Perhaps my memory on these is not so good, but I seem to recall:
Musician, Brian Eno, composed the start-up sound for Windows 95, and the only requirement he was given was that the piece needed to be 3.25 seconds long.
When Bill Gates wanted to use the rights to the Rolling Stones song, "Start Me Up," he called Mick Jagger and asked him how much it would cost. Mick Jagger said, off the top of his head, "I don't know, a million dollars," and Bill said "OK." I believe Mick later remarked that he wished he had asked for more.
Such is life. These small bits of music can have a big impact. I am a big fan of TED. Originally geared towards Technology, Entertainment, and Design, TED has grown to be so much more. So it's with a sense of pride that my colleague, Matt Tierney, helped the creative agency at TED, Psyop, use Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite to create the video that accompanies the preroll music, that little song you hear before you watch a video. Check out the intro to this video by paying close attention to the first few seconds.
TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading that started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. With two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.
The TED curators took a leap of faith when they decided to conduct this experiment in thought leadership: inviting local people to host their own TED events, under the banner of TEDx. (The x stands for independently organized.) Organizers need only apply for a license, abide by core TED traditions, and they've got themselves a world-class brand from which to launch their own "ideas worth spreading." "It's a platform built on trust," says TEDx founder and director Lara Stein.
Corporate Strategist, Bill O'Connor, is my colleague in the Corporate Strategy & Engagement team. Bill recently hosted a TEDx even in Marin County, California -- home of the Autodesk headquarters in San Rafael. Autodesk own Distinguished Research Scientist, Andrew Hessel, was one of the speakers. The TEDx Marin site will actually allow you to check out all 6 of the speakers. These videos are not long, and you will not regret the time you spend watching them.
Our Gallery at One Market just set up twelve new exhibits that come under the heading of Design in the Public Interest. These exhibits feature products, places, and processes where design is used for common good instead of monetary profit. In a series of twelve blog articles over the next few weeks, I thought I would pick them off one at a time. The first four I covered were:
Our next one is TED. TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading that started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. With two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.
Autodesk Fellow, Tom Wujec, and Autodesk Gallery Curator, Jason Medal-Katz, have a long history with TED.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that an outgrowth of TED -- the popular platform for 20-minute talks on big ideas -- is one of the most powerful global phenomena in public interest design. But it's nothing short of a shock that such a revered brand opened itself up to essentially be hacked by everyday people all over the globe.
The TED curators took a leap of faith when they decided to conduct this experiment in thought leadership: inviting local people to host their own TED events, under the banner of TEDx. (The x stands for independently organized.) Organizers need only apply for a license, abide by core TED traditions, and they've got themselves a world-class brand from which to launch their own "ideas worth spreading." "It's a platform built on trust," says TEDx founder and director Lara Stein.
The trust has been earned, over and over again. Since the founding of TEDx in 2009, there have been nearly 5,000 events in over 1,200 cities, in over 35 countries. That's a total of over 16,500 talks, over 170 of them making it onto the main TED.com website with over 80 million views.
Autodesk has participated in local TEDx conferences.
Autodesk Corporate Strategist, Bill O'Connor, and Distinguished Research Scientist, Andrew Hessel, at TEDx Marin
For those without reliable access to electricity, TED partnered with IDEO.org to create TEDx-in-a-Box, everything needed to host and document a TEDx event. Just add inspiration.
Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matthew Tierney, and Brand Marketing Manager, Grace Hom, for content contained in this blog article. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.
People often say "Bigger is better." Here is an example. I first blogged about Autodesk Fellow, Tom Wujec's, marshmallow challenge in October of 2010.
So I was thrilled when I read another letter that Tom shared with us the other day.
Hi.
I've been meaning to send something to you for a while, and I'm just getting around to it. Three years ago I happened upon the TED Talk about the Marshmallow Challenge. At the time here at Carnegie Mellon University, those of us that teach Design & Production in the Drama School were developing new curriculum built specifically around collaboration, and it seemed like a great fit.
We have the students do a run through the exercise, then we watch the TED talk and then they do it again. After that we take a break - and then we add a wrinkle.
Since we actually build things here, and most of what we do is an order of magnitude larger, we decided to add an upscale version of the exercise. In our third iteration we go outside and each group of four gets 20 1/2"x1/2"x6-0" sticks of Medium-Density-Fibreboard (MDF), a roll of string, and a roll of tape. They get 18 minutes to build the tallest freestanding structure they can with a full bag of marshmallows at the tallest point.
