Wicked Cool Stuff
Dominick Gallegos, Civil 3D Technical Marketing Manager for Autodesk, shares his unique perspective and ideas on the functionality and use of Civil 3D for a range of different project types.
About DominickLatest Post
- posted 03/29/07 by Anthony Governanti How you say English?
- So I'm on my third day of training here in Shanghai, and I learned something really cool today - how to spell my name in Japanese. Well Katakana (Japanese simplified characters) to be technically accurate.
Thanks to Fukuchi for "enlightening me"
アンソニー - Anthony
ガヴァナンティ - Governanti
Then this started a pretty cool competition as my Chinese and Japanese colleagues were trying to figure out my last name in the correct characters.
So here is simplified Chinese:
安东尼
嘉瓦纳帝
And in and traditional Chinese:
安東尼
嘉瓦納帝
Here is the white board that started it all.
View image
It's definitely been a cool couple of days so far. i hope to post some more pics before i leave.
Till Next Time,
Cheers,
AG0 comments In Wicked Cool Stuff > Wicked Cool Ramblings
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International Travel – the ups and downs
Posted 03/27/07 by Anthony Governanti
International Travel – the ups and downs
I’m sitting in a very nice Hotel in Shanghai, China as I write this post, and will get to the details of the “ups and downs” of this particular international trip. First I want to apologize for not getting a new post up here in a while. As you can imagine, I’m busier then a one-armed paper hanger at the moment as I transition from the technical marketing job to the regional sales job. Essentially I’m doing (or trying anyway) both jobs at the same time. Anyway, not a good excuse for lack of posts, if Lynn Allen can do it, I can!
Anyway, now onto the ups and downs, and we’ll start with the downs. To get to Shanghai, I had a set of flights that originated in Boston early Sunday morning, and a connection to Shanghai on a flight through San Francisco. All was going well until we got about two hours into the Shanghai flight, and a passenger noticed a piece of the fuselage hanging off of the right side engine – not good. After many trips by the captain back to through the cabin to take a look, and several passengers employing there digital cameras and zoom lenses, it was decided that we’d better turn back and land the plane while we still could.
Bottom line, 5 hours in the air, and I wound up right where I started, back in SFO. We were delayed till the next morning when they got a us a new plane and could take off again. Now I won’t mention any Airline names here, but it started with a “U” and ended with a “nited”. After several less then desirable experiences, I’ve started to doubt my allegiance to this corporation (I’ve been flying them pretty much exclusively for almost four years). This is yet another delayed flight due to maintenance or mechanical issues for me in a short span of time, and quite frankly, I’m fed up.
Anyway, that was the down, what about the up? Well I finally did arrive here in Shanghai, and I must say this is a pretty cool city. I haven’t seen much of it, but was able to take a small walking tour of the area around my hotel The Royal Meridian. What I’ve seen so far I like a lot. Also, I’m reunited (no pun intended for those paying attention) with the APAC AEs and sales team, whom I usually only get to see once a year, and this week should prove to be a blast. I’m here to do “train-the-trainer” classes on Civil 3D 2008, and despite loosing a day to travel woes, we should be able to cover some great new functionality, and of course share some laughs over some Tsing Toa beer in between.
I’ll try to post again from China before I leave on Saturday, then it’s off to Paris France for the EMEA Train the trainer event. Sounds luxurious I know, but I doubt I’ll get to do too much as I only have two days there to squeeze in 3 days worth of content. Anyway, once the whirl-wind global tour of the Da Govna show is completed, it’s onto the dark side of sales full time for me.
Cheers,
AG
PS - This is a landmark event - this 50th wicked cool stuff post. May not seem like much, but that's close to average of two posts a week. Not ground breaking, but I'm happy with it. -
Behind The Curtain – welcome to the demo world
Posted 03/16/07 by Anthony Governanti
So a while back I had posted a couple times on topics I looked at as "taking a peek behind the curtain" here at Autodesk. I promised at the end of the last installment that I would talk about the process I used for creating and releasing the scripted demonstrations you all get to see when you attend a Civil 3D seminar or when a reseller or Autodesk AE stops in for a visit.
