Maintaining the high-level of quality that attendees have come to expect from AU sessions is very important to us. Since the very beginning, we have asked attendees to provide us with feedback on every single session they attend. We want to know how attendees feel about technical content, speaker preparedness, and session materials (among other things), and we ask them to rate each category from 1 to 10. The highest possible rating is 10. This year, we received feedback from 49.7% of all attendees of all sessions and the average speaker rating was 8.44. The AU team takes these results seriou... READ MORE >

Little over one week since AU, and this is my first blog posting. Usually, I take a week's vacation at this time of year—one week in Mexico or something like this—to recuperate from AU. I work on AU all year, and the last few months before the event usually require “a little more” than eight hours per day. This year, I did not go to Mexico because we also launched the new AU Online website. Many of you have experienced the new site already, (we've had 38,758 unique visitors since it launched last Monday) and I trust you have seen the improvements. Those of you who have used AU Online since the... READ MORE >

Today, Jim Meyer from Solidvapor guided an AU Online/AU event customer focus group. Five participants shared their insights about the event and the website, and I found it incredibly insightful. We are working on getting a new AU website launched next week—and several of the comments we heard today will appear on the new site. Two items that struck me most were: Users did not know handouts are free to anyone The perception of what AU Online is On Monday, with the launch of the new site, we will not introduce a lot of new functionality, but I am excited about the features and improvements ... READ MORE >

The Monday before AU may be my favorite day of AU. A ton of people arrive on Monday and as of right now 7203 (77%) have checked in. It is great to see everyone, and particularly the presenters, many of whom I have worked with over the last 9 years. As for others, it is just nice to put a face to those hundreds of emails we exchanged since the “Call for Papers” got AU 2008 started, sometime back in March. This evening, we had the Speaker Social and approximately 250 speakers were thanked by Chris Bradshaw and Lynn Allen for all their hard work. Chris mentioned that one of the greatest challenge... READ MORE >

Ev'rywhere you go in the Venetian Hotel and Conference Centers... AU is starting to come together in Las Vegas. Yesterday, folks like me who work on AU year round have started to arrive in Las Vegas. Some of our vendors, those who will manage registration, setup the meeting rooms and network 600-plus computers had to skip their home-cooked turkey, and they have been here for a few days already. This will be my ninth AU, and I am still impressed how the AU staff is able to transform the Venetian Conference Center into the Autodesk University campus—in just a few days. For the most part, I am re... READ MORE >