We picked MDF because we thought it would behave most like pasta. The 72" length came from a calibrating exercise where we measured the deflection in a piece of spaghetti caused by one marshmallow and then matched the deflection proportionately with the full bag and the MDF...
photo: Carnegie Mellon Drama Precollege 2012
The large scale has all the challenges of the small scale but adds in some construction practicality (the height of the participant being the main factor).
photo: Carnegie Mellon Drama Precollege 2012
photo: Carnegie Mellon Drama Precollege 2012
photo: Carnegie Mellon Drama Precollege 2012
This is the third year we've done it. The tallest this time around was 12'-6".
Thanks for the inspiration.
db David Boevers Production Technology & Management Option Coordinator Associate Professor of Drama - Technical Director Carnegie Mellon University - Purnell Center for the Arts
As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, Autodesk is a TED partner and participates in conferences like TEDGlobal. Gallery Curator, Jason Medal-Katz, attended TEDGlobal and filed this report.
We presented the Autodesk Gallery at TEDGlobal with exhibits in the main lobby area of the conference. Our exhibits showed a wide range of customer work including emerging fields that Autodesk is exploring. TED attendees commented that Autodesk is doing very cutting edge work.
We had six exhibits overall including two new installations:
Bio-molecular Self-Assembly: This exhibit focuses on self-assembly principles found at the molecular level and how to apply the principles at much larger scales.
Photo by Ryan Lash
For more info, see a video from our collaborator, TED Senior Fellow, Skylar Tibbits. We provided self-assembly kits that attendees took home with them. They were a huge hit with a massive rush of people claiming their giveaways on the first day.
Bio-computation and Next Generation Aerospace: This exhibit features work done in the Autodesk IDEA Studio last summer by David Benjamin and then continued with Airbus. He is researching the potential to use bacteria and computational design to create new structures that optimize transparency and structure.
Photo by Ryan Lash
Here's a video showing some of the work. Airbus, Autodesk, and David are exploring the potential to use these ideas on a next generation concept airplane.
Here's a YouTube video providing an overview of the exhibits:
When I uploaded the video to YouTube, their video servers noticed that the video was a little shaky and offered to fix it, so I let the servers do their magic. The result is a little trippy. If you wish to see the original video, navigate this link with Internet Explorer:
TED Global is happening this week in Edinburgh, Scotland. As one of its partners, Autodesk is there in full force. There are a few exhibits on hand from our gallery as well as members like Jonathan Knowles and Tom Wujec from our Corporate Strategy & Engagement team.
I have mentioned our now famous cage matches in the past:
The Autodesk Fight Club: IDEAS Cage Match at TED Global is a fun, dynamic, colorful event in which pairs of debaters ("fighters") argue for opposite sides of a single question. They do this in a mock boxing ring. Though the form of the event is total pop culture, the content is substantial, thoughtful, and leaves the audience entertained, engaged, and most importantly, thinking. Here are some snapshots from Scotland.
TEDGlobal 2012 - June 25 - 29, 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: Ryan Lash Tom is our referee.
TEDGlobal 2012 - June 25 - 29, 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: Ryan Lash Jonathan, our master of ceremonies, greets award-winning actess Jodie Foster.
TEDGlobal 2012 - June 25 - 29, 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: Ryan Lash
TEDGlobal 2012 - June 25 - 29, 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: Ryan Lash
TEDGlobal 2012 - June 25 - 29, 2012, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: Ryan Lash
Autodesk is proud to facilitate discussions worth having.
"If I have to be alone, it will be on my own terms. I could never talk about it, ever show it, even though the world is watching while I squirm alone." -- Todd Rundgren
It's Good Friday, so let's talk about a non-Autodesk-Labs topic. If you have 19 minutes and 48 seconds of uninterrupted time, you can learn something:
I found this TED talk to be very thought provoking with quotes like:
"We're getting used to a new way of being alone together."
"You can end up hiding from each other even as we are all connected to each other."
"Goldilocks effect: People want relationships in bits they can control: not too close, not too far, just right."
"...someday, someday, but certainly not now, I would love to learn how to have a conversation. The problem with a conversation is that it takes place in real time, and you can't control what you're going to say."
"We short change ourselves when we sacrifice conversation for mere connection."
