Monday, September 15, 2008

AU-Unconference - Call for Topics now Open!

This announcement went live on BLAUG today!

Last year, we introduced the un-conference concept to Autodesk University. Participation numbers where all over the map but most everyone who joined one of the un-conference sessions, liked it. We called our group of 20 plus classes AU-Unplugged and we would like to offer it again this year. If you have a topic, you would like to “deep-dive” with a small number of AU attendees, submit a topic now. [Red Button]

This year's AU will have almost 650 structured sessions, carefully selected by Autodesk divisions and the AU team. Most classes are focused on helping attendees get more productive with our software. AU attracts a great number of industry experts and power users that have much to share with the AU community. Much of their knowledge would be difficult to package into a regular AU session. However, we strongly believe in the value of that knowledge and we will provide a venue this year to allow for sharing that knowledge. A lot of learning at AU does happen “in the hallway” and we believe that providing a room, a projector and a microphone, some of those conversations can be moved into a session room and more folks can benefit from the conversation.

Basic rules of engagement for AU Unplugged are:

o Any topic related to your industry or Autodesk is fair game

o Absolutely no selling or promoting of any product

o No lectures—only discussions

Each session is scheduled for 50 minutes. In most cases, the session leader will start out introducing the topic. Each participant in the room will do a quick 10 second introduction. All this should take about 10 to 15 minutes. Once the stage is set, the session leader will start asking questions and directly solicit comments and opinions from those in the room around topic. The value of an AU Unplugged!—or any un-conference for that matter—is that the line between presenter and audience is blurred. At an un-conference, there are only session leaders and session participants. A session leader has to prepare and is expected to set the stage for the session, but it is likely that the leader learns as much from the participants as the participants learn from the leader or each other.

AU Unplugged! will run concurrently to other AU classes. Unlike regular classes, you are not able to sign up for a particular AU Unplugged! session. Sessions are on a first come, first serve basis and each session will be limited to 40 participants to allow for good dialog.

The deadline to submit your topic is October 17, 2007.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Funny, was setting up some Revit stuff today that was discussed/debated in an "AU-Unc" session I attended last year. I thought they were great especially for AU Veterans who appreciate the networking bit as much as the scheduled sessions.