In 2008, we experienced an economic freefall that had not been seen since the Great Depression. Like many industries, architecture was hit pretty hard. Upon graduating with my master’s degree in architecture in 2008 I found myself in a good situation; I had lined up a job before the true impacts of the Great Recession ever gripped the firm’s management. They had a contracted backlog that spanned 2 years and money flowed freely, so I could attend Autodesk University.
AU 2008 was my first introduction to a professional conference experience. I got out of my comfortable desk and became a rookie AU attendee. I was blown away by the more than 5,000 multi-industry professionals attending sessions. I even had the chance to meet superstars like Burt Rutan and Daniel Simon at sessions that weren’t in my core curriculum. That’s 1 thing about AU that makes it great and where I discovered how to “hybrid learn” about other processes. Prior to AU, too often the dogmas of…