"We are tempted by machines that offer companionship. Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for each other?"
"We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship."
With regard to design projects, infinite computing is great for computationally intensive actions and collaboration, but it is not enough. There's no substitute for conversations between architect and engineer, shop foreman and plant worker, or director and actor. Autodesk looks at technology as a way to speed up analysis and connect people to the latest and most accurate information available. Technology augments the design experience - it is not a substitute for it. It still takes humans to IMAGINE, DESIGN, and CREATE a better world - humans who have real conversations about appliances, automobiles, buildings, bridges, or movies - conversations about how things work, what they are made of, and how they perform. If you agree with me, you can email me at scott.sheppard@autodesk.com.
I first blogged about Autodesk Fellow, Tom Wujec's, marshmallow challenge in October of 2010.
So I was thrilled when I read a letter that Tom shared with us the other day.
Dear Tom Wujec, or to whom it may concern:
I have a complaint for The Marshmallow Challenge; my Peruvian youth group smoked the challenge in under 6 minutes, and I was left speechless.
Let me explain...
My name is Amanda Rodgers, and I am a Peace Corps Youth Development Volunteer serving in Peru. I've been living in my Peruvian community for about 7 months now working with youth on everything from self-esteem to taking care of the environment and sex education. I'm working with kids who the majority of which: live in single-parent households, have held a job or helped pay the bills since they were around 8 years old, are put through an education system that does not encourage creativity or critical thinking, do not believe they have the ability to pursue a higher education after high school (which they generally finish at age 16), and could not point out to you where they live on a map. The odds are definitely against us, and sometimes the best we can do is help raise the self-esteem of the kids we work with, some of whom are learning the concept of ¨self-confidence¨ or their future for the first time.
While at a recent In-service training that focused on leadership, my Peace Corps Volunteer Coordinator set 20 of us to the Marshmallow Challenge. As part of our trainings we often learn and participate in the same games and activities we can later use to interact and teach the youth within our community. We had no idea of the history of the Marshmallow Challenge, nor did we have the foresight to see the significance of the seemingly simple activity. We all failed miserably. To a ¨T¨ we demonstrated the same issues as the ones described in the TED talk - organizing, planning, building, and at the last moment placing the marshmallow on top only to watch it crumble.
After coming back to my community, I decided it would be a good activity to do with a youth group I facilitate consisting of kids ages 15 to 5. Somedays I have 30 kids in the group, other days 14, but we meet every Saturday to work on self-esteem and personal development. I decided to use the Marshmallow Challenge as the beginning of a series focused on leadership and teamwork.
With all of my kids together I did not have enough to make multiple teams of four (some of the younger kids around 5 and 6 years-old are impossible to persuade into activities, so I allow them to work on art and drawing instead), so I had two groups of three and one group of four, ages 8 to 15. I gave them the directions, handed out the packets of supplies, and set the timer. Some of them complained it was impossible. Some of them begged to eat the marshmallow. I put on some music and waited for the results.
Not all of them immediately set to work, one group stared at the contents and pleaded for help while the other two immediately started working. There was little talking amongst the groups beyond conversation and jokes.
The countdown hardly reached 13 minutes by the time the first group called out, ¨¡Terminemos!¨ Within a minute, the next groups as well called out they were done. Before my watch even reached 11 minutes all of the groups sat staring at me, wondering what was next, all of their structures standing with the marshmallow on top.
I had told them the activity would be 18 minutes; no more, no less. I tried egging them on, pointing out one of the team's structures was obviously taller than the others and there was still plenty of time to win. While some minor adjustments were made to make structures stand straighter, none of them added any height, nor cared to change their product. The next 10 minutes were grueling, as I wondered if their structures would fall apart in the waiting process or if their restlessness would get the better of them.
Finally, the last minutes were counting down, and all were steadfast with their product. With 5 seconds remaining, one of the younger children who had been drawing and coloring came up to one of the structures and ate the marshmallow off the top, disqualifying the team.
The winning team had a structure of 54 centimeters, and the oldest kid on the team was 15, the youngest 12. Second place had 32 centimeters and was the team that deemed the task ¨impossible.¨ The oldest kid on this team was 11, the youngest 9.
