General Session | Day 1

[MUSIC - "WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN"]

(SINGING) Oh when the saints, oh when the saints, go marching in, go marching in, oh when the saints go marching in, how I want to be in their number, oh when the saints go marching in.

Oh when the saints, oh when the saints, go marching in, go marching in, oh when the saints go marching in, how I want to be in their number when the saints go marching in.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

PRESENTER: Please welcome to the stage Autodesk's CEO, Andrew Anagnost.

[MUSIC - "WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN"]

ANDREW ANAGNOST: Morning. Morning, everybody. Any of you know how long it's been since we've done this? It's been three years. So I have a question for you. And you can just shout or say whatever you want. How many of you are happy to be here in person?

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

That's what I thought. That's what I thought. I'm happy to be here in person. Look, I also want to extend an invitation. Look, if you see me wandering around, I might be surrounded by people that look worried, and they're shuffling me along, but if you do, stop me. Talk to me. Tell me what's on your mind. OK? I don't bite. I'm interested.

I don't care if it's good, bad, or indifferent. Last night, I had the privilege of sitting with two wonderful architecture professionals from Chicago in the hotel. Mark, I know you're out there somewhere. All right, I knew it. I knew if I gave him bait, he'd take it. Hi, Mark. Why you sitting so far back?

So look, talk to me. But I've got one more request for you, OK? There are over 9,000 people here right now, today. But there are tens of thousands of people watching online. And a bunch of them wish they were here. So can we tell them we wish they were here, too? Just one more time. Are you happy to be here?

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

All right. Thank you for doing that. It is an amazing feeling to be back here, isn't it? All right? It's wonderful to be standing here, connecting in person with all of you. I feel the energy. New Orleans is awesome. It's great for the online people. I just want to welcome you to Autodesk University. It's so great to be back together in person, as a family, all getting together.

It's been really tough for me, personally, spending so much time, from customers and colleagues. You know, we've all been through such disruption over the last few years. It's felt like a decade of change crammed into a very small period of time.

But change has always been constant, particularly here in New Orleans. It's a place with a lot of rich history. It's been through so much during those decades. But the people of this city know how to celebrate both their history and the change that comes with time, which I think is what makes this place such a perfect place to be in person again.

Now, you're here at AU because, like me, you're really curious about the future of technology. You want to know how your industry is changing and what you can do to equip yourself and your business with the resilience to adapt to this changing landscape. So that's where I want to start. I want to share a story about change, about overcoming challenges, about resilience, how technology and communities come together to drive solutions and what's possible in the face of great disruption.

Now, I know if you've walked around New Orleans today, it's kind of hard to imagine such vibrant streets devastated by Hurricane Katrina, to imagine people struggling to take care of themselves and their communities. Now, for a lot of us, climate change feels really easy to ignore. But it is not for the people of New Orleans, or for anyone that is in the path of increasingly powerful hurricanes.

And no one knows that better than our first guest, Meagan Williams. Meagan is a New Orleans native, and she was 16 years old when Katrina hit. She went to school to study civil engineering, and she brought those talents back here to her community. She is now the stormwater manager for the city of New Orleans, and we're honored to be speaking with her today in her home city, where she's been an essential part of managing the effects of extreme weather events since experiencing them firsthand. Everybody, would you please welcome Meagan to the stage.

[MUSIC - "WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN"]

There you go. You got a big New Orleans welcome, the music, everything.

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: It feels appropriate.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: It does feel appropriate. So what is a stormwater manager? What is this job? What do you do?

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: My job is to manage all of the stormwater in the city of New Orleans and to find innovative ways to live with water. And there is so much water. There's a lot of water. We're surrounded by it. So I developed a sort of multiple lines of defense strategy to mitigate climate change. For us, that means using both gray infrastructure, the built environment, our levees, our storm drains, the pump stations, as well as green infrastructure.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: OK, what is that? What is green infrastructure?

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: Green infrastructure is sort of a manmade way of doing what nature does, to manage water, to catch it where it falls. So we do that by installing detention ponds, permeable pavement, utilizing the landscape, and using native plants to help absorb water, as well. For us, living with water means hurricanes, but it also means that the typical summer rainstorm has been kind of inundating us a little bit more than hurricanes, actually.

