Category Technology

Bloomberg Businessweek Design Conference – Visually Recorded by Tom Wujec

Visual Recording of Bloomberg Businessweek Design Conference by Autodesk's own Tom Wujec http://buswk.co/VjqSYZ

You might think to yourself “hey I can draw”, but can you really draw real-time as the presenters are speaking or a conversation of fast speaking colleagues like my team to capture the essence of the topic and key takeaways as that is the hard and even more rare talent. Some may have seen Tom visually record at Autodesk University during a community meeting event and he literally had paper around the room and he just kept drawing non-stop. At the end a complete visual recording of the event was complete and easy for anyone to understand as a picture tells and conveys an idea much better and faster than just semantic text.

More about Tom

Tom regularly meets with teams from companies around the world and facilitates discussions to flesh out ideas, problems, and strategies by leading the discussion. Many times see having a led discussion and documented visually on paper, sticky notes, and whiteboards can help get you to the right strategy, idea, or solution compared to just talking and taking notes in a group meeting amongst themselves without a ring master or herder of innovative cats.

Tom is a member of the team I am on in the Office of the CTO and a great fellow, no really Tom’s title is “Autodesk Fellow”. He is one of the instrumental people in the history of the popular Sketchbook Pro and Maya products.Tom is also well known not only for being a nice, thoughtful, stylish, and funny guy, but he is key at TED including the referee of the fun cage match events also at Autodesk University and the Innovation Forums and so much more as I honestly could keep going.

Computer Reboot and Tech-xersism

Not a normal reboot by any means but actually a new drive and starting from the fresh Operating System and rebuilding as well a performing a tech-xersism to rid the machine of evil bits and bytes. I had to reinstall everything to get back to where I was before my drive and OS decided to get sick or possessed by ancient evil spirited code for the past two weeks seriously hobbling my ability to work between crashes, lockups and blue screens. I am very rough on hardware due to all the unreleased technology I install and uninstall or the crazy things I research and try as well as travel incidents like last year in remote Northern Turkana basin Kenya and having to place my laptop on blocks of ice due to the 115+ degree heat, and then AU 2011 where static electricity built up from all the walking and I touched my laptop and the motherboard fried.

One of the biggest challenges when rebuilding your machine is knowing what your hardware is, what is installed, and what are you registration keys for the installed application.

Autodesk Formit 2.0, then Revit

Autodesk Formit is a free iPad app launched on iTunes as a version 1.0 during Autodesk University 2012 in December 2012 and updated this past weekend to version 2.0.

Autodesk Formit 2.0 on iPad with Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino Model

Autodesk FormIt Version 2.0 has just been launched on iTunes, and it is completely free. This latest update includes some great improvements including metric units, automatic Revit file creation (with Autodesk 360), grid and snap settings adapt to zoom level, and some great user experience enhancements.
Download or update today: http://autode.sk/TjO5Hj

Don’t be a Technology Armadillo

I recently learned that the odd animal armadillo has very self destructive habits that threaten it’s very own survival. What the armadillo does that is so bad is that once it establishes a path, it continues to use it regardless of the changes and obstacles placed in its path. Part of this is due to its poor eyesight and it follows fence lines and other barriers to guide them but what about when a house or road is placed along that established armadillo path, the armadillo does not always adapt and runs into the object over and over. The friend who told me about this was living in a new apartment building and every once in awhile they would hear a loud “thud” sound outside on the wall. The thud sound turned out to be an armadillo running its long established path before the apartment building. This behavior also allows people to trap unwanted armadillos easily just by placing a trap on their established path or along a fence line. Armadillos are also known to jump when scared which is deadly when they are on a road and jump under a moving vehicle.

Six Technology Trends

You need to watch this short video of Autodesk’s geek and technology master in residence Brian Mathews, Group CTO of the Platform Products Group providing his overview of the technology trends. Want a list of the 6 trends, watch the video and find out and hear them explained, and why they matter.

Capturing the Exploratorium in San Francisco

The San Francisco Exploratorium has long been a place for kids and adults alike to explore science and technology, but it is moving. The Exploratorium is moving to the historic Embarcadero waterfront at pier 15 in 2013 and closing the current location in the Palace of Fine Arts in a couple weeks.

One of the people that the Exploratorium helped get interested in science and technology was Autodesk’s very own Brian Mathews who is now the Group CTO for the IPG group. Brian mentioned it made such an impact on him that he wanted to help document the existing Exploratorium in 3D using Reality Capture methods such as laser scanning and photogrammetry. Laser scanning projects a laser beam and captures the x,y,z and other attributes at a very high speed to create a 3D point cloud to be used as a digital reference of the objects and space. Photogrammetry is where you take a series of photos and then software creates a 3D textured model. Autodesk currently has a free software for computers as well as iPhone and the iPad 123D Catch where you can take photos of an object and create a 3D model. Brian is using an advanced version of the technology that we are working on.