“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” – Mark Twain
Knowledge Transfer is a struggle, be it organizational or individual development. Without the support of colleagues or a peer group, we are vulnerable to one employer change or mentor retirement away from losing a productive edge. Another facet of this paradigm is; What if we are already missing that edge and are unaware of it? Luckily, I have a not-so-secret weapon.
Not long ago (I pretend I haven't been in this field long) I made a career change into the engineering design world. I started by replacing someone who was retiring. To complicate things, I was a green one person department replacing an individual who had 40 years of experience. There were a lot of insights, hurdles, tricks and tips yet to be encountered. For me, the puzzling dilemma was how would I cover this gap in experience and institutional knowledge.
What I needed was a gathering place of those who had seen the business end of the ‘cat by the tail.’ Of the many internet destinations, I found myself always coming back to the same spot, the best spot.. my not-so-secret weapon, the Autodesk Community. Daily in the forums there is a new slate of questions and solutions from which to learn. Reading and participating in these communities catapulted my skills to the next level. The wide breadth of experience in the forums ranges from the green drafter learning why they shouldn’t explode everything all the way to users explaining how to automate entire workflows. I owe a lot of my current knowledge to the fantastic questions and answers I have read in the forums. Reverently, it reminds me of Isaac Newton’s quote: “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Two examples of some of these game-changing tidbits I picked up are the Autodesk Reference Manager app and the AutoCAD Core Console. These two tools alone fundamentally changed some of our workflows and greatly increased our productivity and I owe these productivity gains directly to participating in the community forums.
If you find yourself in need of an experienced peer group or you have a vexing question, or perhaps you want to share your experiences and mentor others, I strongly recommend exploring all that the Autodesk Community has to offer. There you can find answers as well as participate in stimulating conversations and events. The Autodesk Community has been fundamental to my success in this industry.
