GreenBuild - Day 2

It's symbolic of the hectic schedule I've been keeping that my "day 2" post on GreenBuild is actually days later.  So much for blogging in real-time.  Nonetheless, I wanted to put up a couple more perspectives that I gathered from GreenBuild.

• It's tough to compete with the high intensity of the Opening Plenary, but many of the classes were able to maintain the momentum and messaging set forth in the Plenary.  Great job to those that put on the classes that I attended, I could tell you had put a great deal of time into preparing the sessions.
  
  As I pointed out in my last post, for those of you not able to attend GreenBuild, check out some of the content available at GreenBuild365, the new website set up by the USGBC in conjunction with United Technologies.
  
• There was an intense amount of interest in Project Chicago, a video produced by Autodesk in conjunction with the USGBC that explored the future of Sustainable Design integration with BIM Software.  One of Autodesk's Thought Leaders and one of the VPs of our AEC Division, Phil Bernstein introduced this video as part of the Opening Plenary.
  
  Very rarely do our Product Design and Development organizations get the chance to let their mind run wild about such concepts without having the constraints of available software creep in.  I knew about this effort before GreenBuild, and to no surprise to me the Project Chicago team delivered an incredibly compelling vision of the future of our software to support Sustainable Design.
  
  For those of you who have seen or will see this video, it's important to know that this is just a vision rather than a shipping product, so there's nothing people can buy today.  That makes my life more interesting as we move towards those kind of solutions, kind of lights the fire and defines the end game.  I suspect that's part of the idea why we did it...
  
• Enthusiasm for BIM was immense throughout the conference.  I really enjoyed interacting with users and potential users at our Autodesk booth as well as at other booths on the convention floor and in individual classes.  People are really beginning to understand how the BIM approach to construction projects can benefit the MEP industry as a whole.

Comments

[David Williams]

I was trying to blog as I went also, but the pace and trying to get access to one of the free machines to blog after member day was just too hard. I couldn't get into any of the BIM sessions I as interested in due to crowding. I did run into one of your "Chicago" project folks at the Swissotel on Friday night and had the beginnings of a nice conversation about Revit/Revit MEP/ABS. It did seem like he had no idea that as those of us out in the field get larger and larger models that the rate of system crashes can be significant. That and the issues of third party tools that rely on MS for linking and how things will break due to service packs and upgrades - very frustrating.