So we have to mitigate and prepare for both of those. And with the green infrastructure we do have installed so far, we've been able to manage about 9 million gallons of water. So for reference, that's about 200,000 bathtubs.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: Yeah.

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: So we retain water where it falls, we detain it for a moment, and then we let it go back into the drainage system. So for my technical experts, my nerds in the audience, we use green infrastructure to help kind of attenuate the peak of a rainfall event. We use our green infrastructure to really complement what we already have, not to replace it.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: So I imagine you didn't grow up thinking I'm going to be a stormwater manager. So how did you get into this? How did you discover this career?

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: You know, when I was a kid, I played with LEGOs, I played with K'NEX. I was building things with my dad all the time. And I knew, as an adult, I wanted to do that on a large scale in the real world. So engineering school kind of felt like the next natural step.

And to be perfectly honest, I had no idea that this field of work even existed. It wasn't until I got my first project when I started with the Department of Public Works for green infrastructure that I realized what it could do, and then how much we need it on a very large scale. So I actually created the position that I'm standing in right now that enables me to do just that.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: All right, well--

[APPLAUSE]

And excessive LEGO use does tend to be a presenting symptom of engineering.

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: Absolutely.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: So that's amazing. So you created your own job.

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: Absolutely.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: That's awesome. Now, New Orleans, obviously it's a super unique city. It's got unique challenges. I mean, I remember you saying that you pump all the water out of the city, which is an interesting engineering challenge on its own. But it's got to be interesting to you in some special way. So what does New Orleans mean to you?

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: First and foremost, this place is my home. I was born and raised here. I have generations of family that were born and raised here. And I see myself and I see my family reflected back in the community that I serve. And that's really why this work is so important to me and what gives me purpose.

And the people of New Orleans are so unique. So I want to make sure that the projects that we do are for the community, and that they don't happen to the community. So to do that, we have to work with the community. So we sit with them, we design, we co-create, and then we incorporate that feedback back into the projects that we're doing.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: And I heard you say earlier, like, you're protecting the land for the future generations, which I just think is amazing. And you have a whole set of professionals here. They're engineers. They are facing challenges you face.

What would you say to them with regards to the challenges they might face mitigating the effects of climate change in their communities? Maybe they're going to have not enough water, or too much water. What would be your advice?

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: I would tell them three things. One, find your community champions. The community is really the biggest stakeholder in everything that we do. And often, they know more than we give them credit for. And in the end, the community is the-- they're the ones who are going to live with the solutions that we create. And at the end of the day, they're going to help rally the rest of the community to get on board and get projects across the finish line.

Number two, find a way to bridge the gap between the technical industries, all those that are represented here-- engineering, architecture, construction. The technology that we use to develop these projects and design them, find a way to connect that to the community. But also remember that the innovation and the engineering is secondary to the people that we serve.

And then number three, keep in mind the future generations. Like Andrew said, I see the work that we're doing today as setting up the environment for the next generation to inherit. Everyone is important, and everyone is a stakeholder.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: Yeah, so they're lucky to have you looking out for the next generation. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for coming here and spending time with us.

MEAGAN WILLIAMS: Thank you, Andrew.

[APPLAUSE]

ANDREW ANAGNOST: All right. So as Meagan showed us, making our cities, making people more resilient is critical. And that's whether or not it's bouncing back from an extreme weather event, like Meagan and her colleagues have to help New Orleans to do, or, like many of you, managing through labor shortages or supply chain disruptions. We've all experienced difficulty in the last few years, and we've all learned lessons.

Now, one of the lessons that I've learned is that, in a world that is constantly changing, we also have to be willing to change how we do things. Just like the people here in New Orleans, we all need to be more connected, more agile, and more resilient. We need to acknowledge that how we've done things in the past may not be what we need to do for the future. We need to imagine new ways of working that will enable us and our businesses to thrive.

