I’m back from a two-week trip to the US where I attended and presented at RTC (Revit Technology Conference) in Stone Mountain, GA. It was the second North American RTC conference, with last year’s taking place near Los Angeles. Since this was my first RTC conference I didn’t know what to expect. I was pretty much convinced to attend after hearing how good it was from people who attended last year. Then at AU 2011, Steve Stafford prodded me to submit a talk about content creation and I was all set.
I have attended most AU conferences since 2006 along with a number of other smaller conferences, and without a doubt this has been the best so far. What made it so good? Let’s see, where do I start? Focus, people, location, quality, organization, level of expertise of the speakers, duration of the conference, attention to detail, and so on. They were all interrelated.
The conference had a focus on Revit and as such it stands on its own. That didn’t mean that related third-party software and workflows weren’t part of the conference, but it meant that we were all there with a knowledge and an eagerness to talk, learn and share Revit.
The number of attendees was, in my opinion, in an ideal range (360+ people, I heard). That made it very easy to talk to almost anyone you wanted to, and to meet them a number of times throughout the conference without worrying too much about it. At AU for example, with thousands of people, you might meet someone once, and unless you have their phone number, perhaps not see them again before the event is over.
Initially I thought the location to be an odd choice. It wasn’t a known place like Las Vegas, where there are a million things to do after (and for some people during) the presentations, classes and labs. But I stand corrected. The location at Stone Mountain facilitated communication, casual encounters and enough things to do that you couldn’t finish them. The resort was a 4 star hotel, with free internet access everywhere (attention to detail) and helpful conference staff that you could meet at will, making it easy to answer questions for speakers and attendees. And the staff did an amazing job. I did a private presentation of something we’ve been working on at Andekan for some prospective clients and asked the conference staff if a room could be arranged. “When do you need it?” Sweet!
Staying with the little details for a second, during the first lunch I asked one of the waiters if they had any gluten-free food available (I have a gluten allergy). Jim Balding, from The ANT Group, one of the sponsors and organizers, happened to be right behind me. I’d never met him before. Within a moment I had the phone number of one person from the hotel staff to guarantee that I would be served gluten-free food throughout. I didn’t even have to use the number. Whenever I appeared near a food table, I would be recognized by the staff and brought a gluten-free option. Fantastic!
The quality of the attendees was also first rate. People you might only know from blogs about Revit were there, many not only attending but presenting as well. People like Marcello Sgambelluri, Jeffrey Pinheiro, Paul Aubin, David Light, Jay B Zallan, Troy Gates, Simon Whitbread and more. Autodesk also was well represented at the conference with Harlan Brumm, Scott Davis, Matt Jezyk and Armundo Darling in attendance.
The level of knowledge imparted at RTC was also much higher than at other conferences. This is in part due to it being a Revit-only conference, but I believe that, more importantly, the organization behind RTC makes an effort for it to be so. Wesley Benn, the chairman and founder of the conference, got all the speakers together on the last day to share ideas, suggestions and complaints from the speakers with the aim of using the feedback to make the conference even better next time. I heard that he also takes the feedback from attendees pretty seriously(!). And like anything, it can be improved. On one of the nights I had the chance to speak to R. Robert Bell, who also is a member of the conference committee. We talked about the high level of the talks and how the “Advanced” label had been slightly washed out by other conferences. I suggested adding a “Hardcore” level of classes. We threw ideas around: “perhaps one such class per day”, “extremely focused”, “sharing and learning among all those involved, including the speaker”. But the labelling Bob came up with gave the clearest picture: if you don’t think you could teach this class yourself, maybe it isn’t for you.
There was more to RTC than I could dare write – parties and conversations in and around the swimming pool until the late hours of the night (for some it was the morning), a boat trip to a BBQ which included beach volleyball, hearing about Jay Zallan and Troy Gates’ brilliant idea (you’ll hear more about it soon), meeting friends and their families, as well as some customers who I hadn’t met face to face yet, and more.
And for those in this side of the pond, the news are that next year the first RTC Europe will take place in Delft, Holland, in late September 2013. Don’t miss it!
On a final note, I attended the class by Don Bokmiller called “Add Some Spark: Creating Electrical Families”. In it Don commented on the drawback of wall mounted (face based) lighting fixtures not having an annotation-based plan symbol. When the Q&A time for the class came about, I raised my hand and mentioned that there was a workaround. I thought I had done this a couple years ago at the request of a customer. I was told to prove it there and then, but I couldn’t. I had forgotten how I did it. So much so that I started to doubt it could be done. I’m glad to say that after checking this in detail, I have actually done it a number of times, most recently for a project for Arup. See images below. This little nugget was mentioned by R. Robert Bell on the last day’s closing presentation where he told the audience that an explanation would soon be posted online. My next post will be a full explanation of how to go about it.
