Conferences in Las Vegas. Let’s Stop the Madness.

Every year, hundreds of Autodeskers leave San Francisco, the most beautiful city in America, for a big party in Las Vegas, the urban sprawl in the middle of the desert. They are joined by over 10,000 users and hundreds of vendors, making Autodesk University the largest CAD gathering in the world. AU has been held in Las Vegas every year since 2000.

Outside The Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas rendition of Venice may be drier, cleaner than the real thing, but it’s still fugazzi.

It is my second Las Vegas conference in two weeks, having just come back from Trimble’s Dimensions conference. It was also on the Strip, as Las Vegas Boulevard is called—also in the Sands Convention Center, in fact. It’s the third time in Las Vegas this year. I realize I may have visited Las Vegas a hundred times and always for business.

Outside of the conventions, the businesses of Las Vegas are ones that are illegal, banned or controlled everywhere else. The city is best known for vice. Gambling is pervasive. Slot machines greet you as you get off the plane. The convention center where AU is held sits between the Palazzo and Venetian, both massive casino hotels. The half-mile walk between my room and the conference is through an acre of black jack tables, craps, bars and slot machines. In the early morning, most of the tables have only a croupier, but some of the slots have some action—if you can call it that. Almost lifeless old people, dejected as if their machines haven’t paid out all night but hopeful that morning brings the jackpot, still wearily push the button. Slot machines haven’t had handles for years, an energy saving move, no doubt.

Their cigarettes burn unattended in ash trays. The smoke reminds me of the fires back home. It seems like all of California is on fire. One fire has burned down the town of Paradise, and the smoke has engulfed the San Francisco bay area. Stores have run out of masks, but my family was lucky enough to get some. Is Las Vegas the last place in the U.S. you can smoke indoors?

The seedy and snazz, the shoeboys and the satins,

like a throne made of gilt that too many johns have sat in.

-Alice by Mott the Hoople
(about Manhattan, but in my head going down the Strip in Las Vegas)

I escape later and get outside. I see other conventioneers, some still wearing their AU badges. Some are posing with close-to-naked show girls who seem to have popped up on every corner of the Strip this year. In between are gauntlets of card snappers, men and women try to get you to accept cards with a picture of a naked girl who will come to your room.

Drinking in Las Vegas may be the law. By evening, most everyone seems to have a drink in hand. Some have glasses as long as their arms. I’m feeling out of place.

On one end of the Strip is the last big casino, the Mandalay Bay. A year ago, a gunman using bump-stocks opened rapid fire on a country music concert across the street. There were 58 dead and over 500 wounded. It was the most destruction by guns in America ever, unless you include the Civil War. The city held a candle light vigil Oct. 1.

Why Las Vegas?

They say it’s cheap. The city has indeed made it appealing for conventioneers and travelers with low upfront costs. Airfare from San Francisco can be under a hundred dollars. Five-star hotels are under $200, a third of the cost of rooms in San Francisco and New York. My rooms at the Palazzo and the Venetian were suites with a sunken living rooms. I hear the conference booking costs are also low. Casinos may be giving convention away in the hopes of emptying the pockets of conventioneers at the gaming tables, restaurants and shops. Every other shop in the Grand Canal of Shops seems to be a restaurant. The Strip may have more high-end steakhouses than anywhere else. A steak can cost over $70. Don’t even think of opening the wine menu.

View from the top. The High Roller, Las Vegas' answer to the London Eye, includes an open bar in some of the gondolas.

“Could you just keep AU in San Francisco?” I ask one and all. It’s a selfish request, I admit. It’s my home. I could drive over. It is also home for Autodesk. The company would save a million dollars in airfare and hotels by holding the conference on its home turf. Before it was branded Autodesk University, the annual user meeting was called CAD Camp and held next to the company’s headquarters on the grounds of the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael. An early AU was held in the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.

Many Autodeskers live in San Francisco or its environs. Many of them are young. Who could blame them for the chance to get out and away to Las Vegas, the quintessential party city? It may be their one fling a year. This year AU’s party may have the biggest and best. It included free rides on the High Roller, a 550-foot tall Ferris wheel with “passenger cabins” and open bars.

May I Suggest San Francisco?

Sitting on the dock of the Bay. San Francisco, the No.1 draw for tourists in the United States, a natural venue for future Autodesk Universities.

AU has grown, they say. “There’s no place big enough to hold a conference this size,” is Autodesk’s pat answer when asked, “Las Vegas?” It is a good answer and speaks well of the public relations staff who have to hear me whining year about coming to Las Vegas year after year. PR is all about putting a positive spin on unfortunate circumstances. Las Vegas is a test for them, but the answer needs fact checking.

Many other cities hold much larger conventions than AU. Over 20,000 architects convene for AIA conventions in New York, Orlando and Philadelphia. A 175,000 sales people came to San Francisco for the SalesForce.com convention. IMTS is attended by 130,000 in Chicago. The biggest industrial fair of all in Hannover, Germany, and draws over 200,000 people.

The word around AU is Las Vegas had a 10-year contract, and we are nearing its end. One can only hope that is true.

Comments

[NotAganost]

San Francisco would be prohibitively expensive, plus you have the San Francisco feces map to deal with.

[R.K. McSwain]

>>> " AU has been held in Las Vegas every year since 2000."

Except for 2005, when it was in Orlando.

[Kristiina]

Could not agree more. I have experienced two times conference in LV and even you walk under the same roof to a quick visit to your room and feel that you don't leave the event (even walking through casino smoke and restaurant areas) you leave the event and walk 10-20 minutes to your room. In smaller cities, you walk to many surrounding hotels at the same time, even it happens under the sky.

[Corporal Willy]

There are some valid points made in this discussion and one that I did not hear discussed too well is the cost of having conventions or large meetings here. I believe Vegas Businesses think too highly of themselves and in some cases have out priced their competition. I know several companies that refuse to have any shows or meetings here.

[Darren Young]

I can't disagree with a lot of what was said about Las Vegas. It is a much nicer city if you get away from the Strip. However, while there are other cities that can host large numbers of convention attendees, most of those cities don't have the facilities to take 10,000 people and split them into hundreds of smaller classes of 25-300 people.

Orlando hosts a lot of people yet when Autodesk attempted AU there, it was a disaster (IMO). In Las Vegas, the event is within walking distance to everyone's hotel making networking and meeting new people easy anytime. If you host AU at the Moscone Center, once the event concludes people will scatter. In Las Vegas, you have a chance to make a quick trip to your hotel during the day without really leaving the event.

But, if you really want to move it, I'd suggest New Orleans...the food is fantastic!