What do you say to a group of kids who have not only out-done you, but have out-done majority of people to ever participate in The Marshmallow Challenge? I have decent language skills in Spanish, but I was without words. I struggled to explain to them that what they had seen as a simple game that went on for far too long was used in workshops all over the world with designers, artists, and business professionals from multi-million corporations to help them better their innovation and creativity. I tried to explain to them that what they had done was something many of these people couldn't. I hadn't brought the TED talk because it is in English, and in trying to explain why this activity was important I ended up just sounding crazy. Aside from lacking language skills to convey this message, they lack the understanding of the culture where this activity is implemented so successfully.
I had no advice. I had no suggestions. All I could do was highlight their good teamwork skills and let them eat the rest of the marshmallows.
Attached are some photos from the activity, including the winning group.
I thought this was an interesting outcome from the Marshmallow Challenge (or, El Concurso de Bon-Bon) and would love your thoughts!
Sincerely, Amanda Rodgers Peace Corps Volunteer Perú
As I have mentioned for five days in a row now, TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. The conference was held in Long Beach this week. I blogged about Autodesk's participation every day.
Actor Keanu Reeves got his big break in a movie entitled Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. With this in mind, there's another conference that Autodesk is participating in called BIL. The idea for the BIL conference originated in November 2007, when students proposed the idea of going out to Monterey, CA and crashing the TED Conference. The idea was to simply get a group of people to make the pilgrimage and hang around the areas where the TED attendees would be schmoozing at night. As the group quickly snowballed from a handful of people to nearly thirty in a matter of weeks, the decision to hold its own unconference emerged. source
Autodesk is happy to participate in this most excellent event. This year BIL takes place on March 3 and 4. Participating in events like TED and BIL is a team effort with lots of work by those who attend and many behind the scenes. Believe me, it's no picnic. OK, maybe at the very end, it's a picnic. Thanks team! Another year will soon pass so we can once again hear "It's time for TED."
It's TED week here at the It's Alive in the Lab blog. Today's schedule includes:
As I have mentioned for four days in a row, "TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading that started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. With two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize." source Starting Sunday through March 2, the conference is being held in Long Beach.
For the first time in its history, the TED Prize is being awarded not to an individual, but to an idea upon which the future depends - The City 2.0. The City 2.0 is the city of the future. The City 2.0 promotes innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity. It reduces the carbon footprint of its occupants, facilitates smaller families, and eases the environmental pressure on the world's rural areas such as the Rain Forest. The City 2.0 is a place of beauty, wonder, excitement, inclusion, diversity, and life.
Autodesk fully supports the TED Prize City 2.0 initiatives with Autodesk tools and services. As part of our partnership with TED, Autodesk Fellow, Tom Wujec, conducted an ideation session to formulate the prize details. Autodesk management facilitated the clarification of The City 2.0 Prize. TED asked Autodesk to produce an animation to be incorporated into the TED site. Autodesk Labs hosts free tools such as Project Vasari to help further the initiatives. Cities, like anything else, need to be designed, and design doesn't just fall from the sky. Instead urban planning professionals create, evaluate, and communicate infrastructure proposals and make trade-offs for features like transportation, land use, water consumption, or energy. For this, Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler fits the bill. Autodesk is proud to be associated with The City 2.0.
As I mentioned for the past two days, TED is a nonprofit that started out centered on Technology, Entertainment, and Design but whose charter has since expanded to cover most aspects of the human condition. The TED conference is being held in Long Beach, California this week. As a Design software company with Technology that serves many industries (including the Entertainment industry), Autodesk is actually one of TED's largest partners.
On Monday I covered the Master Classes. Yesterday I covered the exhibits in the Autodesk Social Space. Today I'll talk about Autodesk Fight Club: IDEAS Cage Matches. I am reminded of Monty Python's "I'd like to have an argument..." skit. From its name, I am certainly reminded of the movie Fight Club. Think of a cage match as a civilized combination of the two. The nickname for the matches is Grey Matter Smackdown. These are patterned after the sessions we conducted at Autodesk University (AU):
Photo from Shaan Hurley
The Autodesk Fight Club: IDEAS Cage Match at TED is a fun, dynamic, colorful event in which pairs of debaters ("fighters"), several current and past TED speakers, argue for opposite sides of a single question. They do this in a mock boxing ring - with over the top smoke effects, lighting, and campy commentary. Though the form of the event is total pop culture, the content is substantial, thoughtful, and leaves the audience entertained, engaged, and most importantly, thinking.
