Meet Mike and Mike. To wrap up our RYI Tour podcast series, Mike Colombo, Senior Director of Sales Execution and Field Marketing at Autodesk invites Mike DeLacey, principal of Microdesk (a key Autodesk partner) to fly from New York and visit with him in the San Rafael office. They talk about some of the central business challenges Autodesk customers are facing. They also discuss how Autodesk’s partners are integrally involved in helping their customers’ customers solve their business problems. Check out this highly informative podcast if you want to know how to go beyond better designs to better business.

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Our team had a great time on the Tour, especially those of us who had a chance to visit beautiful downtown Arlington Heights outside of Chicago -you know who you are and you know what I mean! (wink wink). Over 4500 people attended these events and got an "up close and personal" view of the latest and greatest Autodesk technology developed specifically to help mechanical engineers get more done in less time and (here’s the most important part) have fun doing it. If you missed the Tour or if you simply want to learn more about Autodesk Inventor, this is your lucky day. Next week, Lynn Allen is hosting a webcast focused on helping AutoCAD users in manufacturing answer the often-asked and thought-provoking question: Why are my peers moving to Autodesk Inventor? It's a 45-minute, down-to-earth, no-nonsense presentation that includes live demonstrations of the things you do today done faster and more reliably with Inventor. Lynn starts the session by addressing the common questions about adding 3D to a 2D design environment, such as: What do I do with all my AutoCAD files and what happens to them? How long is it going to take me to be more productive than I already am with AutoCAD? What makes you think my company is better off with 3D? I know what you're saying! "Not another webcast shilling Autodesk products!" Come on, I’ve got to make a living too. As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, I've got to pay for my daughter's cheerleading camp. But the truth is, we all love design -and our products, like Inventor, really help us spend more time doing what we love- if that interests you, then go to www.autodesk.com/inventorseries-webcast and register for the webcast. The show starts at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on Thursday July 14th And many thanks for your continued support of Autodesk.

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The Realize Your Ideas Tour finishes off in the cities of Calgary and Edmonton. In this all-Alberta Podcast, Guy offers his email address for listeners who would like a PDF version of his "Art of the Start" presentation. Lynn talks about her favorite features in AutoCAD 2006 and mulls over the fate of the command line. And finally, Kelly Miller discusses his experiences teaching the Migration and Customization Best Practices workshops. Stay tuned for post-tour wrap up Podcasts over the next couple of weeks.

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The final leg of the tour begins with a stop in Vancouver. Lynn has 3D on her brain after a visit to Barcelona, and discusses the relationship between 2D and 3D in the new Autodesk products. Guy offers tip #10, suggesting that "you should never let the Bozos grind you down".  And finally, Caesar Ruest talks about his experience on the show floor in Vancouver.

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What do cheerleading camp and design data have in common? Hi, Cliff Brown again. I’m not on the road at Realize Your Ideas tour this week because this week I’m at home and focused on two very important things. Number 1, trying to figure out a way to get my daughter gets into cheerleader camp this summer. It seems that the enrollment papers were in my pocket and I forgot to mail them. As you can probably guess, I’m not too popular at home right now. Number 2, I’m trying to make sure that everyone knows about Autodesk Vault and Productstream for design data management. So what do engineering design data management and cheerleading have in common? Well nothing really, except for the fact that I placed a very important piece of data in my haphazard filing system of suit coats and in-box trays in my home office and when I needed the data (i.e., the dates and forms for cheerleading camp) I couldn’t find it! The same thing happens all of the time with our design data. We store it on a server or in file cabinets and spend hours trying to find it when we need to reference or reuse the data. Autodesk Vault and Productstream are simple-to-use design data management solutions that eliminate the time spent finding design data or managing version control. To learn more just attend the controls design or mechanical design sessions during the Realize Your Ideas event in your area of attend the online webcast at www.autodesk.com/Vault. So long for now and please, wish me luck on the whole camp thing. I think I’ll need it.

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