My intention here isn’t to brag or call attention to this work; it is more to give you a sense of what goes on behind the scenes and maybe give you a better understanding of why we show what we show when demonstrating the product. I want to point out that the materials I create for demonstrations are merely a starting point for a lot of our AEs. It is in no way the end-all and be-all when it comes to demos, and really is just meant as a baseline of material that our sales force can use to present a consistent and concise message of Civil 3D to customers. I think what you’ll find is that most if not all AEs (Autodesk and resellers alike) don’t use the “canned” demo, but instead prefer to create a custom demonstration for their audience that either uses data provided by a customer, or at least more “locally” applicable datasets. This is where the real value of a local AE or technical expert comes in. They can add their expertise and experience to the presentation to improve its overall effectiveness.
So the way I approach creating a demonstration of the product can be boiled down to several common steps;
- Finding a Dataset
- Re-engineering that dataset in Civil 3D
- Canning certain parts of the demo
- Scripting the messaging
Finding the dataset
This is a very crucial part of the process that will lead to the success or failure of a demonstration. The challenge with finding a good dataset is balancing the need to have a large or complex enough project that can show the power of the application, but not something so huge that its overwhelming to an audience when you show it. Once this type of project is found, then the next challenge is to get the rights to it. In our marketing world, we need the materials we produce to be accessible by all of our partners, resellers, and sales folks alike, worldwide. They need to use that information to sell our product, and so getting the legal rights to the information is paramount. The downside is that many companies aren’t willing to sign their data, which represents their intellectual property, over to Autodesk to do with as we please.
Re-engineering that dataset in Civil 3D
Ok, so let’s assume that we find the correct dataset, and then we get the sign off from the customer to use that dataset. No we need to get that dataset configured so it fits the needs of the demonstration. This means that if the project wasn’t done in Civil 3D, it has to be re-engineered or redone using Civil 3D.
“Now wait a second there Govna, you mean to say that you use datasets that weren’t even created using Civil 3D? What’s up with that?!”
Well, this goes back to the first step; sometimes, well if fact most of the time, its very difficult to get a dataset that fits the criteria so we take what we can get. If that means it’s a project that was built using a different product (LDT most likely in my case) then so be it. Also we need to consider what we are showing, and the features we wish to highlight for the customer to show the value of the product. In some cases, that means tweaking or adding to the original design, and that’s part of this step as well.
Canning certain parts of the demo
I hope that you can agree that we can never show all the steps taken to design or create a project using the software in one sitting. So realizing this, we have to take some license with the data, and have some engineering or work done ahead of time in order to get through the demonstration in a timely manner. As such we typically "can", or have a lot of the work done ahead of time. This streamlines the demo and allows us to create a highlight reel of sorts to show all the critical or cool things that the product can do. What I typically do with the parts of the demo I do "can" is to make it clear to my audience what was canned and why, that way everyone is on-board with where the data or project is at before I demonstrate a feature.
Scripting the messaging
This is probably the part of the process you weren’t aware of. Or at least I should say you shouldn’t be aware of. In order to make our demonstrations consistent across multiple demonstrators, we provide a script of messaging with the datasets. This script is usually just a word doc that lays out the marketing messaging and key points we want a presenter to make while they are showing certain things in the product. I mention that you shouldn’t be aware this exists because it is not the intent that the document be given to customers, or that a presenter stands in front of an audience and repeats the script word for word from memory. Much like the dataset, the script is meant as a framework or a guide for the presenter use so that the messaging and presentation of the features is consistent and on target for the intent of the demo. This again is where most AEs will add their value, in that they can interject their personally experiences and points of view to improve the presentations. This is usually the hardest part of the demo creation process in that you need to articulate the value, benefits, and the importance of features to an audience, and do it in a way that is clear and concise, and for me, doesn’t sound like a bunch of Marketing BS.
With all these steps taken into account, at the end of the process, you should have a demonstration with a dataset that’s on target, a set of steps that are easy to follow for both an audience and a presenter, and messaging that communicates the value and benefit of the product. In my role as the Technical Marketing manager, this process has taken me anywhere from 8 weeks with a large demo like the Overview for Civil 3D 2007, to just a few weeks with a mini-demo like the segment specific ones I’m releasing this year for Civil 3D 2008.
