The AUGI Top DAUG winner was announced. The competition went down to the wire with several last day participants winning top slots.  The overall winner was announced to a large gathering.

The show floor closed up and it is on to the evening events soon.

Here are a couple of videos from the show floor.

TechShop Tour  – youtu.be/4Pb7K9yVawY
The Gallery at Autodesk University 2011 – http://youtu.be/oVS5ZeRHo64

I am writing this from the show floor and the crowd is not thinning out as the evening wears on. I visited the Bluebeam booth and was impressed with their product and their booth.

One interesting thing that I did see today was the offering to be taught how to knit or crochet.  Right there in the middle of a high tech conference was an Autodesk employee offering to educate you on the fine art of handcrafted creations.

AUGI Top DAUG continued to be in full swing with many watching the tote board for updates to the top ten lists.   Tonight was the Annual Beer Bust and the passing out of the AUGI Beer Mugs.

The General Session Keynote was done on a single massive display that must have been well over 100 feet wide and Autodesk CEO Carl Bass always entertains and informs.  I am hearing stats like 8000 attendees from 80 countries and the crown is a wide mix and buzzing with energy.

Classes got underway and the hallways were jammed at the breaks. The day ended with the opening of the Exhibit Hall. AUGI was there in force with the Top DAUG competition.

There are 7 products in the testing now – not just AutoCAD.

Walking the Exhibit hall was tough as the crowd was fairly large.  The hall  is long and narrow with two main aisles and branches off both sides like little cul-de-sacs.

I did not have much time to wander but I did notice the cheerleading squad and also stopped by the HP booth to check out their modular chassis desktops that allow you to quickly snap in major components in the box in seconds.  Swapping out a power supply is a breeze and airflow is maximized for cooling.  They also demoed their large touch screen that outranks anything I have seen recently in that it allows multiple touch points in ways that others do not. There was a large wall mount and a desktop model.  Very Nice.

The night ended with the hall closing and the crowd scattering to other events or to get some rest prepping for the next day.

Read a little more each day in AUGI’s HotNews Daily

Today was the full force attack with classes on leadership, BIM, Digital  Design, Sustainability and Cloud Computing – all from those who have lead the charge in these areas.  I presented on “Energizing a Multi-Generational Workforce. Some good conversations and many people connecting and sharing experiences and ideas.  Quite a buzz.

During the breaks I checked on the AUGI booth that is being set up and checked emails.  You can follow AUGI at AU on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AUGIatAU

Still meeting up with many that I have not seen in a while.  If you get a chance and are here – stop me in the hall and let’s chat.

Leading change will draw upon your skills in ways that you may not have fully developed and will continue to develop your entire career.

I have broken this topic down into two areas:

Leading

This part will draw upon your leadership skills and uses your people and political skills.  People skills as you interact with others and Political skills where you interact with misgivings, misunderstandings, misinformation and outright positioning by others to help you succeed or attempt to make you fail.

Change

This draws upon your planning skills and uses your creative and organizational skills.  Planning is used as you map out the future and you are going to get there.  Creative and Organizational skill to originate ideas and align them with other initiatives in the organization.

What does a Leader need to do to create and energize change?  Linda A. Hill in her book on “Being the Boss” helps us understand.

• They need to demonstrate their character—the intention to do the right thing.
• They need to demonstrate their competence—knowing how to do the right thing.
• They need to demonstrate their influence—the ability to deliver and execute the right thing.

I will unpack these and many more  perspectives in  the class.

Five Keys of Understanding the Generations

•  Traditionalists (WW2 generation) and Baby Boomers are as likely as Millennials to be technology contributors. Enhancing and clarifying the old – producing and creating the new
• Baby Boomers and Generation Xers look for a work life/home life balance, while Millennials see work as “part of life.”
• Millennials and Generation X place a high importance on working for a company that develops both their career and life skills
• Millennials are likely to select an employer based on the ability to access the latest tools and technologies at work
• Both Traditionalists and Baby Boomers place high importance on a manager who understands age diversity in the workplace.

Here are some of my thoughts…

The Enemies of Momentum.  The people and comments below can be killers of your progress.  You can hear people saying these things and it will cause things to stall or even fail.

• Complacency – people who don’t care say…
• We are fine
• We don’t need to change
• Self-Protection – people who are protecting their turf or process or function
• My way is working good
• Your way won’t work
• Defiance – those who are refusing to change
• You can’t make me change
• Pessimism – those who think you will fail or don’t trust you planning
• This won’t work
• What if we fail?

Just after lunch we had an AUGI TweetUp where we put the word out to all those who follow AUGIatAU Twitter feeds to join us in the AUGI booth where we did not talk to each other – we just Tweeted – har har

Right after that was the AUGI Top DAUG finals where the top ten leaders from the first round have a shootout for the top spot.

The winner was Steve Fong – the 2010 “Leader of the Pack”. (Below on the left with Top DAUG Logo Design winner Ken Chenault)

Rushing from there to the AUGI Unplugged sessions where we met with many who were interested in AUGI and what was coming up.  An hour long wandering discussion of topics like the website, Local Chapters, Membership, Benefits and so much more.

After all that was over a quick trip back to the AUGI room to prep for the AUGI Annual Meeting.  Then on to the Beer Bust.  What an exhausting day.

The AUGI Beer mugs were a hit this year.  We also saw lanyard, lapel pins that had the 20th anniversary logo shown below.

Here are a couple of pix from the event.

AUGI Meeting

Exhibit Hall