In addition to download, email, and forum, the right side of each Autodesk Labs page has links to various social media assets, specifically: Facebook Twitter Blog (It's Alive in the Lab) YouTube The links are not present on every page — only ones where they apply. Today I want to talk about two of them: Facebook and Twitter.

I started using Facebook and Twitter long ago. It was so long ago that although my primary usage is work-related, my accounts are in my name:

Scott Sheppard

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This is because way back when it was frowned upon to create IDs for these social media presences that were not a real person. I am scottsh115 on Twitter by the way because years ago I lived at 115 Justin Circle.

Now Facebook and Twitter are all about supporting commerce. Creating pages and accounts for products is all the rage. With this in mind I was tempted to replace my person-based accounts with new ones created specifically for Autodesk Labs. Rather than do that, I decided to leverage our existing social media accounts.

AutoCAD Civil 3D	Visit	Visit
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Autodesk Revit	Visit	Visit
Autodesk Simulation	Visit	Visit

So when providing feedback on a technology preview, you can post messages on these Facebook walls. There are teams of "real people" who pay attention to these accounts.

Social media is alive in the lab.