What is Ailing Autodesk?

Maybe it's the fact that they've abandoned using the term GIS or geospatial or maybe it's the malaise in the global economic building slowdown but the company has taken an enormous hit in the stock market. The stock is off nearly 50% of its value since hitting a 52-week high of $46.26 per share back in May. Last Friday, the company reported earnings of $546 million beating analysts expectations of $540 million. Cash flow was up $20 million over Q2 2010! 

Perhaps they should've never abandoned GIS?! GIS is hot; civil engineering is ... not. I'm being facetious, of course, but what made the market turn ugly on ADSK? Financially, the company is stable and putting money in the bank. Quarterly earnings are strong as are earnings per share. 

The market has a strange way of anticipating bad news. Perhaps the market anticipates that the global economy will hit the brakes again and building, hence technology that supports building design, will take a breather.

As a geospatial technology publication we don't hear much from Autodesk these days. GIS is a four-letter word to ADSK. I simply don't get it given that such a huge number of AutoCAD users are mapping professionals. Actually, you can still find mention of AutoCAD Map products but you have to dig deep.

Autodesk Invites you to “Make Your Most Amazing Ideas Happen” Virtually

The Virtual Conference opened today, April 20th, 2011 and ran "live" from 8am PST to 2pm PST. There were some live presentations, some pre-recorded webcasts, including some in Spanish. The conference will be accessible on-demand until July 20, 2011 so don't rush out to catch the end today. Registration is available here.

I was interested to visit the event as much to see the "state of the art" for virtual events as to learn about the latest in geospatial at Autodesk. The state of the art is not so different from what I've seen the last few years. There's an auditorium where "live" presentation are run, but the schedule does not indicate what is live "now" so can't just "walk in" and listen for a few minutes. In fact. I thought I was going to see something live, since the title of section on the agenda said "live" but in fact it was a replay. And, presentations scheduled for later in the day have a "view now" option that lead to a "sorry" page. At least those pages do let you know when the session will start within your time zone. I'm disappointed the UI does not yet make clear what's live, what was recorded today and what is from months ago.

When you log in with credentials you get an "e-mail account" at the event. I got an e-mail soon after arriving which certainly soured my visit: 

The content I viewed was not engaging. The session "Better Infrastructure Planning Innovations with AutoCAD Map 3D" teased about addressing issues that keep users up at night, but the extended list of functionality on slides didn't address how to alleviate that sleeplessness. I could find no way to access the any Q&A that was included, if there was one. Comments on Twitter asked for more video over slides. Others were frustrated with the tech difficulties.

The Exhibit Hall includes pavilions for Brasil, Latin America, Autodesk Subscriptions and Autodesk "verticals": (1) AEC, plant and government (2) AutoCAD and Platform Solutions (3) Product Design and Manufacturing and (4) Media and Entertainment. These days GIS/geospatial is with AEC etc. I visited the "chats" for government and infrastructure. The former was mostly in Spanish and the latter was mostly about the tech difficulties with the live presentations first thing this morning. All of the presentations will be available for on-demand viewing within a few minutes of their conclusion per the Autodesk reps.

About 3000 people online with me at 2:30 EDT today. Our names were sorted alphabetically by first name in the "networking" area. 

The tech behind the event is from INXPO.