Connect Now!

AU Connect went live today.  Check it out.  You have to be registered for the event and the same UN/PW you used for AU, works for AU Connect.

www.autodesk.com/au

Still tweaking a few things on the backend – but the site is ready for you to give it a spin.

Would love to hear your thoughts & feedback about the New AU Connect.

Session you Don’t Want to Miss!

MS10-1 Welcome General Session
Carl Bass’s first AU as Autodesk CEO, opening the biggest AU ever!

Details are still being worked out on all the Industry Main Stage session.  Anyone using any Autodesk products will benefit from hearing the latest industry updates during those 90 minute session.  Although there are classes going on at the same time, at least one of the below listed sessions should be on everyones schedule to have a full and well rounded AU experience.
MS21-1 Building Industry Main Stage
MS21-2 Education Industry Update
MS21-3 Manufacturing Industry Main Stage
MS21-4 Process & Power Industry Update
MS31-1 Civil/Geospatial Industry Main Stage
MS31-2 General Design Industry Main Stage
MS31-4 Design Visualization Industry Update

Hands-on Labs still Open!

AU this year will have 98 hands-on labs – 43 of them are full.  We are able to repeat many of them and there is still plenty of lab space available.  Below find a list of some of the labs that have plenty of space.  More are listed on the AU website.  You are able to change your class schedule by going back to the scheduler.

CV32-1L Cracking the Vault: Project Management for Civil 3D® 2007
DV21-1L Quick Spin on Autodesk® VIZ 2007
GD11-1L Paperless Tiger: Effective Use of Autodesk® Design Review and AutoCAD®
GD11-5L Managing CAD Standards

AU Community Map – Get Featured!

Something new at AU this year. The AU Community Map. Using Autodesk MapGuide, we are plotting AU attendees (generic information) on a map and it is searchable. Cool tool to see how many users from Denmark (~64) are coming – or how many from China (4) [last I checked]

We would like to feature a few attendees to this years event - post some personal, same professional info about you, reasons you come to AU, a picture etc. I am looking for volunteers who would like to get featured. This will go on the autodesk.com homepage as well as the AU site.

All we would need from you is to answer a few questions, provide a picture and you are done. No interaction required with others - although you can use AU Connect to make those connection…

If are interested, shoot me an email (joseph.wurcher@autodesk.com) – or reply here.

Course Catalog

Over the last few days I assigned rooms in which each of the sessions will be held.  For production purposes, we need to assign so early and have to give it our best guess as to what size room is most appropriate for each session.  Other then hands-on labs (of which 42 out of 98 are full), we are still below 70% occoupancy for all classes.  Our goal is not to run out of space in any class. Luckily space at the Venetian is very flexible and there is plenty of it that this is not likely to happen.  The PDF posted on the left, shows all sessions and their location.

BTW – Right now we have the same number of people registered as was the final number for AU 2004 – and we are still 2 month out.

#5: AU Online (…or AUOL)

As many of you know, last year was our first AU Online.  We recorded about 100 sessions – some of which did not get posted due to recording problems.  The site is still open and can be accessed at www.autodesk.com/auonline . As last years’ AU attendee, you have full (and free)access to the site – as do subscription customers.  A huge number of handouts, PPT, and datasets were downloaded.

 This year, we are doing it again.  We plan to record more sessions and make them available much faster after AU.   All relevant session documents will be posted to the AUOL (site name) – and plan is to link to other informational materiel within Autodesk.

 Classes we will record have not been finalzied yet.  We are likely to record classes as they fill up – or we think are important.  Final selection will be made with in the next few weeks.  This said, I know we will record both Powertracks (C3D and Revit).

 If you plan to be at AU, stop by the AUOL booth to get a sneak preview of the new AUOL.

More (on) Labs

AU this year will have more labs then ever before. We will have 7 lab rooms, with 40 computers each, set up. Rooms are setup so that 2 attendees share one computer. This allows us to offer a total of 98 hands-on labs. With so many labs, each attendee would potentially have the opportunity to attend 2 labs. We don’t restrict how many labs someone can sign up for – which of course leads to “early birds” signing up for more then 2 and some attendees not getting into the “promised 1.7284″ average labs J

As of today only 35 labs are full – and with the conference at over 50% of capacity, chances are good, most attendees will get lab time. Today I filled the final 2 open labs – I added a Civil 3D and a AutoCAD lab – and now all 98 labs spaces are filled. List of latest classes added can be found on the AU website, under http://www.autodeskevents.com/au2006/index.cfm?site=civil&mainsite=classupdates

Each lab instructor is assisted by 2 lab assistant. Lab assistants roll is to help the students stay on track with what is being taught and allow the instructor to stay on topic. BTW – for many, being a lab assistant is the first step on becoming a future AU instructors. (If you want to be considered as a speaker for next years’ AU, go to the speakers corner on the AU website and fill out the short speaker form. This year we had almost 1100 class submissions from over 500 individuals)