Content Creation and Digital Twins in the Metaverse 

Announcer:

Today on Building the Open Metaverse.

Diana Colella:

I think it's going to be... I'm going to use it for an hour and I just want to use it for an hour, right? I don't want to pay a subscription for a month or a year or whatever that is. So I firmly believe that the next model that we all have to work to is consumption, which will make things even more accessible.

Announcer:

Welcome to Building the Open Metaverse, where technology experts discuss how the community is building the open metaverse together. Hosted by Patrick Cozzi from Cesium and Marc Petit from Epic Games.

Marc Petit:

So hello everybody and welcome to our show, Building the Open Metaverse, the podcast where technologists share their insights on how the community is building the open metaverse together. My name is Marc Petit from Epic Games and my cohost is Patrick Cozzi from Cesium. Patrick, how are you today?

Patrick Cozzi:

Hi, Marc. Hi, everybody. Doing fantastic.

Marc Petit:

So great. Today, we're going to talk about model creation, digital twins, and we have two fantastic guests from Autodesk. So Raji Arasu, you are the Executive Vice President and CTO at Autodesk. Welcome to the show.

Raji Arasu:

Thank you, Marc and Patrick. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me here.

Marc Petit:

Also, we have with us today, Diana Colella, Senior Vice President in charge of the Media and Entertainment division at Autodesk. Welcome, Diana.

Diana Colella:

Thank you. Thank you guys.

Patrick Cozzi:

So Raji, you have an engineering background and you've led teams focused on emerging technologies from AI to AR to computational geometry to generative design… and Diana, you have a product and strategy background with 25 years at Autodesk where you've seen many transformational business models. We'd love to kick off the podcast to hear about your journey to the metaverse in your own words. Raji, do you want to go first?

Raji Arasu:

Sure. I grew up in India. I always enjoyed and loved watching science and helping us do unimaginable things. In 1983, just watching Guion Bluford getting to space and people landing on the moon, that's how I grew up watching those episodes. The early open heart surgery episode that was shared, I think telecasted by channel eight and the Arizona Heart Institute. Those were action movies for me. Anyway fast forward, my love for science and things that are totally out there led me to the accidental discovery and embracing computer engineering. It was the third year in the university that I joined. People didn't really know what we would do and how things would come together. The courses were still being defined. The confusion with my family was, "Hey, you're a computer engineer. You should be able to rewire the electrical lines in our house."

Raji Arasu:

I would be like, "I don't think they're teaching me that." It was definitely a lot of mystery around what it really was and the courses covered there. But right out of college, I caught the wave, where the industry was going through a transition from hand drafted design to computer aided design. My first project, believe it or not, was a large scale map digitization for the next gen phone line system for the state using AutoCAD. And here I am full circle, back working at Autodesk and starting off with some of the same technologies.

Raji Arasu:

My background after that first project was leading tech and business transformation for ecommerce, payment, FinTech. In addition to establishing some high performing teams, I would say there are some common themes, such as delivering customer value through some of the golden insights that you get out of exponential data signals that you capture and then improving productivity and competitive edge for the company through a fairly trusted, highly scalable, and cloud-enabled platform. Those are common themes across all of these. Even today at Autodesk, these are some of the themes that I'm focused on.

Patrick Cozzi:

Very cool. Thank you for sharing. Quite a journey thus far. Diana?

Diana Colella:

My way to the metaverse is actually from a completely business angle. I actually am an accountant. I was working for Discreet Logic, which was the Flame product, and fell in love with media and entertainment. Autodesk acquired us and then we acquired a bunch of other companies that were part of media and entertainment. But for me, I remember watching the product manager who was working for us and thinking to myself, "I want that job." I remember going to my boss at the time and he was like, "Yeah, you can't get that job. That's not a job you can get."

Diana Colella:

I was like, "No, but in technology, they have to think about the business side. Sometimes we don't think about the business side." So I started my path towards learning product management. I worked in operational roles. I worked in sales roles. I worked in support and services, so I could learn more about the products. I learned about the customers. It took me almost 10 years to get to product management, but I did finally get there and I've been in product and strategy ever since.

Marc Petit:

Fantastic. Thank you, Diana. So let's jump right in one of the topics that we like on this podcast, which is open standards and content creation. So it's interesting because with AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, Fusion 360, 3ds Max, and Maya, Autodesk plays a huge role in 3D content creation. So many of the models that we will interact with in the metaverse originate in applications built by Autodesk. So what is Autodesk's point of view on interoperability and open standards? Who wants to take this one? Raji, you want to give it a shot or...

