Nerf Bats

My voice is hoarse.  My throat is burning.  My eyes are dry....

Sounds like another week in the desert of Las Vegas has passed.  The travel gods were kind to me and a strong Jet Stream got me back to Boston in just 4 hours.  It was true bliss to step into the jet way and take in some air that actually contained some water vapor.  I enjoy Vegas, don't get me wrong, but I often wonder how people can survive in such a dry climate.

Gripes about the climate aside, AU 2007 lived up to the hype and really was an excellent environment for learning about Autodesk software, networking, and of course having some fun.

Highlights

• Revit Mixer - Things got off on the right foot with this social gathering that featured some great customer models and Revit trivia on the big screen.  I got a chance to talk with some Revit MEP implementers and talked about their experiences.  Special thanks to James Vandezande for putting together the media for this event.
  
  
• General Session - The official kickoff for AU went off with lots of great visuals and inspiring discussions.  Things like this always make me excited to work for a company with such resources and great people who can put on such a great show.  Check out the video that the AU Blog put together about the making of this show.
  
• Revit MEP Feedback Luncheon - In anticipation of a free-for-all feedback session with users from our discussion forums at AU, I purchased some Nerf Bats for frustration release, hence the thread title.
  In the end the group was surprisingly gentle to me, perhaps calmed by the free lunch, and really provided some awesome feedback about what wasn't working, what needed to be added, and how the tool is working for them.  I captured everyone's thoughts on the easel and took the paper back with me, a great resource for product planning.  Thanks to all who attended.
  
• AEC Lounge - Our Quality Assurance team organized and coordinated the AEC Lounge, and additions on our Technical Specialist and Development teams helped to staff it.  Puzzlers helped to occupy anybody who wanted to stop by, and the members of our teams provided their wealth of knowledge to all who asked.  I also managed to get tracked down by a few customers and help answer some additional questions.
  
• AEC Industry Session - The senior management for the AEC Division of Autodesk, of which Revit MEP is a part, put on this show, which highlighted the direction of Autodesk's AEC Software and the growing Interoperability story between our many platforms.
  
  P.S. For those of you attending the session, you might have noticed an unfortunate incident involving Armundo Darling, our Technical Marketing Manager, and a dreaded White Screen when running the IES Heating and Cooling Load calculations during his demo.  Looks like our dev team has something to look into when I get back.

Of course there were many more interesting parts of the week, but I wanted to point out those items.  I had planned to attend a number of courses during the week, but my obligations for customer briefings, executive roundtables, technology demos, and weekly meetings resulted in only being able to attend a couple.  Nonetheless a great week for me.

On a side note, for those of you who've been following my posts on Revit MEP concepts, I plan to start back up this week with some new videos.  If you've got any requests, shoot me an e-mail.