AU Reminders

First I would like to introduce my coworker Jason to any of the regular viewers of my blog. Jason has helped me and the office I work in to make the transition to Civil3D from Land Desktop. Hopefully you will find Jason's reminders as helpful as you find mine. I would also like to thank Engineered Efficiency for the free shirt and Mastering Civil3D book, even if the book was a mistake on the part of one of the EE team members.

For the rest of the post it will be a reminder to me of my AU experience. The whole point of the blog was to put what I found out about Civil 3D and Map and Autocad here so I could remember what I figured out and how to recreate it. I usually regret finding something out and then having to do it over and not remembering how to do it. This blog seemed like a better container then the office network or my home computer, I just have to remember to use it.

First lesson I learned at AU this year is the a benefit of being a presenter is the ready supply of water and the quick access to the Internet in the Speaker Ready Room. Don't have to wait for a free computer in the common areas. You also have the opportunity to talk to the notables who bring you Civil 3D.

The second lesson I learned is that you should do a good job of doing your description of your class. I got this from feedback from my coworkers comments and my own presentation experience. My coworkers found that some classes didn't deliver on the description of the course. I think my problem was the exact opposite. I think I didn't convey the complexity of my presentation. I did submit it as an advanced course, but I lost half of my audience by the end. I did hear some positive feedback from some of the people who remained to the end. I probably should have stressed the modifying of rules rather than just covering the basics. I also learned that people care about seeing the menu bar, even if it is not pertinent to the concepts being presented. While not being able to see the menu bar was a technical difficulty out of my control, I thought it was interesting since most people should know what the Civil 3D menu bar looks like.

If I go next year I think I will try to remember to ask for a room on the strip. The view from the strip, I find, to be more interesting then the view I have of the Hilton Hotel and the city lights behind it.

If you do use AVI's in your presentation, I think it would be better to record the whole presentation, that way you aren't hindered by the powerpoint interface which doesn't seem optimized to use video within the program. I messed up twice with my mouse trying to pause the avi's.

I think they should show how big the class is going to be. In hearing the Webcasts for the presenters leading up to the event, it was conveyed that as the class size grows larger the technical content of the class may need to go down. I think this suggestion is made to satisfy the majority of the class who attends.

I am also looking forward to getting my resolution back to 1680x1050, the AU projectors are set to 1280x1024 and I find that too small on my laptop. I also can't wait to see the 2009 beta and the new features that will be included since I am signed up on the myfeedback.autodesk.com website.