Autodesk’s 40th anniversary celebration

As I mentioned last week, Autodesk turned 40 yesterday. In anticipation of this milestone, Shaan Hurley and the Autodesk Community team organised a fun online get-together on Friday for people to join and get nostalgic about the good old days.

Shaan asked me to prepare something Floppy Friday-related, so I went and created a Floppy Friday Zoom background that I used during the event. Here’s a GIF version, in case you’re interested.

Floppy Friday Zoom background

At its peak there were around 70 people in the call. It was so nice to reconnect with people after such a long time. It would have been even nicer to see people in person, of course, but there’s not much chance I’d have headed to the US for an anniversary party, so I was grateful for the chance to participate online.

Some of the Zoom meeting attendees

Shaan shared some slides that brought the memories flooding back for people…

Some old-timers

I also had a few props on hand that I’d prepare during the day.

Some memorabilia

Inside the AutoCAD 2.5 box was a crazy hardware lock (also known as a dongle):

AutoCAD 2.5 and it's early dongle

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