Metaverse One

I feel it right to be upfront and say we are about to go on a journey. The matter at hand is something that has become very close to me and it directly affects anyone that lives and works in a house or building. In a few weeks there is going to be a first of its kind event called the AEC Hackathon . This event will break new ground in how we think about design, construction and communication about our built environment. But before we talk about this, lets step back and see how I got here. It all begins seven years back to when I was working in downtown San Francisco with one of the legends in my field. On a day like any other, I see our boss come into the office chatting with another guy that introduces himself as a home builder. This builder goes on to share how he is using game-like technology and robotic manufacturing to improve the home building process. Wait, did he say video games and robots to build houses? Before SF, I spent 15 years in Dallas, Texas. Here is where I got bomb...

So I just got back from the ESRI User Conference 2013  in San Diego and wow, what a trip. Founded by Jack Dangermond, ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) is an industry leader and international supplier of Geographic Information System ( GIS ) software and geodatabase management applications. The company has an installed base of more than one million users in more than 350,000 organizations, including most US federal agencies and national mapping agencies, all 50 US state health departments, transportation agencies, forestry companies, utilities, state and local government, schools and universities, NGOs, and commercial business. The user conference brought 15,000+ ESRI users from over 130 countries. Keynote presentations included Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information, Infrastructure, and Innovations Sam Pitroda  and an inspiring discussion with pop culture icon Will.i.am. For the record I am a B.E.P. fan but this interview was somethin...

  Here I show an application developed by the IDEAbuilder Tech Tools team. The team created an application using actual digital fabrication models (the same 3D computer aided manufacturing models that drive our CNC machines) combined with a 3D city model created with ESRI's City Engine tool  and viewed using the Oculus Rift head mounted display for an immersive virtual reality AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) experience.

So a few days ago I posted the following about an online hands free home configurator developed from a partnership between IDEAbuilder Homes and SpiralConcepts. Here is the original post  and the repost  by sci-fi author Bruce Sterling on the Wired Blog. When out in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley tech scene it is not the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry I hear about leading the charge in technical innovation. It is the chatter of the millions given and insane evaluations of those either in the cloud, selling user data, social, gaming, or insert buzz word here. Yet more and more construction companies are incorporating technology to improve various areas of the building process. I observe all around SOMA how construction companies like Swinerton  and  Webcor  are using data from the BIM (Building Information Modeling) process to build better. I applaud Skanska 's  use of tablets  and  experiments with augmen...

So much has happened since my last post. The end of 2011 saw many tech developments, announcements, events, passing of giants , IPOs, and the list goes on. Definitely I owe back coverage to the many wonderful things I have seen in recent travels that took me from the land of the vikings, to the mountains of Mordor (New Zealand), and parts in between. But now, happy 2012. It is year of the Dragon, apocalypse, alien contact, revelations, a cycle change on the .obj calendar (okay only certain people will get that, Maya for everyone else), and many other scenarios. *maniacal laugh I don't know about the world ending this year, but I feel very comfortable saying it will be the end of the world as I've known it. Beyond weak economies, revolutions, international movements, nature (weather, earthquakes, floods, etc.), and a growing number of other variables that are causing a global evolution, I get to experience firsthand how certain technologies are augmenting our reality and enh...