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.