I know many of you are ready for this change. I've seen how many of you are embracing digital transformation, how you're connecting your data, your processes, and most importantly, your people. The way you all collaborate has changed. And it's changed forever.

So I think it's time to think about the software tools you rely on catching up to that. I've heard from a lot of you about this. Just last night, in fact. There are many tools you all use today, from so many providers. Some of them are closed, and they leave your processes disconnected.

They force you to build manual workflows. You have to figure out how to pass huge files back and forth. And as you do this, you often overshare your valuable data, your intellectual property. And we all have to face it, nobody likes an oversharer. Usually gets people in trouble.

Data gets lost in translation, and it needs to be patched back together over and over and over again. And when data and processes are disconnected, teams are, too. People get stuck in their silos. They get confined to whatever phase of the project lifecycle they work on. And so do the unique insights that they bring to the table.

So how can we lift people out of their silos so that they can bring their valuable insights to the different teams working on a project? How might we unlock data from closed formats so that the insights that help people do their job are easily accessible? How do we connect processes between tools and teams so people don't have to spend their valuable time building manual workflows? How do we change all of that? Sounds easy, right?

I believe that it is time for us to disrupt ourselves and pursue different ways of working. Now, at Autodesk, we have an opportunity to harness the cloud, to rethink the tools you rely on and refocus them around a new paradigm, one that makes you more connected, more agile, more efficient, and yes, more profitable. I want our tools to deliver more value to you, your collaborators, and your customers.

Some of you might remember that last year, when we weren't in person, I talked about how we've started to build a platform that helps you connect your processes and data in the cloud. Now, I'm really proud to share with you that we're well on our way. We're making great progress building our three industry clouds-- Autodesk Fusion for manufacturing, Autodesk Flow for media and entertainment, and Autodesk Forma for architecture, engineering, and construction.

Each cloud will enable you to manage your assets and workflows more efficiently, to connect the right people to the right data at the right time. Unlike all the unwanted disruption that's been thrown at us, I believe a disruption of the technology we use to do our jobs, a positive disruption is probably long overdue. So our industry clouds aren't simply incremental improvements to the software you already have.

Our industry clouds are different. They will help you drive an entirely new way of working. They'll bring the capabilities you know and love from our current portfolio together in new and powerful ways that will ultimately transform the way you work.

So let's look at how. And I'll start with manufacturing. Now, manufacturing, for decades, have locked down their processes, making their production as lean and efficient as possible. Now, when the pandemic hit, teams who were used to working in person were suddenly distributed.

They found that their tools, standalone tools, generally serving standalone departments, couldn't flex to meet their needs. Today, manufacturing requires tools that are fluid, not rigid, tools that enable teams to work with agility and with all their stakeholders. This is the vision for Autodesk Fusion, our Manufacturing cloud. Are there any Fusion users out there?

[APPLAUSE]

Carol, I know you don't use Fusion. Come on, can I hear it from the Fusion-- there has to be some Fusion users out there. Can you at least say hi?

[APPLAUSE]

All right, see, I knew you were out there, OK? You folks know just how quickly Fusion helps you to iterate. All right? That's because we've worked hard to unify design, simulation, electronics, cam. And of course, everybody loves data management, all right? And with your project data unified in the cloud, we're automating many processes to eliminate both guesswork and grunt work.

Soon, you'll be able to automatically create part designs and generate tool paths. You'll even be able to automatically generate drawings and dimensions. Automatically generate drawings and dimensions, OK? Think about that. What's that going to do?

But the cloud is going to take Fusion much further. We want all data relevant to a product's development-- how it's designed, how it's performed, how it's manufactured-- to be used and flow throughout your organization, from top floor to shop floor. Today, the shop floor is where the digital thread ends. And I don't think it should, because shop floors are tremendously dynamic environments, where downtime is costly.

So as well as managing your machining and fabrication processes, we're pulling that digital thread through shop floor scheduling, purchasing, inventory management. And we're doing it with Prodsmart, which we're integrating into the Fusion cloud. But more importantly, we're bringing Fusion to the mobile devices that the shop floor staff rely on.

