From June 14th to June 16th, 2022 DBEI held their Digital Built Week Americas event in Anaheim California, USA at the Anaheim Convention Center.
This was the first BILT event in North America since 2019 in Seattle, and only the 2nd BILT event since the BILT Europe 2019 event in October 2019 (The first being BILT ANZ 2021, in March 2022). The convention center is right across the street from Disneyland, and there were signs all around 😜
I could even see the nightly Disney fireworks show from my hotel room.
I will start by saying it was awesome to see so many old and new BIM friends again IN PERSON! Sure Zoom got us through the last few years but it was not a replacement for in-person events. The networking that happens in person at social events and between sessions is so invaluable to the community. Of course with the good comes the bad, and the last few years have been very hard on organizations that run conferences, and DBEI was no exception. Unfortunately, the RTC Events team that did all the “back of house” organization for all the BILT events was a casualty of almost 3 years of no events. That meant that this was the first BILTAm (Now called BILT Americas no longer BILTNA for BILT North America) with a 3rd party event company handling the “back of house” things, and let’s just say they didn’t deliver to the expectations of the BILTAm team. This meant that Wesley and Robert from the DBEI executive, the BILTAm team (Bob, Desirée, Nick, Steve and Alice) along with help from members of the DTS (Bob, Vickie, Craig, Chris and Brad) and BCS teams (Jim, Randall, Mike, Melissa and Chad) did a TON of work in the short hours before and during the event to make it happen. In the end, this meant scaling back the social events, having paid bars, boxed lunches and the cancellation of the Gala Dinner. In the end, everyone that I talked to understood the situation and was happy to be together in person again.
Something else that was new about this version of Digital Built Week Americas was the number of different events happening concurrently.
- BILTAm
- DTS Americas
- BCS
- National BIM Conference
- S2C2
- buildingSMART USA National High Performace Building Conference
- Bentley User Group
- USIBD
- Shadow Ventures
I didn’t get a chance to take in sessions from the other conferences, but they were included in your BILT conference pass so you could if you wished.
My Sessions
This year I submitted 10 abstracts, as 10 was the max because of the new “Carl Rule”.
Two of my sessions were selected for BILTAm 2022:
API: A Not-So Master Class (Presentation/Lecture)
To provide information, resources, and tips about using an API to get a little extra data, functionality, or interoperability out of your BIM workflows.
Apps & Add-ins for Your AECO Workflow (Presentation/Lecture)
This class is targeted to anyone interested in what’s new in add-ins, apps, or 3rdpartyadditions to Revit and other software and platforms that are part of an AECO workflow.
If you did make it to BILTAm 2022 you can get the Presentations, Handouts and Datasets for my sessions using this link HERE
I also got to help out with Jean-Marc Couffin on his pyRevit Lab on the first day as a lab assistant.
Take Control Over Revit by Creating Tools with pyRevit
You can find all the cool stuff covered in this class on Jean-Marc’s GitHub page HERE.
I was busy pulling double duty at this BILT as I was speaking and helping out John Barkwell in the BIM Track Booth, so I didn’t get to see a lot of sessions.
The few sessions I did see were good ones for sure.
Bridging the Computational Gap with Dynamo Player By Dana De Filippi with co-speaker Jacob Small.
To Dynamo Or Not To Dynamo: A Guide To Deciding When Automation Is The Answer by Marie Williams Bell and co-speaker Jamie Owens II
And of course, there were a ton of classes I missed that I wish I could have seen, here are just a few.
- Lab: Here’s Your Sign – Awesome Methods For Making Signage In Revit by John Pierson
- This Graph Does Not Bring Joy – Cleaning Up Dynamo Workflows by John Pierson
- Collaborative Coordination: Starting Clash Coordination During Design by Katelyn Sanchez and co-speaker Jacob D’Albora
- Making An Engaging Technical In-person And Virtual Presentation by Marcello Sgambelluri
- Effective Software Adoption In A Hybrid Environment by Jess Purcell
- How Many Toilets Do I Need? by Julie Kidder
- Mastering And Automating Revit Groups by Nicolas Catellier
- Lab: Tools In Bluebeam You Should Be Using by Bill Debevc
- How Design Firms Leverage Data To Improve Digital Delivery by Megan Brooks
As I said at the beginning it was great to get back together with so many BIM friends in-person and talk shop, learn, laugh, and share an adult beverage or two. I’m already looking forward to next June in Dallas, Texas for BILTAm 2023!
And if any of the committee are reading this I really liked the boxed lunches, I’m being 100% honest, They weren’t too heavy, could be eaten at your own pace, and were very portable for those that had to eat on the go (like booth folks).
The Food Trucks at Wednesday’s social event were also awesome!
And to end I would like to echo what John said in this tweet BILT (and DBEI) is all about the community 💯
See y’all in Dallas in 11 months! 🤠
Social & Podcast Links: bio.link/thebimsider
The BIMsider 
Is the 2023 conference in Dallas, TX, or Maryland? Thank you!
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Hey Mike, Dallas Texas https://www.dbei.org/event/digital-built-week-americas-2023/
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Thank you for the reply! one more question if I may, do you know if they will be offering AIA PDHs’ as they have in the past? I didn’t attend the 2022 conference, so I don’t know if they had PDHs’ there either. thanks!
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Do you also attend AU? If so, would you prefer one over the other if you had to pick?
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That’s a hard question because they are both great for their own reasons. AU is great for networking with over 10,000 people. BILT is great for learning new things and getting your BIM geek on!
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