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AU 2008 Session Catalog!

Almost 1,500 sessions were submitted for AU 2008, and these have been whittled down to 621 sessions for presentation this fall. To develop this year’s curriculum, we looked very closely at which topics were of greatest interest last year and we also looked at industry trends. A couple of things are different this year:

Rather than grouping all MSD sessions into one track, we split them into 5 industry specific tracks and they are now listed as Manufacturing Engineering (10), Mechanical Engineering (42), Electrical and Control Engineering (9), Industrial Design (16), and Collaboration (14).
Working closely with the Autodesk Developer folks, we updated our Programming class offerings, and those sessions can be found in the Customization & Program (46) and Developer (35) tracks.

PowerTracks for 2008

Back by popular demand are the PowerTracks. Last year, 16 out of the top 20 classes belonged to one of the 7 PowerTracks we offered. This year we will have 6 PowerTracks:

Matt Olding from the Autodesk Learning group will work with the 6 PowerTrack Leads to develop a top-notch cohesive learning experience and truly make them into classes that you won't want to miss for your specific industry.

New this year is a Design Leadership program and I am very excited about it. AU is all about product training and how to be more efficient with Autodesk tools. From last year’s survey, we learned that a good number of attendees would like to hear more about industry trends and developments in the design industry. So far we have confirmed several sessions that sound very interesting. They will be presented by Gensler, Pixar, Autodesk, and others. Announcements will be made as we add new sessions.

But What About the Catalog?

So those are some of the highlights that I wanted to bring to your attention. However, what most attendees want to know is what are the sessions being offered at the upcoming AU? Here is the most current version of the AU 2008 Session Catalog (XLS format). Please keep in mind that this is still subject to change since we may add sessions as others fill up, or we may have to drop sessions if a presenter becomes unavailable. Still, the sessions you see in the attached spreadsheet are 99% of what will be offered at AU.

How to Use the AU 2008 Session Catalog

If you have an AU account, you can register one week prior to general registration opening. This document will give you an easy overview of all content and allow you to most effectively schedule your time or help you build schedules if multiple folks from your organization go. You may want to start by selecting either a Track (column D) or Primary Software (column J). Hopefully, by looking at the title, you can get a pretty good idea of what will be offered. Use columns M and N to make comments or to indicate your interest level. This document can be useful when you get ready to schedule your classes or it can help you onsite at the event to find alternatives if your primary choice does not pan out.

I'd be very interested in hearing your reaction to this year’s AU schedule.

