Many times following a path leads to meeting new people, seeing new things, learning things, or perhaps a wild bear or rabid chipmunk. Twitter has become a great pathway to follow what others are thinking, doing, seeing, their opinions, or what their inner voices are saying publicly in 140 characters or less.

• Video: Twitter in Plain English
• Video: Twitter Search in Plain English
• Video: Zombies in Plain English

Twitter can be entertaining, educational, but also distracting if you do not manage your time like anything else in the information age. I would classify it as EduTainment as I almost always find something funny, entertaining, off the wall,or learn something valuable all in a 15 minute Twitter reading session.  If you learn to use it in moderation, it can be not only fun, but a way to learn great things and meet new people. I know I have ran into many of the people I follow on Twitter and it was like running into an old friend but you forgot their face but you do know they ate at Dairy Queen last night and are a wicked mechanical engineer sharing cool tips to make you more productive or better yet what not to do by learning from their mistakes.

Many times you will know the latest breaking news in the world of technology or Autodesk software before anyone else or perhaps how others are harnessing the power of a technology to do cool things. Sometimes you may also follow someone that goes on vacation and you end up resenting their fun tweets about that beautiful lake setting or sunset on the beach without a care in the world. Hopefully the person does not tweet “hey I am on vacation and left my awesome stereo and super computers at home and nobody is there and my burglar alarm service is broken…”.

During events like Autodesk University (117 days away) the Twitter users are always in the know on what is going on, and where to meetup. I even gave away some cool prizes to people that followed me on Twitter and called it “Hide & Geek”. I plan on doing that again this year as well as giving out other goodies to those that follow me throughout the year.

For those that use Twitter please consider following us from Autodesk. There are a ton of Autodesk’ers on Twitter as well as product teams below are a few of  from my Twitter list.

• http://www.twitter.com/autodesk the official Autodesk Twitter account
• http://www.twitter.com/autocad the official AutoCAD Twitter account.
• http://www.twitter.com/lynn_allen
• http://www.twitter.com/katemorrical
• http://www.twitter.com/mrcadman
• http://www.twitter.com/heidihewett
• http://twitter.com/AutodeskU Autodesk University
• http://twitter.com/AutodeskPR Autodesk PR
• http://twitter.com/ACADExchange AutoCAD Exchange
• http://twitter.com/AutodeskAEC Autodesk AEC
• http://twitter.com/Autodesk_MEAutodesk Media and Entertainment
• http://twitter.com/adskmfg Autodesk Manufacturing
• http://twitter.com/scottsh115 Scott Sheppard of Autodesk Labs

You can download a larger list of some of Twitter accounts I follow. The quick list is in no particular order nor the entire 1000+ Twitter accounts I follow. The first part is Autodesk accounts on Twitter and then non-Autodesk CAD related accounts. Download Shaanstwitterlist

While following me on the trail does not necessarily guarantee you wont get lost, or run into that mad bear on the trail, I hope it is an entertaining and educational journey.

Are you on Twitter? Post your Twitter name in the comments to this blog post, and tell me what you tweet about.

Cheers,
Shaan

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