Interview: A Dozen Questions with Autodesk Labs VP Brian Mathews - Part 1…
Kung Fu Drafter
It’s not every day that we get to have a phone interview with a Vice President of a multi-billion dollar corporation. So when the opportunity came for Kung Fu Drafter’s Curt Moreno to chat with Autodesk’s Brian Mathews, how could we pass that up?!? Come on, the guy is a card carrying genius!
What else can you say about a person who helped bring real-time pan and zoom to AutoCAD, invents DWF and now runs Autodesk Labs? Well you could say that he could say that he liked Kung Fu Drafter so much he bought us out, but that didn’t happen. Oh well, maybe our luck will be better with the next Autodesk VP.
Career
Curt Moreno: Tell me about your early career and how you came to Autodesk.
Brian Mathews: So I have an electrical engineering background, because when I went to school they didn’t have the major that I wanted. And that was computer graphics. TRON came out and that kind of blew my mind. The film itself might not have been that great, but the graphics and what they were able to do with something that had so little power and so little memory was amazing.
Autodesk Labs VP Brian Mathews at AU 2010 ...When I came [to Autodesk] I was in a start-up, Ithaca Software, that did computer graphics and it was acquired by Autodesk eventually. So I got to work on 3D Studio Max, when it moved to Windows, as they used our graphics engine. I also managed the team which put the HEIDI graphics engine into AutoCAD. That’s when real time pan and zoom came about because the graphics engine was so much faster than what we had before. I also did the initial work for the DWF file format and its compression engine.
That Internet play got me into a bunch of other collaboration kind of opportunities, which eventually became Buzzsaw. I was the third person at Buzzsaw when it was launched inside Autodesk. Then that spun out with about 70 employees. I was at Buzzsaw for a number of years, and got acquired a second time when Autodesk acquired Buzzsaw.
CM: What exactly are your duties as Vice President of Autodesk Labs?
BM: Everything, right?! I kind of run a start-up inside a big company. If you think about what Autodesk Labs’ mission is, it is to explore new concepts in design technology. We do that by involving our customers in the process of innovation.
I have a lot of different hats that I wear. Some of them are leadership, some of them are management. Some of the time is to curate what’s going to go onto the Labs site from all the different inventions and technologies that are in the company. I work with my team on helping to build the community and really, our focus is on early adopters.
I spend a lot of my time communicating, a lot of my time listening. Meeting with customers, listening, trying to understand what their problems are and how some of these inventions, if they were made practical, could help solve those things.
Corporate Responsibility and the Future Labor Force
CM: At the AU media briefing I asked Carl Bass if corporations should consider the moral implications of their products. What do you think of this?
BM: I think that everyone has a moral obligation. Corporations, even in their fiduciary responsibilities have a moral background behind those responsibilities. A lot of this comes back to culture and value.
Autodesk Labs' 3D Photo Booth at AU 2011 ...At the heart of what Autodesk does, we are a toolmaker. We make tools. These tools can be used for a variety of purposes. So the question is, “Why are you making the tools and how can the tools be used?” We aren’t the tool users.
That may sound like we are putting your question at arm’s length, and to a [small] extent, that is true. If you work for Stanley and you make hammers somebody can use that hammer for some pretty bad things. But I can’t imagine a world without hammers, because there is the greater good.
So I think the bigger question is how does society and how do cultures, how do they want to have that discussion about the moral implications of how to use tools. Where is a tool appropriate and what is it appropriate for? And certainly the company that makes the tool needs to be involved in that process as well. But I think it’s more than just the company. It should be society that decides that, I think.
CM: With a worldwide recession and US education budgets being slashed, how can we insure future generations of technologically skilled entrants to the labor force?
BM: I totally agree and that is something that is kind of a US phenomenon. If you go to India, if you go to China, those cultures value engineering, design, sciences, and math. If you turn on a TV in the U.S. you’re very unlikely to see shows on those subjects. The culture doesn’t seem to value those topics as much. If you talk to some kids I’ve talked to, math, sciences, that kind of stuff, doesn’t seem “cool.” People are more interested in entertainment and sports.
A First Robotics competition ...This is why we formed a partnership with Dean Kamen around First Robotics. I don’t know if you are familiar with the First Robotics competition, but that was the thesis. When that was formed the United States in particular, and several countries as well, that science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics, we call it the “STEAM” subjects, the culture was not valuing them. If you think of specifically the United States’ history, what made this a great nation, allowed for increased productivity, and increased standard of living was innovation that comes from “STEAM”—it creates the industries that employ the people. Somewhere along the way the culture started taking innovation for granted and in turn education has suffered.
The U.S. has often had it that when we have our biggest problems is when we find our biggest solutions. Yes, education around STEAM has been a big problem. But I think there are some creative seeds out there that are coming and starting to flip this around. Just look at the Maker Movement.
Are we rocking the casba or what? Oh sure, you may use more of the Autodesk Labs products than we do, but do you know what's in store for Part 2 of our interview? Well we do! Be sure to check Kung Fu Drafter tomorrow to read the follow-up to our interview with Brian Mathews. We can't have our readers running around the interview with a half dozen questions under their belt ...
- KFD -
Image credits: John Steven Fernandez, Autodesk, Robin Caper, and Nic McPhee.
Reader Comments (3)
"when we have our biggest problems is when we find our biggest solutions," right you are there buddy! :)
Thanks for a great write-up. I think everyone will find that it is fun to read and informative.
Scott:
Thank you! We're pretty pleased with the result. Just let us know when you are ready for your moment in the Dozen Questions spotlight and we will make it happen!
Ava:
Mr. Mathews was full of profound statements. It really was an amazing experience to have a long interview with a thought leader like him. Just to give you an idea of the depth of the interview, there was nearly as much material that did not get printed!
- KFD -