The CAD Insider

Autodesk University 2011 - Hits and Misses, Pt 5

LAS VEGAS, NV (Autodesk University), Nov 29, 2011 -- For the 2nd day of AU, we were treated to a variety of presentations, from a morning keynote to (new this year) an Innovation Forum. Here are some hits and misses:

Hits

Sir Ken Robinson: "The Internet is rewiring our brains." There's proof that we read the New York Times print version slower and and retain more than with the print version. Sir Robinson thinks this is due to the distractions on the web page, like hyperlinks. 

Just don't kill each other. "If we all live like Rwandans, the Earth can support 15 billion. If we all live like North Americans, it can support 1.5 billion." Thanks to Sir Ken Robinson, again, for recognizing the true cause of all our troubles is us, but who has the tact to not make us feel bad about it.

3D show and tell. Louise Leakey, descendant of the famed paleontologist Richard Leaky, who made 3D models of the bones of our ancestors so we can all have access to it.  She may have used Project PhotoFly for it (now renamed 123D Catch). Teachers can make life size models of Lucy's skull and repeat 30 times that being buried for a million years does not turn bones to plastic.

Corporate conscience: VP Amar Hanspal appears truly saddened at the thought of a child getting sick every 6 seconds because of lack of clean drinking water.

Misses

What about that child? Consecutive VPs drool over booming middle classes in emerging markets and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). One says we are all connected all that time. I don't think they have tried connecting a corporate office in Rwanda or a guest house in Kolkata. 

Random comparisons. The number of microprocessors produced last year was greater than the grains of rice produced

And why are we doing this? Autodesk CTO Jeff Kowalski holds up a petri dish full of E. coli bacteria that smells like bananas. Because we can, does that mean we should? I try to remember any experiment with nature that hasn't backfired. 

 

Autodesk Strategy is No Strategy: Autodesk University 2011 - Hits and Misses, Pt 4

LAS VEGAS, NV (Autodesk University), Nov 29, 2011 -- Maybe for the millionth time Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, is questioned about the strategy of giving away software, or making it really cheap. The analyst who asked this question  at the media Q&A session no doubt considered such a strategy suicidal. It was much easier to understand an Autodesk that sold AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit or some other vertical product that sold for thousands of dollars and provided huge margins. But now Autodesk is as likely to brag about software that is downloaded by the millions but sells for 99 cents. Worse, the apps from Autodesk Labs  are all free. 

Carl danced around the question and did not directly answer it. The polite analyst did not press the issue. The timidity of our industry's press usually bothers me. It took me a while before I realized that in his own way, Carl actually was providing the strategy.

I remembered reading about Google, which on top of all its popular success has also achieved immense financial success as a publisher. Almost all its revenue is derived from advertising, something that did not initially occur to its founders and is missing from Google's business plan. All Google originally wanted to do was to become wildly popular, i.e. make something so good, so useful, so indispensible that people get hooked. The financial success that followed was a a happy accident.

Autodesk is a very profitable company. Last quarter it made about $550 million, almost all of it from its professional products. $70 million of it was profit. That is a lot of money to experiment with different products for consumers with the hopes that one, two or more will be a runaway hit, creating millions -- maybe billions-- of devoted fans who may do anything from pay a buck or two to upgrade to a professional product. Who knows?

No strategy appears to the Autodesk's strategy for now. Ingratiate yourself with the public, then wait for money to fall into your lap. Popularity first, profit second. Like Google. 

 

And Now a Word From Our Conscience - Autodesk University 2011, Hits and Misses, Pt 3:

And Now a Word From Our Conscience - Autodesk University 2011, Hits and Misses, Pt 3:

LAS VEGAS, NV (Autodesk University), Nov 28, 2011 -- The mad rush to put professional tools in the hands of non-professionals was given a face and a voice Monday afternoon when Autodesk CEO Carl Bass excitedly told of an inventor who flew his "aerocopter" to a height of 3,000 ft. "I don't even know if this guy was an engineer," says Carl, who was on the panel of judges for the contest in which this device was featured.


Autodesk CEO Carl Bass wants to empower all those who want to design.

Clearly, Autodesk wants to empower individuals with software. It is making software available to all who want it, a lot of it is free or cheap, a lot of it runs on cheap tablet PCs. It's a way to reach way to reach people who may never have been Autodesk customers before. I get that.

But it make engineers like me cringe. If you are a Professional Engineer, you have even sworn to protect the public. But how do you protect the public when you are not even in the design process? When the inventor has the tools to design an aero copter and the tools to build it, how do you protect the public from itself?

Carl admires the inventor who risks his own life to commandeer this aerocopter. Should such endeavors be regulated? Carl does not think so. He's a Libertarian. I am reminded of the Darwin Awards, in which someone rigged his lawnchair to dozens of balloons and tried to lower himself down to earth by shooting the balloons with a BB gun. See Darwin Awards.

What a dope! It's funny. Unless the dope falls on your head.

 

Autodesk University 2011 - Hits and Misses, Pt 2: 10 Billion Mobile Computers

LAS VEGAS, NV (Autodesk University), Nov 28, 2011 -- Autodesk wasted no time in declaring its desire for the consumer market. Only a few minutes into the media presentation, VP Chris Bradshaw, who is prone to reminding us that the computing power of his iPhone eclipses the computers of my youth, went on to say the half of us in the room who are now on iPads were representative of the world at large. He sees the rush to mobile computing not abating until there are 10 billion of these devices. Never mind there are only(!) 7 billion people on the earth. That just means that we'll all have more than one. As proof, he asks the assembled media how many of us had more than one mobile computer, meaning a laptop, tablet PC (like iPad) or smart phone? Most of us were guilty as charged.

And on these mobile devices will be many DIYers, hobbyists, artists...in other words, non-professionals. Non-designers. Non-architects. Non-engineers. 

Autodesk's Chris Bradshaw sees a promised land with 10 billion mobile devices

 

Autodesk University 2011 - Hits and Misses, Pt 1

LAS VEGAS, NV (Autodesk University), Nov 28, 2011 -- One might think Autodesk would be content in hosting what is by far the biggest CAD gathering in the world, but it's not. It is inflating the numbers. in addition to the 8,000+  that are expected to be here, Autodesk is also counting those that are attending "virtually," as if that matters. So the number being bandied about is in the hundreds of thousands. 

Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO, takes on a room full of media -- and redefines "businesss casual"

IMHO, there is no substitute for being here. If I was attending "virtually," I would also be doing my regular job, answering emails, shopping on Amazon.com, or a half dozen other bad habits I have picked up on my way to ADHD --none of which would have put in in good standing as a student or careful attentive listener.

There's 95 of us are from the media, a category that increasingly includes bloggers, international press, some of whom represent titles that have little to do with CAD. We have been corralled into a large room a and are being treated to one presentation after another by Autodesk VPs. Carl Bass, CEO, will be the the dessert.