In about 24 hours my colleagues, friends and me depart for Dublin and Revit Technology Conference Europe 2014. This year’s conference is the second ever, with the first being held in Delft, Netherlands a little over a year ago. That was a truly epic event, and I am confident we will bring the level of awesome in the building design industry community to new heights this weekend.

Thomas, me, Kaja, Lars, Vilde, Arne and Ricardo are heading for Dublin and RTC Europe 2014

My company Dark Architects is sending a total of seven architects to Dublin this year. That’s 13 % of our entire crew of employees, and I’m proud of our ambitions and willingness to invest in the digital design knowledge among our young designers. I am also exited to introduce the brilliant people that I work with to my tribe; the characters leading technology development and dissemination in the building design industry world wide. I want Ricardo to meet Julien Benoit, who I met in Delft a year ago, and who has become one of my best friends since. I want Vilde to meet Kelly Cone from Texas. Kelly did a swing class at RTC North America in Chicago in June, and I’m hoping Vilde will perform a similar Riverdance session on Saturday. I hope Anthony Hauck and Jim Lynch will come over and say hello to Arne, who has been pushing their software to the brink of exhaustion the last couple of six or seven years. Kaja will surely enjoy meeting Jose Fandos, almost as much as Jose will enjoy meeting Kaja. With nervous anticipation I’m waiting for Lars to meet up with Aaron Maller. Both should have a thing or two to say about the higher purposes of life, and both are by far two of the most brilliant humans I have ever met. And I’m looking forward to introducing Thomas to Dynamo Grand Master Andreas Dieckmann. Thomas has been working at Dark for less than a year, but has already written Python scripts for my Dynamo iterations. Those two brains should be able to perform miracles together. Hooking up with my roadtrip buddies Jay and Martijn is a reunion I can’t wait to have. Our drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas last year is going to stick with me for a long time, hence will they.

The Eight Knights of Castle Awesome

On Friday and Saturday I will host my two class sessions, and I can honestly say I have never before been looking so much forward to presenting at a conference. It’s the first time ever I present at an international event in Europe, and both classes are going to be so much fun. The first is a 75 minute presentation (I click and talk, you watch and listen) on Computational Logic in Structural Design. This is a repeat of topics I discussed and taught in Melbourne and Chicago previously this year, and I have now streamlined the content further since then. Migrating to Revit 2015 and Dynamo 0.7.2 has been much work, but the process has helped reinforce my understanding of how visual programming works.

Two complete Dynamo handouts

The personal highlight of the entire conference will however been Julien and my joint double lab (we click and talk, while you click and ask questions) session on Saturday. The content is brand new, the exercises are AWESOME and the handouts are straight from the press. If the material covered in this lab does not create some discussions about Dynamo, I don’t know what will. I’ll mostly be covering simple basic math, but Julien’s research on Python and Revit API possibilities in structural design is mind blowing. Here’s our teaser preview from June:

My biggest worry for the weekend is the dress code for the Saturday night gala dinner. My presentations are all set and done, all travel arrangements are good, but this small note in the conference details is terrifying me: “semi-formal”. What is this? What do I wear? What do I not wear? What will happen if I put on mismatching pieces of clothing? Do I put on a tie or not? So many potential mistakes to be done. Luckily, there’s always Google to the rescue, and in case others struggle with the same paranoia, here’s an excerpt from an article I found both useful and frustrating:

“Groom correctly. Remember to take a nice long shower, style your hair, and shave your face before attending a semi-formal event. If your hair is getting long, make sure you cut it before you attend the event, or you will look disheveled. Take time with your appearance before you leave the house.”

Apparently semi formal requires that you do wear a tie and a suit, but most importantly DO NOT EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WEAR A TUXEDO. Good to know. Here’s the entire article: How to Dress Semi Formal for Guys

Groom correctly

In  June Steve Stafford remarked that my t-shirt and shorts matched my red eyes poorly, and I’m firmly determined not to let the man down again.

See you all in a little while, and be prepared to raise our universe’s total level of awesome a few notches more.