Autodesk University 2009 was by all definitions a success.  Everyone that I’ve talked to, whether they were in Las Vegas or attending via the AU Virtual events, had a great time and walked away from the experience with an improved knowledge of the programs we work with daily, more connections and friends, and much more.  I covered all this last week when I posted my reactions to Autodesk University 2009 here.  That’s all fine a good, but there are two sides to every story.

There is room for improvement on the Autodesk University experience.  This isn’t meant to sound harsh, but it is a reality.  Autodesk in-arguably put on a great event this year, but it was the first year for AU Virtual, we are all fighting a global economic recession so there were less “live” event-goers in Las Vegas, and a lot of new technology was used for AU 2009.  With all these variables in play, there is going to be room for error and change for the better.

Overall, the concept and execution of AU Virtual (AUv) was impressive.  Tens of thousands of people were interconnected around the world for it and it will undoubtedly change the face of Autodesk University forever.  With AUv being such a success, it brings to question where Autodesk will put more effort and influence in for every future AU from here on out.  Putting on events like this is a huge undertaking time-wise, effort-wise, and financially.  I’m curious to see which basket Autodesk puts its eggs in next year.

The live event in Las Vegas went quite well also.  People seemed very pleased with the Mandalay Bay venue and all the amenities it had to offer, although some people did apparently get turned around a bit having been used to the past AU events at the Venetian.  Between the many events and classes, meetings, Design Slam, Pecha Kucha, and the AUGI annual meeting and Beer Bust, everyone had a great time in Vegas this year and I don’t think you can beat that experience (if you can spare the expense).

Now that I’ve summed up the main points of my previous post on AU 2009, it’s on to the negatives.  My direct experience this year came from AUv, so that will be the basis of improvements that I’ll suggest for next year’s AU.

If you were participating with AUv from home or work, many people were experiencing “Media Site” errors that prevented them from watching.  This may or may not have been due to firewall issues with company intranet protections or many other things.  By the third day, the number of complaints surrounding these types of errors decreased dramatically, but one my come to the conclusion that is because many that experienced it gave up and didn’t return to AUv.  Because of this, I can’t be sure if the issue was ever resolved.  This may not be something that Autodesk can change with how the stream the content, but it needs to be something addressed ahead of next year’s events AU Virtual registrants may need to be notified that they should contact their IT/IS personnel to ensure that the proper modifications be made to their network prior to the event.

Surveys.  They help so much in understanding the experiences of attendees.  Autodesk pushes and pushes for people to fill out the surveys for all the classes they attended.  Instructors depend on these surveys to find out what they did well, bad, need to improve on, and/or what subject matter worked for them.  One problem, an extremely low number of people filled them out.  Many people may have disregarded them as pointless, others may have procrastinated and let them go by the wayside, and many more (as was my case) thought they could go to the AU Online interface and fill them out there.   I was left trying to tweet my impression of classes to any of the instructors I could find on Twitter, because I did a simple and quick delete in my email inbox of the requests to fill out the surveys.  Why did I tweet to the instructors instead of filling out the surveys?  Although I went to the AU Online event page in attempt to fill out the course surveys, apparently the only way to access them is via the link that was in the request emails I received.  They’re gone now and the surveys will go without being touched.  Matt Anderson instructed a class with 618 AUv attendees and only 3 filled out the survey.  Ouch!  I don’t know why they didn’t get completed, but making them more available and accessible to attendees would be a big help.

There is one more item that I thought was a compromise of what could have been.  Whether you were at Las Vegas or attended from home or the office via AUv, Twitter was a huge part of Autodesk University this year.  The integration of the Twitter panel on the AUv screen played a big part of making AUv attendees feel much more connected to the experience, as I’ve said before.  Something also available on the AUv screen was the class Q/A discussions-another valuable aspect of participating from afar.

So what’s the problem?  There were two choices for AUv, either you can view the Q/A and Twitter panels while the webcast window is small (approximately 1/5 the size of the monitor or projector screen and virtually unusable) or you could watch the webcast in full-screen mode without any options for viewing the Q/A or Twitter panels.  It would be a much richer experience if the class webcasts could be viewed full-screen and, at a minimum, the Q/A discussion was available.  My preference would be an option during full-screen mode to toggle the Q/A on or off, as well as the same options for the Twitter panel, but controlled separately.  This would give every AUv attendee the utmost level of control in what information they view and how they view it.  Watch the webcast at full-screen and at a usable size-Check.  Participate in the Q/A discussion simultaneously so that you don’t have to jump in and out of the full-screen mode-Check.  Tweet the Autodesk program features that you are impressed with as it is presented-Check.  Ability to give the course instructor immediate feedback with either the Q/A discussion or Twitter-Check.  Tweet your impressions of a class to other AUv participants not currently in the class so that they might jump in-Check.

To wrap things up, I want to reiterate that Autodesk University Virtual went above and beyond my expectations.  I really was gratified by how much information and knowledge I was able to build and take away from the experience.  Maybe, though, these suggestions could be incorporated into AUv next year (along with whatever else Autodesk has up its sleeve) and make it just that much richer of an experience.

Take a second to consider what you think Autodesk could have done differently for Autodesk University and/or AU Virtual.  Post it in the comments area below so we can get a discussion going that could lead to the overall improvement to everyone’s experiences in the future.  Also, if you participated in the Autodesk University Extension events, let us know how it went and how you’d rate the benefits of them.  Oh, and don’t forget to read my previous post about my initial impressions of Autodesk University 2009 as a whole here.