Autodesk IDEAS Conference

In late January, we were honored to be last-minute invites to Autodesk's new IDEAS conference.

Part Foo, part mini-TED, part book-launch party, it was a really incredible experience. We got to meet lots of other amazing people and share all sorts of subjects. As part of a company that is strong on how and weak on why, it's always fun to bring our pragmatic and hands-on vision to the big ideas table!

There was a big focus on 'Design Thinking' and the value design has for business, our communities, and our world. Some talks from some amazing folks, then some creative break-out workshops, and of course, lots of conversations over lunch and dinner.

While we're huge fans of Autodesk's tools (especially Revit) the focus on the conference was less about Autodesk and more about just doing amazing things, no matter what tools were used.

One really cool feature of the conference was the visual documentation via photos and cartooning that was going on. Conversations were captured in a really compelling and concise way, while it was happening, by a team of amazing illustrators in the wings. Their handiwork can be seen in the great PDF summary of the conference you can see here. And cameras were everywhere, with the resulting Flickr stream here.

We were really jazzed to meet some of the people from Bespoke, who also do digital fabrication (i.e. make stuff with robots) but instead of custom interiors & furniture, they make amazing artificial limbs.

All in all, a simply amazing time. We hope to get the chance to go again!