AU 2007 Day 1, Main Keynote

LAS VEGAS, NV - Carl Bass predicts a near future with 3 billion people with mobile phones.  I wondered how this could possibly segue into into green design, something Carl has been pushing lately. To me it seemed that all those cell phones will generate so much e-waste, primarily with all the batteries that wear out.

No, Carl was using the cell phone example as a part of his point about how the world is changing and how we (CAD users) need to adjust to it. It was a part of his 4 important trends of our time:

1. Going digital
2. Globalization
3. Infrastructure boom
4. Rising cost of energy

According to Carl, the Library of Congress contains 20 terabytes of data. Google indexes 850 terabytes. Of course, much of the web content Google indexes would not be worthy of the Library of Congress.

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass makes use of a round stage and a wraparound multiscreen display at Autodesk University 2008

Despite some doom and gloom stats about energy consumption and exploding population, "it's not a time to despair." "Today's world is going to test our ingenuity."

Next on the main stage was Yves Behar, founder of fuseproject, a San Francisco design and branding firm. I googled the site but was quickly ensnared in an overly creative navigation and had to bail. Yves talked of a design of a child's $100 laptop [pictured balanced on the head of a child in a dusty village], a children's water bottle that becomes a construction toy after its contents are consumed as "reuse is the best recycling" [obviously, Yves has not had to try to recycle tons of toys from kids who tire of them -- and besides shouldn't the kids just drink from the tap?), and the Leaf Lamp designed for Herman Miller, which looked flimsy but kinda cool, too (see picture)

Carl introduced Jeff Kowalski, CTO, as a "great friend." That might be but I was more interested in what Jeff was going to tell me about great technology at Autodesk. A CTO should be good for that, right? I'm such an optimist. Jeff seemed content to speak in broad terms like "visualize, simulate and analyze." But I did learn that the new Ford Mustang's look was derived from Steve McQueen's face (see picture by Shaan Hurley -- you have to squint).

A design example showed a game controller go from concept (Alias) to design (Inventor), to analysis (ANSYS) and production (mold design). Nice to see actual software at work, I thought. But a game controller? Now we'd really gotten away from the seriousness of saving the earth that Carl had started with.

On the whole, I'll remember this presentation for the dazzling display of technology of another kind -- an audiovisual technology with huge screens that encircled the audience. A BIM model of some city (was it Las Vegas?) brought oohs and aahs from  the crowd.

Lynn Allen fans got to see her for a few minutes before she introduced CEO Carl Bass.

Comments

[Scott Sheppard]

The city was Washington D.C.