Forge Developers Conference is Today and Tomorrow #ForgeDevCon

Part of Autodesk's success is based on the fact that long ago the founders:

• Recognized the computer industry was shifting from mainframe computers to personal computers.
• Entrusted a wide dealer and reseller network to sell our software.
• Developed application program interfaces (APIs) that allowed our software's capabilities to be extended by third-parties.

These factors are still true today as we leverage the shift from desktop computing to cloud-based computing. With this in mind, I am attending Forge DevCon today and tomorrow.

Autodesk Forge is actually 3 things:

As a software development platform, features of Forge include:

• Framework plus building blocks.
• Data at the center.
• Connected workflows.
• Changes how and what is made.

As a software development fund, Autodesk has already made 3 investments to companies developing Forge-based solutions. There will be more to come.

As a software development community, Forge has over 300 developers working with Forge already, and with over 1,600 attendees at this conference, that number is sure to grow.

Forge DevCon is being held at Fort Mason in San Francisco. I am attending because I would like to see parts of Autodesk and other Forge-based developers leverage Autodesk Labs early in their development processes. This will allow them to get feedback on their potential web-based solutions early in their development processes rather than waiting until their ideas are sufficiently developed to reach the beta stage.

As an example of some of the types of things that are possible with Forge, here is a slide from Reality Capture VP, Brian Mathews' slide from a recent technical summit:

This is possible because:

For the latest information check out developer.autodesk.com.

Forging ahead is alive in the lab.