AU 2020 – Going Virtual

It is that time of year again, seeing old friends that you haven’t seen since last year, bright lights, lots of music, even more walking…yes Autodesk University is in the air! Of course, with it be 2020 nothing will normal and we won’t all be gathered together in Las Vegas next week. This year AU is going virtual, starting Nov. 17th and going until Nov. 20th and it is FREE for everyone! You can still register HERE.

Lots of things will be different this year, to begin the majority of sessions or class have already been recorded and will all be released at once as “On Demand” sessions (750+ of them) starting Nov. 17th at 9:00 am Pacific time. There will still be live Keynote sessions, as well as Panel and Roundtable sessions that will also be live (350+ live sessions). The AU team has released a full schedule that you can search all of the sessions and bookmark them to future reference once the content is available starting Nov. 17th. You can find that scheduled HERE

Another staple of AU is the Autodesk certification exams, and yes they are still happening this year. The difference this year is they are not free, but they will be discounted 50% ($75 USD) if you register for AU 2020, which is free. You can learn more about this process HERE.

Of course, who could forget the parties, those will be hard to replace virtually…but I have seen a few invites out there for vendor-sponsored virtual happy hours so who knows maybe they can get close? Autodesk will be providing a dose of cuteness with puppy and kitty cams! The Expo and AU 5K are also going virtual. There will be a Design slam and Theater talks too, so the AU team really is trying hard to make this “Similar” to what we are used to. You can learn about all of the things you can out outside the AU class HERE.

You can also catch an AU 2020 special edition of BIMThoughts being published on Nov. 17th at 9:00 am PT (12:00 pm ET) where Bill, Dana and I chat about the idea of a virtual AU, classes we would like to attend, and some of our favourite AU memories from the past!

I do hope that for AU 2021 we can all get together again, Zoom is great but it doesn’t replace the real thing!