairos During our panel session on 3D Printing where we spoke of Autodesk role in developing software and technologies used in design and also supporting 3D printing. We covered a great deal of ground in a short amount of time to 350 students broken up into 3 groups. I absolutely love discussing technology with students as they come up with the greatest questions and ideas since they don’t know the boundaries or set in their ways. During the session I brought up the hot topic of the 3D Printing pen “3Doodler” on Kickstarter that was trying to raise $30,000 and are now OVER 1.8 million dollars and causing a buzz all over in social media and even among researchers in the 3D printing space. In fact there was a long email thread I was involved in the evening before the Kairos event discussing what it really was and if it was really 3D printing, or really a free form 3D sketching tool. When I brought up the 3Doodler topic a gentlemen in the back of the session pointed to himself and so I asked what he wanted to add to the discussion, it was none other than the co-founder of WobbleWorks and the 3Doodler pen Maxwell Bogue. 3Doodler: The World's First 3D Printing Pen Max of WobbleWorks and the 3Doodler 3D Prnting Pen Shaan of Autodesk and Max of 3Doodler Pen Kairos Event on the NYSE Stock Exchange FloorOn Saturday we were invited to participate in the launching of the Kairos 50 on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. What a surreal and interesting venue where many of the startups in the Kairos 50 were presenting their projects.We were all dressed up in suits and I even had a tie on. Shaan in a SUIT!! Shaan and the AnybotI also met Anybot a virtual presence robot that allows people to attend remote locations even attend meetings while away over the Internet. Autodesk’s own Jonathan Knowles has had a robot but this is a new and sleek model. One cool thing was the ability to attach a mobile device running Google Hangouts and that could then be used to allow people to join a Hangout session and experience an event or place remotely. Would love to have some of these at AU. Cheers, Shaan

Go to the original post...