Autodesk University 2026, Day 2
It’s day 3 in Arrakis, and my Whoop device is completely red; it has been for the whole week, but we are now peaking in the low trend.
Yesterday morning started with me trying to catch some of my familiar faces; I headed to the breakfast hall to hang out for a minute with Lee Mullin. I have known Lee for a while, and I wanted one of his cool stickers from his new adventure, BuildArc. I hope to get a view of his new project soon, but breakfast was more about talking about life on Earth. I also met Kevin Fielding from Sheppard Robson, another classic: I know him but have never met him.
After that, I headed to find some of my colleagues who had missed breakfast, and now they were in the endless line at Starbucks, and then headed to the B-side viewing of Keynote Day 2. Day 2 had Autodesk Operations demoing again, this time with our new colleagues from MaintainX showing some of their capabilities for onsite maintenance. For Tandem, it always made sense to complement it with a product that takes care of the boots-on-the-ground activities and communication, and I am super excited about the team joining Autodesk Operations.
After that, I had a bit more presentation practice, and then I did the walk around the Expo Hall booths. From what I saw, I will write a longer post on startups tomorrow or next week, but yesterday I had two clear favourites for different reasons: Pirros and Nomic.
Then I headed to the Autodesk Operations Roadmap session after lunch. There, we presented what we have worked on in the last year and what is yet to come. Then straight into the Building Owners Summit; these Summits bring in customers with a focus on a vertical. I find it very interesting, as it gives a very different perspective on architecture and construction from their side, and it is also critical to understand their problems for downstream life cycle outcomes and consumption for Tandem platform. This was 3 hours, and the room was so packed they had to bring more chairs; congrats to the team organising.
Then dinner followed with my colleagues, and a get-together for the new Autodesk Operations team; this is our first AU as such a big team. My first AU with Tandem, I remember the entire Tandem team (including engineers, product, marketing and customer care) was not bigger than 30. Today, Autodesk Operations is nearly 1,000 people with the MaintainX acquisition, FlexSim and the other teams. What a 5-year ride Tandem has been!
Today I will be presenting at 1.30 pm; it will be a 30-minute debate on digital twins. Grab a coffee and come along; I promise to make it light and fun, just as it is needed before wrapping up another AU.
