We announced the launch of version 6.1 of the <VE> and in particular our new SketchUp plug-in, the next generation of our Gaia technology and our Bioclimatic analysis capability. There was lots of interest in all of these new capabilities as well as our improved Revit plug-in, and the new gbXML healing tool that considerably improves gbXML import for Revit, Graphisoft, Bentley and other gbXML exporters.
The exhibition looked good and the Miami Convention Centre was much better than the Moscone Centre in San Francisco last year. However, the footfall was extremely low. Many of the big companies have been slowly paring back their activity at AIA and many said they would put in less effort next year.
AIA need not worry as IES will be their next year so that should help protect their numbers!
There is a ‘software pavilion’ where they group all the disparate software companies together. This makes it much easier for anyone interested in software to find us, and also much easier for others to avoid the ‘techies’.
What was interesting was several of the biggies e.g. Google SketchUp, Autodesk and others had big ‘sustainable’ booths built of all recycled materials. Smaller booths with less people would have been even better. They will probably do both over the next few years unless the show’s numbers pick up.
On the last day Michelle was telling me that she met the Vectorworks people who had been miscategorised and put rows and rows away from the software pavilion. Don’t worry guys you did not miss much.
However, to be fair although the footfall was low we had good quality contacts so that’s better than large numbers of contacts that don’t have much value.
I personally had a number of press interviews and good discussions with others including SketchUp, Autodesk, Graphisoft, Bentley and Trelligence. So it was well worthwhile suffering the humidity.
