Are You Going to Autodesk University?

We asked this question in our recent AU Poll on the Autodesk University Online homepage. In the survey results, 31% of the responses were positive, and those respondents said they will likely be at AU 2009.  Another 19% know at this point that they will not be at AU this year. For 50% of those who completed the survey, it is still a toss-up if they will make it to the conference in Las Vegas this year.  Of course, this is not a scientific survey, but rather it’s more of a reading of the pulse of the AU community. 

AU 2009 Call for Proposals (CFP) to speak at the conference is currently open and we had a surprisingly large number of submissions in the first week. Usually, 80% of submissions arrive the last two weeks, so this early rush was good to see. 

This year, we will do class selections slightly different.  Each product/industry group will assemble a team of industry experts to review, rank, and recommend classes. Once CFP is closed, we will also open up all submissions to the public, and let anyone rate and comment on classes. Final class selection will be a combination of what industry experts and the public selected.

This year, we are adding two new content types:

• Virtual sessions: These 60-minute classes will be videotaped  in high definition in front of a green screen. Session recordings will be done at AU  and session broadcasts will start on Tuesday, December 1. Content will be presented in lecture format, and live Q&A (text only) will be available during the broadcast.  These sessions will also be broadcast at the AU conference where they will be offered to AU conference attendees.
• Unconference sessions: Unlike a traditional lecture, an unconference session will have a leader who introduces a topic and engages the audience in a discussion where experiences are shared around that topic.  A session leader’s job will be to remove the separation between expert and audience and tap into the wisdom of the crowd to reach a common understanding of the topic. Unconference sessions will have a maximum of 25 attendees and will be scheduled for 90 minutes. Some sessions will be selected now—others will be added later as topics pop up. The unConference is not new this year, but we hope those significant changes can address last year’s major concerns—that attendees did not know about them and they were too short.

--Joseph