Our aim is to create an event that reflects the spirit of TED - lively, thought-provoking and unexpected. Typically the TED conference format consists of tightly scripted presentations with no questions. Whereas TED promotes "Ideas worth sharing," the Cage Match is about "Discussions worth having."
The four cage matches featured at this year's TED include:
Human Evolution: Intervention ("Napalm" Nathan Shedroff) versus Forces of Nature (Mark Foster "12 Gage")
"Nathan Shedroff is the chair of California College of the Arts' groundbreaking MBA in Design Strategy. He is one of the pioneers of experience design, an approach to design that encompasses multiple senses and explores the common characteristics in all media that make experiences successful; he also works in the related fields of interaction design and information design." source
Arguing: Physically we have evolved as much as we need to physically, we will soon control our DNA and biology in whole.
Mark Foster Gage is a founder of Gage / Clemenceau Architects who are at the forefront of a new generation of architects working to combine architectural practice with the innovative use of today’s emerging technologies. The work of the firm has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum in Berlin. source
Arguing: Nature will drive evolution regardless how much we interfere.
The Future: Abundance (Peter "Rocket Man" Diamandis) versus Scarcity (James "Hacksaw" Hansen)
"Dr. Peter Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private space flight and the $10 million Progressive Automotive X PRIZE for 100 mile-per-gallon equivalent cars, the Foundation launches prizes in Exploration, Life Sciences, Energy, and Education." source
Arguing: By focusing on the right things and leveraging exponential technologies we can realize a future of abundance.
"James Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He has held this position since 1981. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University." source
Arguing: If we don't change some things drastically we are heading toward a future of scarcity.
Education: Institutional (Vivek "The Voice" Wadhwa) versus Experiential (Dale "Hackademic" Stephens)
"Vivek Wadhwa is Vice President of Academics and Innovation at Singularity University; Fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University; Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University; and distinguished visiting scholar, Halle Institute of Global Learning, Emory University." source
Arguing: Formal education is critical to a competitive and successful society.
Dale J. Stephens is the author of Hacking Your Education. He founded UnCollege to prove that education isn't limited to school. For recognition of his work as an educational futurist, he was named a Thiel Fellow in May 2011. The mission of UnCollege is to change the notion that college is the only path to success. source
Arguing: College education isn't worth it, drop out and "do something."
Intelligence: Moonshot (Astro "Jedi" Teller) versus Small Steps (Omar "The Ominous" Wasow)
"Dr. Astro Teller is currently Director of New Projects for Google, working to help the company explore new potential business areas. Astro is also co-founder and a current Director of Cerebellum Capital, Inc., a hedge fund management firm whose investments are continuously designed, executed, and improved by a software system based on techniques from statistical machine learning. Astro is also co-founder and a current Director of BodyMedia, Inc., a leading wearable body monitoring company." source
Arguing: Go big or go home. Take risks and shoot for the moon.
"Omar Wasow is a Ph.D. candidate in African American studies and Government at Harvard. His research focuses on race and politics, particularly in relation to education and crime. Omar is the co-founder and strategic advisor to BlackPlanet.com, a social network he helped grow to over three million users a month. Omar also works to demystify technology through regular TV and radio segments. In 2003, he helped found a K-8 charter school in Brooklyn. He is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship." source
Arguing: True progress is the result of practical thinking and a pragmatic approach to even our largest challenges.
As I mentioned yesterday, TED is a nonprofit that started out focused on Technology, Entertainment, and Design but whose charter quickly expanded to cover many aspects of humanity. On Sunday through March 2, the TED conference is being held in Long Beach, California.
As part of the conference, Autodesk is hosting a lunch with TED executives. Autodesk's involvement with TED has grown each year, which makes sense, since we are a Design software company serving the Entertainment industry (as well as other industries) with our own Technology. TED is practically our middle name. This should prove to be an interesting event as the following are in attendance:
Carl "Ted" Bass, President and CEO
Jeff "Ted" Kowalski, CTO
Chris "Ted" Bradshaw, VP of Reputation, Consumer, and Education
Jon "Ted" Pittman, VP of Corporate Strategy and Engagement
Tom "Ted" Wujec, Autodesk Fellow
Jonathan "Ted" Knowles, Director of Strategic Initiatives to the Office of the CTO
Maurice "Ted" Conti, Innovation Strategist
Brian "Ted" Mathews, VP of Reality Capture
TED conferences are premiere events that bring together leaders in business, technology, media, entertainment, education, and philanthropy. This is a great place to discuss how to imagine, design, and create a better world. Oh to be a fly on the wall!