I believe that every one of you should be able to start digital and stay digital, with fluid tools that span every phase of a project, whether you work in manufacturing or in media and entertainment. Fluid data and tools are exactly what the entertainment industry needs, and now more than ever. The demand for content skyrocketed during the pandemic, and it's continuing to grow.

Now, why is this such a big challenge? Just think about the credits at the end of a movie. They seem almost as long as the movie itself. And you often have to wait for that end of credit scene, right, because your kids say there's going to be an end of credit scene.

Got to see the end of credit scene. That endless scroll of names, it shows you how movie productions are crazy complex. And game productions are often equally so.

Studios have to build their own custom data pipelines and workflows just to get their work done. We want to change that with Autodesk Flow, our media and entertainment cloud. With Flow, we'll connect your workflows, data, and teams across the entire production lifecycle, from the earliest concept to final delivery. And how are we going to do that? We're going to do it by allowing collaboration across disciplines to access and manage their assets whenever and wherever they're needed through one central asset management system, because once assets are unified, workflows can become unified, too.

Autodesk Flow will deliver new workflows on the desktop and in the cloud. And it's going to bring together the capabilities of our leading content creation and production management tools into a single environment. And by fully supporting MovieLabs' industry principles for production in the cloud, Flow will help break down the silos between on-set production and post. It's going to allow you to increase your efficiency and let your teams work as one.

And we have this same goal for architects, engineers, construction professionals, and the owners they partner with. Like so many of you, these teams are expected to deliver increasingly complex projects on accelerated timelines, all while facing new pressures, pressures like creating designs that are both sustainable and cost-effective, navigating supply chain disruptions, and a shortage of skilled labor that just doesn't seem to be going away.

I've seen how you are adopting new digital tools, finding different ways of working, from the earliest stages of design until the last punch list item is resolved. But you do need more. And that's why we're building Autodesk Forma, our AEC cloud. Forma will unify building information modeling workflows across teams, the teams that plan, design, build, and operate our built environment, enabling your data to move throughout projects, stakeholders, and asset types.

The first Forma offering will reimagine early-stage design with your desired end results in mind. So let's take sustainability as an example. If you want to design buildings that are sustainable as possible, you will be able to analyze, test, and ultimately optimize a multitude of concepts to ensure your solar panels are well-placed, your outside spaces get good light, and your carbon footprint is minimized.

And you'll do all of this in real time. And with the ability to sync with Revit, you'll be able to transfer your model between Revit and Forma, allowing you to start detailed design faster or to quantify the impact of changes made in Revit back in Forma.

Now, today, Forma will transform early-stage planning upstream. But ultimately, it's going to reach downstream, where Autodesk Construction Cloud is redefining construction management. Construction Cloud combines convenient tools and powerful controls that remove silos and drive collaboration across contractors, trades, and owners.

It allows you to define what information and data is shared, configure workflows to match your unique processes, and it makes it easy to use models in the field. It is powerfully simple construction management. Our vision for Forma is to connect the tools you need upstream downstream, and during all the phases in between, transforming how all of you do BIM.

Now, I hope you understand how much value these industry clouds promise. Some cloud-based tools think the same functionality used today moved to a browser will change the way you work. But what you really get is the same application, just hosted in a different place.

The cloud is so much more. The cloud enables us to pre-compute your data and connect your processes, automate your workflows and provide you with valuable insights. You only need to look at where Fusion is, which is the furthest along of all the three clouds, to see how different, how impactful these tools will become.

That's why these industry clouds matter. Now, building them will take time, but we're making huge progress on the foundation, the shared services set and APIs that will make the industry clouds accessible, extensible, and open. Today, you know these services as Forge. Moving forward, they'll be known as Autodesk Platform Services. We'll be building a lot more functionality into the services over time so that you can use them to extend and connect products, streamline your workflows, and integrate other tools you rely on.

Now, it's a big deal for us, and we think it's a big deal for you. And you can take advantage of the applications and extensions that third parties have built to remove friction and add value to your business today. And that's whether it's a Fusion plug-in for immediate feedback on cost and manufacturability of your parts or a Revit plug-in for instant lifecycle assessments of your buildings. There are many great options that are ready for you to use.

