AEC Technology Strategies Conference 2009 - summary

Last week, I was pleased to attend ZweigWhite's 2009 AEC Technology Strategies Conference; http://events.zweigwhite.com/technology.

After an epic journey, lasting 29 hours door-to-door due to delays and stopovers, I finally arrived at the impressive Green Valley Ranch, Las Vegas, just after midnight, the night before the conference. I must say that Atlanta airport has a surprisingly good jazz pianist! :)

After a scant 5 hours of sleep, whilst adjusting to the 8-hour time difference, I arose to set up the CADsmart booth and meet the organisers. My thanks to Russ and the team at Stagnito Media, who proved to be extremely helpful and obliging hosts.

This was the tenth annual gathering of AEC leaders and it proved to be a worthwhile event. Attendance was very good, in what is clearly a tough year for event organisers. The genial MC for this year's show was Ken Young, CIO at HOK, who kept things running to schedule and offered his own perspective on how recession has affected technical decision making strategy at his own Practice, throughout the proceedings.

Notable keynotes on day one were delivered by Michael Tardif, Director of IPD at Grunley Construction, who discussed Aligning Technology with Core Business Strategy. This was followed by Walter P Moore CIO, Jim Jacobi, who covered the Importance of Leveraging Technology in a Challenging Environment.

The conference split into concurrent working groups after the break, covering topics such as; Communicating & Delivering IT Value, Intranets Made Easy, Leadership Strategies, Adopting 3D, Managing Remote Teams, WAN Optimization, The Reality of BIM and the Changing Role of Technology in the AEC Industry.

An excellent lunch of filets mignon, sponsored by TW Telecom, was followed by further working groups and a wrap up of day one's proceedings. This was followed by an entertaining evening's networking, which included watching the LA Lakers series win against Orlando Magic, and a round of 'beerpong' in the casino. I'm pleased to report that CADsmart were on the winning team, thus jointly holding the reigning title of AEC Tech Strategies Beerpong champions! :)

Day two began with a technical presentation from Dennis Shelden from MIT and Gehry Technologies. Then further working groups covering the following subjects; Collaboration Tools and Techniques, Document Management, Future of BIM, Training For Effect - Improving Your Firm's Knowledge Base.

The final keynote of the day was a fascinating presentation on Building a High Performing Virtual IT Team, by MWH Global's CIO, Micki Nelson. This was followed by an expert panel, comprising all principal speakers, and included a host of technology-related questions from the floor.

In summary, a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days, with many new connections made and friendships renewed. My thanks go to ZweigWhite for their hospitality and to the following delegates for taking me under their wing; John 'Pickle Loving' Robison, Chris 'Sharepoint Guru' Parsons, Chris 'Hustler' Pinckney and Karl 'Rainbow Trout' Fischer.

I thought the return trip couldn't possibly be more convoluted than the journey over; how naive I was! To start, we routed to NY JFK, via Salt Lake City. Then, we were held on the tarmac at JFK for an hour due to congestion; there were literally 30+ planes lined up nose to tail! We missed the connection to London Heathrow by 5 minutes, then took another 5 hours to persuade Delta to let us on the last flight out that night. I squeeked onto the flight with the last seat, only to be held up on the tarmac for another 90 minutes due to yet more Saturday night runway congestion! Grr! So, in fact, my return journey lasted 31 hours door to door!

Still, the rewards of a successful trip far outweighed the down side of a few too many cups of airport coffee. And the Atlanta pianist really is very good! :)

R

The View from the Strip...

Well, we're back and just about caught up from our trip to AU2008 in Las Vegas, and I must say, overall we had a great time! This was my first time at AU as both sponsor and speaker - and it certainly made for a busy event!

The logistics of the conference are a sight to behold; even in an economic downturn, there must have been more than 8,000 delegates in attendance. Simply feeding and watering such a horde of enthusiastic CAD aficianado's was an impressive logistical feat!

The venue itself has to be seen to be believed; we stayed at the Venetian Resort, which is enormous! The walk from our suite ('room' doesn't do it justice!) to the exhibition hall took about 15 minutes! And yes, I did forget my laptop and had to make the trek back at least once! The attention to the interior detail was fascinating, with faux tapestries, ceiling montages, and even a frighteningly realistic blue sky above the shopping mall. It took me a moment to realise that I was still inside the building; and when we sat at the bar for a quick afternoon drink, my wife asked the waiter if we could sit 'outside'! :) I could tell from his wry smile we weren't the first! We then sat over a beer, to be entertained by a mini-opera just yards away!

There were a couple of moments which might have detracted from an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable week. When setting up the booth, a rather over-zealous security guard insisted we have our name badges re-printed because they were missing a label (which meant queueing again for 30 mins). And the Autodesk 'help' committee tried to charge me $25 for a replacement badge when I left it in my wife's handbag (she was shopping, naturally!) - even though I tried to explain we were spending $5k on a booth! Ah well, I guess they were just following the rules.

From a business perspective, I'd say the show was a resounding success. This year, CADsmart was involved in a new format for the AUGI Top Daug competition, which went remarkably smoothly. Over 500 assessments taken over two days, on 32 machines, and just two software crashes - a credit to Ed and Martin on our technical tem, for building such a stable app. The results were posted live to a 'Top 10' scoreboard throughout the event, and the eventual winner was determined by a drafting 'shootout'. Great stuff!

We also launched our new Revit skills assessment, which was tremendously well received. Over 100 companies signed up to trial the software, so we're looking forward to receiving their feedback in the coming days and weeks. We'll be creating an Imperial data set in the next few weeks, for those firms who refuse to work in the real world :) (just kidding!) and will be adding Structure and MEP content in the new year.

Tony & I delivered our class on making the move from AutoCAD to Revit to a full room, and received some good scores on our feedback survey, which is nice to hear.

And so to the gambling; we did have a dabble on the last day, just to be polite! Tony, Mel and I started with a 'pot' of $25 each and here's how we did; Tony - lost it all on a spin of the wheel. Myself - ditto (although I went red 18 and it came up red 19 - so near and yet so far - probably 6 words which sum up the history of Vegas!). Mel - hit the craps table, feigning an innocent ignorance, and walked away with $150, to the amusement of the croupier, who knew a hustler when he saw one! :)

And so, we left Vegas as winners, in more than one sense. Next year's event will be at the Mandalay Bay. Think I'll try my hand at Black Jack...

Rory