As I also mentioned yesterday, the social space features some exhibits from our Gallery at One Market. Our aim is to illustrate how design and visualization operate across a vast spectrum of scales. We have eight exhibits planned.
Design tools are being used to visualize and design at nanoscales. It is possible to design living matter. Biology is now technology. This notion will revolutionize industries. Visitors can design a cancer curing robot.
Nike Shoe Design
The things we love don't just fall out of the sky. They have to be designed. Digital tools make this possible. Designers decide what things look like, what they are made of, and how they work. Digital tools allow these decisions to be made before the object is made. Visitors can get a sense of how objects such athletic wear demonstrate the importance of design in the things that surround our lives.
Bespoke Innovation Prosthetic Limbs
Carl Bass wants Autodesk to be a good, great, and important company.
Good in that we are a good corporate citizen in that we pay attention to sustainability issues such as how much we travel, how much energy our computers use, and LEED certification of our facilities.
Great in terms of the return to our stockholders.
Important in that the work that our customers do makes a difference in the world.
Clearly this is an example of important work. Bespoke's work turns something that is a liability (Parents scolding their children not to stare.) into an asset (Strangers approaching wearers remarking "Hey that is a cool looking leg."). Bespoke helps make a better world using technologies such as scanning and 3D printing combined with customization to match each recipient's style and activities. Visitors can appreciate the beauty of Autodesk tools in action.
Mercedes Design
Yes a car can take you from place to place; however, it's about more than just getting there. Mercedes put a lot of thought into the both the experience of driving as well as being a passenger. Visitors can recognize that human centered design and engineering are at the heart of what goes on inside an automobile. In the future, Mercedes may grow a car from biofibre that converts sunlight into energy and stores it in chemical bonds.
Shanghai Tower
When it is completed, the Shanghai Tower will be the second tallest building in the world. It will be the tallest in China. With any tall building, a concern is that it will fall over. The design of the Shanghai Tower features a twist and a taper which reduces its wind resistance. As a result of its innovative shape, the building is very sustainable in that less steel was required for its construction, rain water can be collected for the HVAC, and wind turbines on the roof can generate electricity. All of this was made possible through the use of building information modeling and analysis tools. Visitors can see that the Shanghai Tower represents how buildings can be designed for performance yet still maintain aesthetic qualities.
Tools to Design Cities
Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler started out on Autodesk Labs as Project Galileo. Project Vasari is still on Autodesk Labs today. Research on Project Dasher is underway. These are examples of software tools that allow urban planners to play with infrastructure models, adjust the parameters, and visualize the results. Urban planning professionals create, evaluate, and communicate infrastructure proposals and make trade-offs for features like transportation, land use, water consumption, or energy. Visitors can understand that all of these trade-offs can be evaluated even before the first shovel hits the ground.
Cosmic Simulator
I haven't watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos series in years, but the other day I was thinking about how things are grouped from large to small: Universe, Galaxy, Solar System, Planet, Continent, Country, Region, State, County, City, Neighborhood, Street, House, Room, Object, Part, Material, Compound, Element, Molecule, Atom, Proton/Neutron/Electron, Quark, Preon, Singularity. Have I missed any? Although design tools have typically been applied to things at the House, Room, Object, and Part levels, there's no reason they can't be scaled up to address larger groupings. Visitors can see how visualization tools allow the sky to be viewed in several wavelengths from radio waves to gamma rays.
Play Space - Pinball Machine
"Ever since I was a young boy, I've played the silver ball." Pete Townsend, 1969.
Q: What would an exhibit hall be without a play space? A: A library.
Autodesk's presence at TED includes a hands-on fun place for TED attendees to play pinball. All work and no play makes Ted a dull boy.
As I mentioned this morning, the TED Conference is being held in Long Beach this week. A few weeks ago, Autodesk participated in TEDx Berkeley. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our President and CEO, Carl Bass, covered the new rules of innovation.
Innovation is happening at an unprecedented pace and will continue to accelerate because of 5 trends:
Science can use biology as building blocks, e.g., repurpose Ecoli to smell like bananas.
Mass production is no longer required to obtain goods at a moderate price.