Platform Services and APIs sit at the heart of our cloud environments. And so does a central cloud information model. It's where the different representations of a product, a building, a movie character, the data relevant to all disciplines comes together in one central location. And each collaborator can access just the data that they need when they need it, share it with the right stakeholders, and move it between solutions critical to your operations, whether that's an Autodesk tool or other products you rely on.

Now, open standards make that possible. They're a key area of investment for Autodesk because we want your teams to be connected throughout the entire project lifecycle and beyond, no matter what software you use. Open standards ensure our platform remains an open ecosystem that our tools, as well as third-party tools, can plug into. This is about more than your adoption of digital tools. It's about transforming the way you work with more fluid, connected, and informed workflows.

Now, nobody wants to be disruptive. Sounds awkward, OK, but the process of disruption is a critical part of moving forward, of the journey to something different, something game-changing, something totally new. And it starts with your data. Now, I know that all of you think about data slightly differently. So I think I'll unpack how we see data for each of your industries and talk about how we'll help make data move throughout project lifecycles.

In AEC, building a hospital, an overpass, or a high-rise is becoming more complex. And so are the models associated with them. Locating just the information you need and keeping it up to date can feel like a full-time job. That's why, over the last year, we've been building data capabilities within our platform capabilities that help you exchange data fluidly between products.

For building design, we started with connections between Revit and Inventor and Power Automate. And now we're extending those capabilities to Rhino, with our Rhino connection. You'll be able to share subsets of data between these apps, including Rhino and Revit. So for example, an architect working on a building concept in Rhino can move a facade to a colleague so that they can start detailed design. Only the facade gets transferred. And if the Rhino model changes, the Revit model will update automatically. And all of this happens behind the scenes in the cloud.

And this is just the beginning. It's a fraction of the connections that we'll build. So you can unlock your design data and exchange it between all the products you rely on, whether they're from Autodesk or not. And ultimately, this exchange of data will be a native capability in Autodesk Forma.

Similarly, in infrastructure, we are working to write terrain data from Civil 3D to the cloud as granular data. So what this means is that civil engineers collaborating on things like corridor and alignment design won't have to transfer entire files. Instead, they can share just the terrain data that each need to collaborate. And with all the design data in one central location, valuable information will be unlocked and made available outside of the native authoring application.

We are working to connect design, properties, data, and files from our authoring tools like Revit, Civil 3D, and Plant 3D into Autodesk Construction Cloud. This makes it easier for teams downstream to leverage the information. This is also the first step in democratizing your data.

You all know that fluid movement of data from design to construction is critical to success, especially if your site is one of the most remote, unforgiving places on Earth, the Antarctic, where British Antarctic Survey and their partners are modernizing the infrastructure. This 10-year program will upgrade the research facilities to keep the UK at the forefront of climate, biodiversity, and ocean research. By reducing the resources needed to maintain the station over the long term, this project allows them to focus on what they really care about-- the science.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- My first trip to Antarctica, I was stunned by the immense vastness of the place. You could see for miles icebergs, mountains, and also just the numerous amount of wildlife that live in their natural habitat. It was truly remarkable.

Antarctica holds the majority of the fresh water on this planet, locked up in ice sheets and glaciers. We don't want to see that melt into the oceans, because one of the major impacts of climate change will be rising sea levels.

The British Antarctic Survey, BAS, has undertaken a 10-year program of construction. The Discovery building will replace six existing buildings that have reached the end of their life. And these buildings provide the operational capability to ensure that more time is spent in delivery of science. Understanding the impacts that climate change will have in the Antarctic will enable us to better protect that environment to safeguard the world.

Cambridge is a long way away from Antarctica, about 15,000 kilometers. If we miss something, it's not as though we can pop down to the local hardware store. That presents a number of challenges. Namely, it's distance and the logistics of getting materials, equipment down there. There's also a limited amount of resource that we can actually deploy. Each season, we have a cap of about 50 construction workers. We really need to think carefully about how we could become more efficient at how we deliver our construction activity.