Post Time: 7:07 pmShare: | 27 Comments | Add Comment

Comments

Just my luck... the ONE TIME I have to miss AU and we FINALLY get a Lab in the FM track. ~pouting~ ;-p
Posted by Melanie Perry on July 22, 2008 9:42 am
ME214-2L Is "Part 2" but I do not see "Part 1"
Posted by Ian Yeager on July 22, 2008 10:52 am
Ian: this one is a little strange - Part 1 has a different title. Me210-3 is part 1 ME210-3: Migrating AutoCAD® Drawings to AutoCAD® MEP: A Pilot Project for Electrical Designers, Part I ME214-2L: Harnessing the Power of the Electrical Functionality in AutoCAD® MEP 2009, Part II
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on July 22, 2008 11:42 am
It would be helpful if repeat classes were highlighted, since many of these I recognize from past events. Thanks for making this catalog available now. BTW: It would be interesting to see some of the 879 rejected class topics...
Posted by R.K. McSwain on July 22, 2008 11:48 am
Sorry to complain but is seems again that a lot of the MEP based classes are scheduled at the same time. ME214-2L, ME214-3, ME214-4 are all in the same time slot. ME114-1P and ME114-2 are in the same slot. I know it is hard to spread them all out. Hopefully they will be recorded for viewing after AU concludes. Overall though I am getting what I need. Thank you.
Posted by Ian Yeager on July 22, 2008 3:48 pm
Ian, With 32 MEP classes offered at this years event, we have to schedule 2 or 3 session at any given time. And yes - will record approx 2/3 of all session - don't know yet which ones. Cheers, --Joseph
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on July 22, 2008 5:01 pm
I have to agree with Ian, there has been a lot more buzz with engineering firms implementing Revit MEP and since Architecture has far more classes and AutoCAD has been around for decades, it would be very helpful that these were spread out to attend Revit MEP classes as much as possible in person. Since Revit is the BUZZ in all countries. To help the engineers move forward, I would really consider recording all Revit MEP classes. However, I think you guys did a great job getting this information out early this year and appreciate all the work you guys had to go through to sort out all of these classes.
Posted by Robert Duffy on July 23, 2008 4:09 pm
Thank you Robert. Glad to see the early posting is helpful to you. We do have almost twice as many Revit MEP classes as AutoCAD MEP - and scheduled it so that someone who is interested only in AutoCAD MEP can take every single one of the sessions. Revit MEP we scheduled 1 or 2 classes in any given time periode - because there are so many and we only have 12 periodes that we can schedule into (3 Tue / 3 Wed / 5 Thu / 1 tutorial Friday) BTW - if sign-up for Revit MEP classes is similar to last years, we are likely to record most of them.
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on July 23, 2008 7:06 pm
Thanks for posting this. Looks to be another great conference. I'm looking forward to it.
Posted by Demetrios Xarhoulakos on July 24, 2008 9:32 am
I'm pleased to see the schedule-stagger revised. As a track-jumper, this year I won't have any zero-minute breaks between classes 3 floors apart! BTW, it took several tries to get this comment in. The site still seems to lose track of your login moving from page to page.
Posted by Earl Kubaskie on July 24, 2008 12:54 pm
Keep up the great work Joseph!
Posted by Richard Binning on July 25, 2008 8:31 am
Joseph, we're really looking forward to AU2008 this year! See you there!
Posted by Marc McLean on July 25, 2008 12:19 pm
Is Zaha Hadid really going to be at the conference? - Totally cool!
Posted by Ged Trias on July 26, 2008 9:53 pm
Ged: We will have presenters from Zaha Hadid Architects at the confrence but I don't know exactly who or what sessions. I shlould have removed all "pending" sessions from docuemnt before posting.
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on July 28, 2008 10:31 am
This works much better than last year. I've already got my schedule figured out 3 different ways, now all I need is for the registration to be open and I'm all set.
Posted by George Rover on July 28, 2008 5:52 pm
Any idea when the Class Descriptions will be posted?
Posted by Demetrios Xarhoulakos on July 29, 2008 9:38 am
Class Description for all confirmed classes are scheduled to appear this week on the AU website. Class catalog will have the same set-up as the current AU Online session catalog.
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on July 30, 2008 11:00 am
I appreciate that AU covers SO many products and seeks to keep us current and I'm excited to return after a several year hiatus. However, I am a bit disappointed at the relative sparseness of advanced AutoCAD Architecture sessions. This leads me to give more weight to the rumor of ACA phase-out in coming times.
Posted by Marla Edwards on July 30, 2008 1:16 pm
I finally was able to record my audio. I am looking forward to registration, there are so many informative classes this year that I can completely fill my schedule and spend less money gambling, haha.
Posted by Norm Akin on July 30, 2008 2:22 pm
There are a number of TBD classes in the Session Catalog for Design Visualization. Will these be updated and reposted before registration opens?
Posted by Walter Tien on July 30, 2008 3:27 pm
Walter: TBD classes will not appear in on-line catalog until confirmed. We hope to have it done when registration opens. If we are not able to confirm all presenters, we will add later - and announe on the AU website and on the BLAUG.
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on July 30, 2008 4:08 pm
I saw the same speaker (Kelcey Lemon) in 2 classes at the same time in 2 different rooms. The classes are: AB300-4 AB300-5 Are you cloning speakers?
Posted by Steven Register on July 31, 2008 11:28 am
WOW - you guys are looking at the schedule very closely :-) I work with Kelcey on selcting classes. We added those two classes but do not have a presenter confirmed yet. I used Kelcey as a placeholder. Kelcey will not present either class and actual presenter will be added as soon as confirmed.
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on July 31, 2008 2:39 pm
Tim: Detailed class information is scheduled to be available on the AU site this week. Although I am told this is still going to happen, I am preparing to post all class information in PDF format no later than EOD Friday.
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on July 31, 2008 5:41 pm
Man, this is going to be something special this year. I have one question though, why are the Keynotes scheduled during regular class times? I liked the format when the day would start out with the industry-specific keynotes first thing in the morning. They seem to be happening at prime times for classes this year. Is there anyone else out there who is concerned about this as well? An AU without Melanie Perry? Oh nooooo!!!!
Posted by Whata Maroon on August 5, 2008 2:55 pm
I agree with you Whata: AU with out Melanie IS a concern :-) About Keynots: We scheduled the AEC, Manufacturing and Geospatial on Wed morning and there are no other classes scheduled (except repeat hands-on labs) The other keynote sessions are scheduled to all attendees to attend multiple keynots. We did not schedule any (i.e. education) classes during the (i.e. education) keynote session.
Posted by Joseph Wurcher on August 5, 2008 5:55 pm
Joseph, if new classes are added to the schedule, will you announce the change on the BLAUG or should we be checking the AU 2008 website every day?
Posted by Walter Tien on August 14, 2008 1:00 pm