Bottom line is that there is a lot of effort that is put into these demos, so the next time you have the pleasure of seeing one first hand, I hope you’ll get a little more out of it then you would have otherwise.
Till next time,
Cheers,
AG -
Where or Where could Anthony be?
Posted 03/12/07 by Anthony Governanti
So it has been a long time since my last post, and I ha hoped it would have been less, but last week was YAWLV - that means Yet Another Week in Las Vegas.
I know; woe is me; but in this case, it really was a long and tough week. We had our annual Sales conference last week called One Team at the MGM Grand hotel and Conference Center. It was a blast, but probably not as fun for me as it could have been. Two reasons; one my laptop died on the plane ride out there; two I was pulling double duty as both the tech marketing guy and the rookie sales guy.
Laptop woes:
So there I am on my 6 hour flight to Vegas, working away on my laptop putting the finishing touches on what I hoped were going to be some great demonstrations of Civil 3D 2008 for our sales team. I shut down my machine to change batteries, because even with power save mode, I still only get about 3 hrs from this boat anchor. I change batteries and restart - except the machine won't boot - it just hangs there on the IBM ThinkPad startup screen. Hmm, this is interesting, let's try that again. After several more failed attempts, it finally comes up with an error - _System Start Failed - Check system date and time.
This is not good.
So after messing around with the bios and seeing that indeed my system time and date have been reset, I give up and put the machine away, hoping that maybe some alone time will do it well and that it will decide that it feels better after we've had some time apart.
So we land in LV, rush to get a private care cause we are running late for a rehearsal for one of the 5 presentations Dave and I are involved in this week, and we get to the hotel, where I try to boot again, only this time plugged in to see if its a power issue. No such luck, so I am stuck with a laptop and no OS. Luckily, Dave is there to save the day, as he has recently installed a build of Civil 3D 2008, and I have an Ultra-bay adapter that allows me to put my hard drive in as a data drive. All is not lost, but more on that later.
Tech Guy vs. Sales Guy
So the other difficult part of last week was managing what worked out to be a split personality for 6 days. As many of you are now aware, I'll be transitioning to a new role as a Sales Territory Manager in the coming weeks. This made for an interesting dynamic for me at the conference, as I was torn between being the tech guy for all these presentations, and also being a rookie sales guy who needed to meet-and-great all his new resellers and various sales folks within the organization. Anyway, it was quite a challenge, but I want to express my deepest thanks to those of you who attended and helped me ease into the new role by introducing yourselves, or at least didn't mind when I asked you name for the third or fourth time.
It was a surreal experience in the end; as on Thursday afternoon, I did my last technical presentation during the CAD/GIS sales session. I came to the realization that it is going to be something I will miss, as I really enjoy presenting these products to an audience. It was also surreal to talk to all the folks who knew me from that role and the great compliments and encouraging words they had for me. I was truly lucky to have been involved in some of the cool things over these last several year, and I want to thank all of you who were there for the great and not-so-great times.
Ok, so enough reflection; time to start looking ahead, and in doing so, I want to begin to share how truly excited I am for the year ahead! We have a lot going for us this year.
A rock solid product; this year is the year, we worked really hard to get this thing ready to for prime time, and despite a bit of a false start last year, I think the momentum is still strong, and 2008 will be well received.
New opportunities; with my new role comes some new opportunities for me to grow and learn. In the short time I've been the sales guy, I've already seen some great opportunity to do some cool things, and I can only say at this time to stay tuned in for future updates.
A growing business; despite a downturn in the housing market here in the US, the economy from a Civil Engineers perspective is still very strong, as the public sector is starting to rise, with more state and local government projects coming up for bid. Other parts of the private sector are still growing as well, with commercial development continuing to grow. This all means great things to come for us all; more projects mean more work for all of you, which means more need to be efficient and productive; this is where Civil 3D will fit in and be and integral part of the entire process, and this is where I hope to make a difference (well at least for the Northeast states anyway).
Ok, enough of my ramblings for today - I still owe you a post on how we go about building technical demonstrations that you see out there, so I hope to get to that this week before I'm fully transitioned to the new role.
Till next time,
Cheers,
AG