It's really important to BAS that we have a strong and long program of partnership because the challenges that building in the Antarctic presents. Our three main partners are Ramboll, our technical advisor, BAM, our construction partner, and Sweco, who worked on really understanding the importance of how we can reduce our carbon emissions through smart engineering.

- With so many different partners working on it and so many different engineers, it's imperative that we have a single model that everybody can relate to.

- We used BIM 360 because it gives us that collaborative way of working. It gives us a joint access to the model, and it gives us the clear sequence of delivery.

- We need to clear out the ice in front of the wharf.

One of the main aspects of working in Antarctica is making things predictable and repeatable. The approach that we take is that we build it before we build it. We use digital tools as much as we can, really, to rehearse before we arrive on site.

Another way of rehearsing was to utilize the models in different ways. We were able to create a game, whereby our excavator operatives were able to practice excavating around the tie rods which made up the wharf.

- We're really breaking ground with a lot of this design. There's no real design standards for Antarctica. You can't really design a wharf to withstand a 40-megaton iceberg the size of a large building. So you just have to weigh up risk with impact and come up with the most pragmatic solution.

- Just have a look at Antarctic research.

We'd like the discovery building to be designed so that we use approximately 25% less marine gas oil across the site whilst we slowly transition using other projects to more renewable energy sources.

BAS has a huge wealth of knowledge. There's a message there for contractors, designers, and project managers to start early with their sustainability thinking.

- Understanding the behavior of the icebergs and floating sea ice, we were actually able to reduce the steel used in the wharf construction by 50%.

- The partnership team that's helping to create those buildings had to come at things differently in order to reach the kind of goals that we've set out to achieve.

- Everybody's pulling in the same direction regardless of the company that we work for. We've had suppliers come into here in Cambridge in meetings with all four partners present and remark that they actually can't tell who works for who.

- A lot of clients talk about working collaboratively and in a spirit of mutual trust and cooperation. But it truly feels like we're walking the walk here. There's no us and them. Hopefully, it's the way the industry is going to move in the next 10 years.

- The drive towards achieving the best is felt amongst all the team. And it fills me with huge excitement, as well as achievements that should deliver in a new building, which I can't wait to see BAS Operations and Sciences use in their daily lives and hopefully make the world a better place.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[END PLAYBACK]

ANDREW ANAGNOST: And now, straight from the Antarctic, here is David.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

All right. So David gets the award for wearing the most uncomfortable New Orleans outfit that you could possibly imagine. So let's give him a trooper award. Look at the boots, for God's sakes.

You know, look, I hate being cold. So I'm glad they keep you warm when you're in the Antarctic. But I have to ask, why Antarctica?

DAVID BRAND: It's one of the last few remaining pristine environments in the world. But, more importantly, the world's vast majority of fresh water is locked up in those ice sheets and those glaciers. Understanding the impact of climate change and global warming on those vulnerable ecosystems will better enable us to understand how we can address this climate crisis.

There is a positive message, though. And that is if we're able to address climate change-- in particular, the carbon emissions-- we can really understand, through the research that the British Antarctic Survey does, but also other nations around the world that does research down there, just exactly how that response mitigates this, slows down the melting of those ice sheets, and ultimately, reduce the amount of sea level rise that we're seeing in the future.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: You see how passionate all of you are about the science. And the video shows how amazing it is the way you got Ramboll, BAM, and Sweco working together on a really tight set of constraints. They got their data synced, their projects synced. How did that work out for better outcomes for BAS?

DAVID BRAND: As we've heard, it's a very remote place, over 14,000 kilometers away, which presents a number of logistical challenges, as you heard. There's not exactly a hardware store just around the corner. But it's not just the logistical challenge. We also have extreme environments to deal with, climate, as well as a very short construction window each year.

And that really means we need a unique way of working that sort of meets those challenges. And the collaborative partnership we have does just that. Through that early engagement with our partners, we can really share information, particularly engineer solutions, design, that delivers the operational requirement that BAS needs, and also focusing on cost and the program.

So we can really provide the client, BAS, with assurance that we can deliver construction first time round. But the best part of the partnership really is how we've worked on delivering efficient construction. How can we deliver construction with a minimal resource on site?

