Where do I begin? In a
nutshell, AU is a 3 day conference that consist's of Classes geared towards learning
about the Autodesk software. If you didn't know, I am a drafter and in the
Engineering field we rely heavily on these products. In my everyday
"work" life I use regular Autocad and Autocad Civil 3D. I won't get
too much into that though...zzzz.... I know, boring nerd tech stuff, which is
funny because I'm SO not a techy person (don't even know if "techy"
is a word that technical smart people would use). I have attended this
conference once before, 4 years ago, and everything went way over my head. I
really wanted to attend this year because I am so much more confident with the 3D
program we use and so much more familiar with "terms" that they use
and how our industry interacts with each other.
The conference is about 9,000
people big and there are so many sellers there that are giving away so many
little freebies. Below is a glimpse of some of the things I received over the
last 3 days. Free stuff is always fun right?!
BUT I don’t really care about all
that. You see that yellow ribbon on my name tag that says “Certified
Professional” ….yeah, that’s me . That’s
what I care about. I have been working with this program for almost 15 years
and have only “thought” about getting certified the past, maybe, 2 years. This
year they were offering free certification tests so I finally decided to take
the plunge the first night at AU. I was very confident walking in, hello 15 year’s
experience and guess what …I failed. I was sooooo…… bummed! I was going to give
up and pretend I never took the test in the first place but we were allowed to
try twice. I seriously debated but decided “what have I got to lose”. So the second night I walk in, nervous as heck, and I
passed!!
I took it slow, I triple checked my answers and even went back to
questions that I was really stuck on. I never really thought of being certified
as a big deal but I’m so excited I took the test and now I can confidently say I’m
a professional…lol… silly, I know.
Besides the AU stuff we got
to stay at THEhotel. All the rooms are suites so it was really nice.
Unfortunately my schedule was jam packed so I didn’t get to actually enjoy the
room (maybe I’ll get to take a swim in the tub before I check out on Friday).
But my husband and Babe came along with me, so they took advantage of the room
more than I did.
I can’t wait to get back to my regular schedule and catch up
on my blog reading!
Congrats on passing! My husband is also an AutoCad Drafter- I used to watch him do drawings on the computer and it looked like so much fun!
ReplyDeletehttp://mylifebeingrenewed.blogspot.com/
Thanks! It can be fun, depending on the exact feild, but I do enjoy what I do.
DeleteHi Sarah, I stumbled onto your blog and this post about AU 2012. Since I'm trying to go to this year's, I wondered if you could tell me whether you got a lot out of it as a drafter. I see a lot of posts by industry experts and AU speakers as well as engineers and architects who attend, but not as many reviews by actual AutoCAD drafters. I'm an architectural drafter, and my goal besides learning new tips and tricks is to get ideas for standardizing my company's plan layouts and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteHi Jordan, I think if you pick the right courses you can definitely benefit from it, it's kind of hit and miss with them to be honest, and unfortunately you don't know until you are there. As far as standardizing... I feel like you won't find everything you are looking for, you might find courses that are "discussion types" but nothing that will go into deep detail. But if you are taking course's on a specific program, revit for example, you will definitely learn some new stuff. Good Luck!
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