SpaceClaim Corporation (www.spaceclaim.com) has been officially uninvited from attending or exhibiting at Autodesk University (AU), after having been encouraged to exhibit by Autodesk personnel (who know who they are, but shall remain unnamed). And after SpaceClaim accepted the invitation, and prepped demos, logistics, and paid for travel reservations, Autodesk then rescinded its approval to exhibit or attend.

For those of you that are unaware, SpaceClaim is a complementary software vendor that unlocks AutoCAD models so they can be more effectively leveraged (by being able to be easily opened and modified) by the entire extended product development chain.

I wonder what Autodesk, with over 1 million users and $2B in annual revenue, fears from little SpaceClaim?

Is it fear that better use of the AutoCAD models might enable its users to (according to http://www.aberdeen.com/summary/report/benchmark/4130-RA-extending-3d-engineering.asp - a recent Aberdeen report ):

Hit or beat development budgets 94% of the time?
Meet goals for product revenue 89% of the time?
Meet product launch dates 96% of the time?

It amazes me that in this world of complete transparency, where information is just a mouseclick away, that organizations still believe they can control what their prospects and customers can see and do.

So in that sense, I think the official AU banning probably helped SpaceClaim get its message out to the AutoCAD userbase even better than had they attended. According to some of the folks I spoke with at SpaceClaim, on Tuesday (the day the news hit) they experienced the greatest volume of website traffic ever, and downloads of SpaceClaim’s http://www.spaceclaim.com/getdoc/dd5e13e3-4902-490a-8933-7ce0fcd95a55/Explore30.aspx - 30 day trial software rose 400% above the daily norm.

So I guess SpaceClaim should offer Autodesk a big, hearty thank you for the "shout out!"

Joe.