So that might be through prefabrication, digital construction, and really focusing on how we can reduce that resource and still deliver that construction output. And why? That means we can reduce number of bed spaces, and that means we can still deliver our core output, which is that scientific research.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: So you can see the building. It's not that big. There's equipment in there. There's almost, like, 150 people that hang out there.

How do they all get-- how does it go? Do they all get along OK? How do you-- how does it-- they're stuck up there, and there's not a lot. And they can't go out to dinner. So how does it turn out?

DAVID BRAND: Well, the building you see there is actually 100 meters-- or just shy of 100 meters long. And the station itself-- whilst the continent is huge, the actual station that we work on is about 8 kilometers squared. So it's a very small space with bed spaces for about 140 people in the summer season.

So, yes, there's that quite a lot of effort considering about how we integrate on station. And, really, working with BAS, the construction partners can really focus on sharing information, whether it be through predeployment training, so we all train together. And we also share our respective programs. So, for example, the constructor knows what the science program is doing one season and vice versa. And that means that we can really coordinate our delivery and make sure that we get the best efficient delivery of output.

But it's not just about construction or science. We also got to make sure that we integrate well and we actually have fun together on the station. So we have a football match every season.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: Always a good bonding activity.

DAVID BRAND: Yes, it's great. But we've got to make sure that we select the right people to go down there, that they experience the joy of working in the Antarctic, and focus on the delivery of construction.

ANDREW ANAGNOST: Well, fabulous. I hope you continue to do great work. David, thank you so much for coming here and for braving the weather.

DAVID BRAND: Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

ANDREW ANAGNOST: All right. So it is inspiring to see how British Antarctic Survey and their partners collaborated. They found innovative ways to use BAS's research to design a sustainable and constructible project while connecting workflows to efficiently move data across project phases.

This approach is not just inspiring for our AEC customers. It applies to all of our customers' work, especially those in media and entertainment. The amount of data that any production creates is absolutely insane.

Films can contain thousands of shots and assets, petabytes of data. All this data needs to be managed efficiently across the entire production life cycle so that processes and workflows between hundreds of collaborators can be connected. It's a tough problem. But I know we can solve it with the asset management capabilities we're building for Autodesk Flow.

Asset management will give users the ability to store their assets, along with the associated metadata, version them, and then manage the movement of these assets throughout the entire process, from modeling to rendering and from previs to post. Our goal is to allow for data management across any Autodesk and third-party application. Maya is going to be the first application to be supported by our asset solution, but we want to manage lots of different assets.

Assets will enable new connected workflows, for example, between on-set production and postproduction. And as the lines blur between these two phases, collaborators who are not on set need to be involved in the process as far upstream as possible because what happens on set has a huge impact in post. And that's where Autodesk Moxion comes in. Moxi--

[CHEERING]

Go, Moxion! Moxion is-- glad we have a contingent out there. Moxion is a camera-to-cloud solution that makes all the data captured on set instantaneously available to collaborators so that they can get up and running as soon as the director yells cut. And what's even more powerful than Moxion alone is connecting it with ShotGrid to ensure that on-site data flows to postproduction nearly in real time.

And that's precisely what some of our customers are doing today. They are connecting their tools and data in the cloud to tackle highly complex productions. Amazon Studios is constantly pushing the boundaries of entertainment, and their stories are amazing-- love The Expanse-- and amazingly complex to create. Let's take a look.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- I am pitching the craziest twist. It's going to blow your mind.

- Men like you are made of stories.

- What makes you so sure that's a story worth hearing? Slap on your big boy pants. We're just getting started.

[MUSIC PLAYING - MAJOR LAZER, "WE ARE THE TITANS"]

(SINGING) Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are the titans. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Oh.

- Real power is the ability to bend the world to your will.

- This power, it's a gift. Let it take you.

(SINGING) Going to turn, going to turn around.

- Welcome to the future.

(SINGING) Going to turn, going to turn around.

- It's all going to be rather lovely.

(SINGING) Hey, hey, hey, we are the titans. Hey, hey, hey. We are the titans. Hey, hey, hey. We are the titans.

