How to be an active Autodesk Labs community member

Autodesk Labs is a process. The various divisions of the company, that have technologies they wish to preview, make use of the process to collect feedback. Technology previews help them decide to advance the technology to the next step, retire it for now, or have another go 'round to collect more feedback. What about the non-Autodesk side? Whether you are an existing Autodesk customer or not, how do you use the process?

It starts with deciding which technology preview projects to participate in. For this, Autodesk Labs has a page on the Autodesk Feedback Community where there are links to join these projects, called recruitment links, are all displayed all in one place.

See the list of technology previews you can join.

When you click on a recruitment link, you log in using your Autodesk Single Sign-on credentials (same ones for Subscription Center, Student Communities, etc.), and go to the home page for the technology preview project. From there you will find links that allow you to do a variety of things.

	Watch videos about the technology preview and leave feedback in the comments section on YouTube.
	Download and install the technology preview.
	If the technology preview does not involve a download, navigate to a site to try the web service.
	Regardless of whether the technology preview is a download or a web service, try the technology preview with your own data.
	Once you try it, share your results in the user forum associated with the technology preview.
	Another way to share your results is to send feedback via email to the team who created the technology preview.
	You can also post comments to the It's Alive in the Lab blog article associated with the technology preview. This does not require any login.
	You can come back to stay up to date with the Project News associated with the technology preview.

As mentioned, these links are available on the home page associated with the technology preview. When returning to the home page, it is not necessary to navigate the recruitment links on the Autodesk Labs page that you used when you first joined. Instead, the simplest thing to do is simply navigate to beta.autodesk.com and look at your Autodesk Feedback Community home page. Here's mine:

There you will find a list of projects you have already joined. You can use one of these links to return to the project you wish to supply feedback for or check the news for that technology preview.

Once back on the project for a technology preview, one thing you can do to stay up to date to date easily is subscribe to the discussion forum. You do this by:

• Go to the discussion forum using the User Forums link on the left side of the project home page.

  

• Check the Subscribe box.

  

• Once you do this, you get an email anytime a project member posts to the discussion forum.

If you wish to go the extra mile, you can:

	Become my Facebook friend and post comments on my wall.
	Follow me on Twitter and respond to my tweets.
	Join the Autodesk Labs group on LinkedIn.
	Follow me on Google+.
	Post comments on my Instagram photos.

Using social media helps spread the word about the technology previews. This increases awareness, which leads to higher participation, which increases the chances of feedback, which improves the likelihood that the technology will advance to the next step instead of retire. So if you try a technology preview and like it, tell your friends. You'll have a better chance of seeing it in production one day. You should at least use the feedback mechanisms to tell us. Like I always say, "Trying a technology preview, liking it but not telling us, is the same as not trying it." Technology previews need affirmation to take the next step.

Using the Autodesk Labs Community effectively is alive in the lab.