Rise of Information
Newspaper editors used to cull information for the masses.
Now the masses individually use methods like Twitter following to select who curates the news for them.
Due to internet connectivity, it is possible to share information among large communities of people even on obscure topics.
Infinte Computing
We’ve been looking at computing as if were a scarce resource, when today, really, it’s more like a free resource, or an infinite resource.
Today you can hold in your hand about 30,000 times the computing power that was launched aboard the Space Shuttle.
Let’s say you have a problem that will take 10,000 compute-seconds to solve. This will cost you about 30 cents today. But let’s also say that this is an important simulation, and you don't want to wait 10,000 seconds (about 3 hours) for it to be done. Now you can give that same problem to 10,000 computers in the cloud and solve it in 1 second. And it still costs 30 cents.
It's time for TED. For the fortunate attendees, today's TED schedule includes:
"TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading that started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. With two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize." source Yesterday through March 2, the conference is being physically held in Long Beach and simultaneously broadcasted to Palm Springs.
Autodesk has a long history with TED. Our involvement has grown each year. As a Design software company with our own Technology to serve the Entertainment industry (as well as other industries such as architecture/engineering/construction and manufacturing), TED is right up our alley. TED is an ideal organization to help drive Autodesk's vision to imagine, design, and create a better world.
So what's on deck for today includes:
Autodesk Social Space The social space includes some exhibits from our Gallery at One Market. The exhibits were chosen to reinforce and augment the TED theme of Full Spectrum by providing a physical experience of the impact of design, engineering, and visualization tools across a range of physical scales - from the exceedingly small to the vastly large. I will cover the exhibits tomorrow. For today, let's talk about the master classes.
Autodesk Master Class: Visualizing Business Strategy Master classes are normally 22 minutes long. Ours happen to be 52 minutes. They cater to small audiences of 20 to 30 people. Like tickets to a Bruce Springsteen show, ours filled up after 6 minutes. For any business, strategy is about finding something that: is unique, is valuable to customers, leverages core competencies, and is defendable against being copied by competitors. We will share our insights into strategy as they relate to the architecture/engineering/construction, manufacturing, and media/entertainment industries. Autodesk Fellow, Tom Wujec, will show that design practices can indeed be applied to business collaboration.
Autodesk Master Class: Rip, Mod, Fab The maker movement is evidence that several technologies have come together to transform the way hobbyists and professionals design and make things.
RIP: Make accurate 3D digital models from photographs using Autodesk Labs graduate 123D Catch Beta.
MOD: Analyze, enhance, and improve them with tablet and desktop software such as 123D Sculpt.
FAB: Print enhanced designs into tangible 3D objects with software such a s 123D Make.
Autodesk Senior Product Manager, Tatjana Dzambazova, will show that from the microscopic to the massive and from simple to complex, emerging technologies and techniques are transforming design in the home, studio, and office.
It's Friday so I try to stay away from Autodesk Labs specific topics. With this in mind, I thought I would highlight two TED talks that I watched this week. One is Deb Roy: The birth of a word. Deb Roy studies how children learn language. Using his son as a subject, he collected data on his son's development as related to his son's interactions with his father (Deb), his mother, and his nanny. Here are 19 minutes and 52 seconds you won't regret.
Deb concludes with "...As our world becomes increasingly instrumented, and we have the capabilities to collect and connect the dots between what people are saying and the context in which they are saying it, what's emerging is an ability to see new social structures and dynamics that have previously not been seen." Who new that there was a relationship between how a child learns to say "water," and the volume of Twitter posts after a Presidential State of the Union Address?
The other is Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent the classroom. This talk was blogged about by my Autodesk Labs colleague, Shaan Hurley. It was also recommended by Autodesk Platform Solutions and Emerging Business Senior VP, Amar Hanspal.
Imagine if I was going to teach you something, but told you that you could not take notes.You would ask "Why not? I have a pen and paper right here." Now imagine if I had the opportunity to provide my instruction via video but did not. You would ask "Why not? Video lets me watch when I want to watch, not when you want to talk. Video lets me pause. Video lets me rewind." The future of education lies in self-paced video instruction coupled with in-classroom collaboration. Fascinating.
Asking if www means the worthwhile web is alive in the lab.