- In your honor, a little surprise.

(SINGING) Hey, hey, hey. Going to turn, going to turn around.

- Come with me to Middle Earth.

[END PLAYBACK]

ANDREW ANAGNOST: You got to love the media and entertainment show reels. [LAUGHS]

[APPLAUSE]

All right. That will certainly keep you on your couch for weeks, all right? Please welcome Eric Iverson.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Eric, take the stage.

ERIC IVERSON: Wow. There's so many of you. Oh, my gosh, I'm so strong. Can you fight orcs?

Hello, New Orleans. Welcome. I am here today to share a little bit about Amazon Studios and talk about some of the great work we've been doing with Autodesk. Amazon Studios is the home for talent to create and produce original television series and films which premiere exclusively on Prime Video.

Prime Video originals are available in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide. Some of our shows include The Boys, The Expanse, Wheel of Time, Jack Ryan, Reacher, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Lizzo's Emmy-winning Watch Out for the Big Girls, and, of course, Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power.

Lord of the Rings-- Rings of Power has definitely pushed the boundaries of episodic storytelling. The first season's eight hours of episodic content utilizes nearly 10,000 visual effects shots supported by 20 VFX houses. Rings of Power has been like producing six to eight movies all at once. And, remember, The Rings of Power was produced with a remote international workforce during a global pandemic.

We were humbled and delighted when 25 million people worldwide watched Rings of Power on its first day of release at the beginning of this month. And I have a sneaky suspicion that Andrew was probably one of them.

Delivering stories and experiences customers will love requires us to work really hard to understand our customers and what will resonate with them. To deliver these stories requires us to work even harder. Why? Because while advances in our industry have brought many, many great tools to create market distribute content, these advances also led to a significant amount of-- you guessed it-- complexity.

Today, we produce more content in shorter timelines by more artists working anywhere around the globe and around the clock. We produce more creative shots at a faster clip using more tools than ever before, as you've seen with Lord of the Rings. We have more places to reach consumers, which means we must create more marketing outputs. And if you don't believe me, I want you to count the number of different marketing assets you see just for Rings of Power in the next 24 hours.

And while complexity has grown in scale, at least our workflows over the years have tended to evolve in a predictable and linear fashion. And then that changed, too. With the introduction of virtual production and the need to move faster, now all phases of production are beginning to happen at the same time, further raising complexity of producing shows.

So what are we to do? Addressing this challenge of increased complexity requires us to think differently about how to invent and simplify the process of storytelling. How can we create a home for top talent that are distributed across the globe?

How can we orchestrate an increasingly complex network of content and data? How can we reinvent the how of filmmaking? What would the next-generation studio look like? What would it need to do? Today, I would like to talk with you about three key tenets of a next-generation studio.

Tenet number one-- and my favorite-- a next-generation studio is responsible by design. Customers expect more than just great stories, A-list talent, and stunning visual effects. They care about how we are producing the content they watch.

At Amazon, we have already implemented the industry's first inclusion policy and playbook and are actively engaged with the Sustainable Production Alliance. This is how we are creating mechanisms that hold ourselves accountable to a higher bar when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and sustainability. The next-generation studio is responsible by design.

Tenet number two-- a next-generation studio is globally cloud connected. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, MovieLabs came out with their 2030 vision for media creation. In partnership with major Hollywood studios, they proposed foundational principles to support the future of production.

Keeping it simple, the 2030 vision lays a path forward for content to be stored in the cloud, secured in the cloud, and to enable the backbone to allow workflows to be connected by the cloud. We are absolutely thrilled that Autodesk is an active partner with us in these principles and shares the MovieLabs 2030 vision.

Tenet number three-- a next-generation studio supports smart, nonlinear workflows. As the complexity and production continues to rise and workflows become increasingly interconnected and asynchronous, the tools and workflow automations we offer must also evolve to support them. More and more, I hear from production teams across the industry, frustrated that they waste hundreds if not thousands of hours because of the number of inefficient manual steps required to coordinate tasks, move assets, and collaborate across increasingly larger and distributed teams.