Last year at AU I was a lab assistant for 2 classes, attended a bunch more, took part in the Blogger and AEC socials, and worked the Avatech Solutions / IMAGINiT Technologies booth. If you were there, I may have seen you and so the reverse. This year, I’ve been lucky enough to have 2 class proposals selected to instruct! So, if you are heading out to Autodesk University 2011 in Las Vegas, make sure to check out the classes listed below that I’ll be presenting. To make it a little easier, once you’ve registered for the conference and are signing up for classes, just find the name “Bryan Tanner” in the instructor pull-down list to find my classes.

That’s just that networking and meetup events, though! You’ll also find me loitering around the Avatech Solutions and IMAGINiT Technologies booths in the exhibitor area between classes and events. I’ll be chatting it up with professionals from all around the world and probably taking pictures with them while there. So what about classes, labs, and unconference events? That’s all covered, too. I’ll be all over the place for civil, survey, and geospatial classes, the Infrastructure Keynote, and I’ll be a lab assistant for one of Autodesk’s Lee Ambrosius’ class: From Open Paren to Closed Paren: Basics of AutoLISP.

So as you can tell, I’ve got a pretty full schedule next week, but I’ll be updating Indydrafter.com the whole time out there. More specifically, I’ve set up a special portal for the Indydrafter’s perspective of all the events and goings-on of Autodesk University 2010. All you have to do is go to Indydrafter.com/au2010. See the full run-down of offerings within the Indydrafter AU portal below:

Keep coming back throughout the conference! Don’t forget, all the festivities officially kick-off on Tuesday morning, November 30th at 8 am Pacific Time, but there are a lot of assorted activities going on all day next Monday as well. It will be a busy 3 days with a nearly unmeasurable amount of information to absorb, but you can’t possibly top the quality of talent, environment, and benefits to be had. Join me on this exciting adventure, whether you’re participating live in Las Vegas or from the comfort of your own office or home.

I was going to do a 10 day count-down to AU with a new post each day, but there are so many other people out there with some really great information, I thought it better to compile all those sources and share them with you. Please visit the websites below and discover the AU tips, tricks, and suggestions they’ve all given.

Melanie Perry’s AU Survival Guide: This is a great write-up that also happens to include some great tips on how to deal with those little awkward moments that always correspond with networking events.

Autodesk’s AU 2010 Green Travel Tips: Looking to get to AU in a more environmentally friendly way? Here are some really good travel tips.

The CAD Professor’s Tips on AU Virtual: Can’t make it to Las Vegas for AU? Sunith wraps-up the benefits of enjoying Autodesk University from the comfort of your home or office.

The Autodesk University Show Guide: Looking for the most comprehensive list of activities going on out at AU Las Vegas? Look no further than the AU Show Guide.

Getting the Most Out of AU Webcast by Lynn Allen: You’ll have to log into the AU Online website and enter the AU Virtual environment for this one, but Lynn runs through a list of must know information about preparing for and participating in Autodesk University.

Ready to Get Ready for AU: If you are just looking for some highlights of what all you should be most interested in at AU, Curt Moreno (the Kung Fu Drafter), has all you need to know right here.

Now, with all of that information, I’ll also suggest that you go to the webapp for Autodesk University by clicking here to keep up to date on the lastest happenings, photo streams, video blogs, maps and everything else going on during the conference. The best advice I can give, though, is that you participate in AU however you can and share it with your friends, coworkers, and peers.

Sharpen your mouse and have a keyboard at ready, because the submittal process can be an interesting one. For more information on requirements for being a speaker, what process to undergo for submittal, and examples of previously accepted proposals go to the BLAUGI post detailing it here. Start early on preparation. It will help you hand over fist when the deadline approaches and you’re still trying to crank out the course description for that 5th proposal.

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.

I personally participated in the AUv sessions both from the office at work during lunch and in between rush times; and also when I was at home sick the first day of the events. That was part of what made this year’s AU such a great event: no one was left out simply because they couldn’t afford to go to Las Vegas, didn’t have the available time, or had other obligations/geographic constraints that burdened them from making the trip.

Aside from watching 6-7 of the AUv screencasts, I also actively participated in the Twitter interface to keep up a line of communication with event-goers as well as a way to give real-time feedback about the Keynotes, Design Slam competitions, and the classes themselves. As a matter of fact, I had a tweet display behind Lynn Allen while she was discussing the incorporation of Twitter into AU this year during her introduction for Carl Bass’s Keynote.

Although this doesn’t mean much and I’m no more recognized today because of it, the fact that there was another form of communication during the event filled a gap. That gap is the inevitable feeling of being disconnected from everything going on at AU. I had the ability to talk to people attending AU, sitting in the crowd watching the same thing in real life that I was from my computer screen. When I wasn’t able to catch what was going on, tweets from others kept me filled in, and vis-versa while I was watching and others weren’t able to. In addition to the Twitter feed, the Q/A section of AUv screencasts gave instructors a great deal of flexibility in answering attendees questions on the fly as well.

Speaking of the AUv classes. I was very pleased with the layout of the screencasts. Displaying the slides/active window on what was about 3/4 of the video while allowing viewers to still see the instructor was impressive. Instead of just seeing a computer screen broadcast, like in most webinars, viewers actually got to see the instructors expressions, reactions, and overall presentability during the course. This definitely enhanced the experienced and let the AUv attendees feel much more connected.

Of the courses available, I leaned more in the way of AutoCAD Civil 3D, programming, and instruction/education based classes. I won’t go into detail of every class that I watched/participated in, but I learned quite a bit and “virtually” walked away from the event feeling like I gained a lot of practical and applicable knowledge. I also came away from AU with more contacts and connections than when I started, even though almost all of them were virtual connections made via Twitter and/or the Q/A panel.

I obviously don’t represent the feelings of the actual Autodesk University (Las Vegas) attendees. They’ll have their own point of view to express. From where I sit, though, I couldn’t be happier…unless I had actually gotten the opportunity to be there myself in person, that is.

Note: Any of this information is subject to change at any point in time leading up to AU 2009.