I have told you many times that I am fan of TED. Here is a lecture from the most recent email I received from TED:
From the lecture, the 7 ways are:
Experience bars measuring progress
Multiple long-term and short-term aims
Rewards for effort
Rapid, clear, frequent feedback
An element of uncertainty
Windows of enhanced attention
Other people!
After watching this presentation, I asked myself "How does the Autodesk Labs technology preview process compare to playing a video game?"
Experience bars measuring progress This one might not apply to the Labs technology preview process. Each technology preview is different, and there is not one "end game" conclusion that all Autodesk Labs visitors are striving to achieve.
Multiple long-term and short-term aims Technology previews have long term goals like possible inclusion into the next release of AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, 3DS Max, etc. and short term goals like improvements for the next update of the technology preview itself.
Rewards for effort This is one where I could use your insight. Though the long term reward is a technology that is honed to meet your needs when it eventually gets incorporated into a shipping application, what could Autodesk Labs do to reward people for their hours of evaluating technology previews and providing feedback?
Rapid, clear, frequent feedback When you take the time to email us, post to the discussion forum, or post a comment on a blog, not only do technology preview team members read it, but you get a response as quickly as we can provide one.
An element of uncertainty Technology previews are not guaranteed to become part of shipping products. Based on your level of participation and feedback, some like the Piping Design Technology Preview or visual search end when the technology preview ends.
Windows of enhanced attention Although technology previews are available on the Labs site for extended durations, there are periods of time where activity is more intense such as when contests are held or updates to the technology preview are posted.
Other people! By participating in the Autodesk Labs discussion forums, you can post your own feedback as well as read about the experiences of others, and see how your results compare.
Thinking about how to make work be more like play is alive in the lab.
My recent blog posting about Where good ideas come from got me to thinking about TED. You should check out Tom Wujec's talks, find out about one of our most interesting Technical Fellows, and our company's involvement.
I am a fan of TED. TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading featuring a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. If I could have any job in the world, it would be my full time job to attend TED and write reviews of each presentation. As Autodesk is a sponsor and participant in TED, I envy Tom Wujec who represents us all at TED events. Thankfully there are TED videos so we can all benefit without actually attending.
Recently I watched Steven Johnson's presentation of where good ideas come from.
I was struck by a section of his presentation where he described Kevin Dunbar's observations of scientists at work.
...where do good ideas come from? When we think about the classic image of the scientist in the lab, we have this image of them poring over the microscope, then they see something in the tissue [sample under the microscope], and oh eureka, they get the idea. [Dunbar found that] almost all important breakthrough ideas did not happen alone in the lab in front of the microscope - [instead] they happened at the conference table at the weekly lab meeting where everybody got together and shared their latest data and findings.
This reinforces what I have been saying all along. Without your participation in the Autodesk Labs process, the best ideas will never surface. Your feedback is the most important part of the process.
In a recent blog posting I shared how the BBC News covered our work at the most recent TED Conference with a video. Well Research Strategist, Brian Pene, captured our own video from TED 2009. His video shows the integration of KOMMERZ MRI hardware with our own software technology preview called Project Newport. Project Newport is a real-time 3D story building technology for architectural visualization and presentation. Highlights from the video include:
Notice how movement of the camera marker corresponds to navigation commands in Project Newport. This movement allows walking around the 2D floor plan on the surface and viewing the corresponding 3D scene on the monitor. The camera can be titled to look up or down. It is easy to see the relationship between the traditional blue print and what the finished building will look like.
Notice how tiles are placed on the surface to alter room characteristics, such as wall color, and the results immediately appear in Project Newport. These changes remain in effect as you navigate about the space. Applying changes to and navigating a 3D model is way better than a photograph.
Notice how Project Newport is not limited to showing what is on the inside of the building. Using Project Newport, Revit models can be viewed in environmental contexts. This includes time of day scenarios where you can control the movement of the sun by simply twisting a designated marker. Project Newport shows you the shadows and their effects.
Our own Research Strategist, Brian Pene, and Labs Software Developer, Eddy Kuo, just got back from TED. They were working with Autodesk Fellow Tom Wujec. They demonstrated a Mixed Reality Interface device from Technology partner KOMMERZ which was integrated to drive the interface of Autodesk’s own architectural visualization prototype, Project Newport. Check it out:
They also showed an augmented reality demo that did not require a fiducial marker! Both Brian and Eddy really enjoyed talking to people about design and the important role it plays with regard to the environment.
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