Raji Arasu:

Sure. I can start and have Diana pitch in. I want to start where, what attracted me to Autodesk because it will give you a little bit of perspective.  We all believe that relationships and people are everything in our lives but in reality, we associate a lot of value to the physical assets around us, right? And we collect them over time… the living spaces, our cars, our gadgets, the content that we consume. There's so many of these. We take pride in them and we feel like a sense of achievement. So as consumers, we demand more and more of this. We want smart cities. We want to use the latest tech. We want less maintenance. We want it sustainable. We want it all connected. I mean, this is a lot of things that we aspire to have, and this is where Autodesk comes in, because everything we created over the decades is about creating… designing digital spaces and physical spaces that are connected, that are smart…

Raji Arasu:

And I see that as being a thing that we want to enhance our lives, and our customers do that for us using these tools. I mean, a simple example is something like our Innovyze Info360 insight… it provides an amazing operational ability to know where your water supply is and the water equalization. It provides some mechanisms to waste less time, money, trying to manage these utilities, right? Like really boring stuff, but really important in our lives, right? So we want to be able to enhance our living and that's Autodesk for me. Now, based on your question, I think, AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, all of these tools have been amazing. This is what our content creators create. Someone like Diana has so much exposure to how this has changed the lives of the content creator and she can talk a lot about it. But for me, I think when I look at it, content creators have, over decades, used Autodesk as a platform to create content and assets. They have done this with both digital and physical worlds. That's the beauty of this.

Raji Arasu:

We must deliver seamless distribution, traceability, and simplicity in how these content creators operate through these metaverse and marketplaces and all of that stuff. But there are some near and dear problems that need to be addressed. They're foundational before we get here. There are enough inefficiencies created by siloed data and technologies that lead to lost time in handoffs, that lead to loss in productivity across architecture, construction, manufacturing, media, and entertainment. In all of these industries, it's a big problem that we all face. I mean, there are large files that exchange hands or data that needs to be transformed before you get from one process to the other. And that gets in the way of these creators. So even without metaverses, portability of assets has become a pressing problem and a significant time and money saver, if you do this right.

Raji Arasu:

And that's why Autodesk is invested and we are committed to open standards, but normally, that first fixing interoperability with the data that we have, and then embracing open standards, such as USD and glTF and OpenColorIO, these are all things that we are leaning in and we are making sure that we are part of that. And companies like us with customers using this for real world use cases can help push the adoption of these open standards. We love USD and Diana and team have embraced this in media and entertainment in a big way because it's given them huge benefits of performance for fairly complex scenes. And the community, the support to actually adopt multiple renderers and stuff like that. But I think to take it a step forward, our teams that are working on Fusion, which is one of our manufacturing design products, they've contributed back to USD and they provided support for interactive [inaudible], but things like text and line styles and billboards and 2D, the thing that you can only get out of people who are very close to the manufacturing industry.

Raji Arasu:

So that's what they've done. They've extended USD and made it actually applicable for manufacturing and the needs of design and manufacturing. That's the kind of stuff that will happen when you bring opportunities closer and closer to companies like us who are working with customers, working with real life use cases, these data standards will evolve, and that's the role we play.

Marc Petit:

Yeah. So maybe a follow up question for you, Diana, is more the business angle. So the metaverse is the internet embracing real time 3D. So we expect a huge explosion and a democratization in content creation. So first, is that a view that you share that the tools need to become easier to use and more accessible, and in that respect, what would be the right business model for those tools to succeed?

Diana Colella:

Yeah. So it's funny, because 10 years ago, we talked about the content boom and trends. In strategy, we always talk about the content boom. Then streaming came and now it's like, it's not ending. It's not going to end, because now you have the metaverses and guess what you need in the metaverses? The content. So I actually do believe in democratization. I think there's going to be more and more content creators out there, especially with the metaverses, and I think that democratization and the tools have to, be not just accessible and easier to use, but even affordable, which I think is important.

Diana Colella:

And that's why I think there's room for all of us. I think, whether it's Autodesk, whether it's SideFX… I think there's going to be so much content that's getting created, that we can actually complement each other in all the things that we're doing. I think accessibility, so the interesting thing is, we went from being a perpetual business into a subscription business. And I could tell you that by doing that, we increased our user base tenfold, because, all of a sudden, it didn't cost $4,000 to buy the product. It cost $125 a month, for example. And so you saw, people would just rent it. At the time it was called rental, it wasn't called subscription, when Adobe first came out with it and then the rest of us also.  

Diana Colella:

But I firmly believe that the next piece has to be consumption. And I believe this and it's not new. I'm not the only person who said this, but I do think that business models starts first in media and entertainment. And I really think that things like rendering, like you see our customers want to render and they want by compute hour or minutes or things like that. And I think they're going to be like that with the tools. I think it's going to be, "I'm going to use it for an hour and I just want to use it for an hour. I don't want to pay a subscription for a month or a year or whatever that is." So I firmly believe that the next model that we all have to work to is consumption, which will make things even more accessible and more price efficient for people to use it when they need it.

Patrick Cozzi:

Great. So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about digital twins. For many folks, especially those in AEC, one of the main tenets for the metaverse is digital twins, and Autodesk you've recently launched Tandem this last spring. So would love to hear about Autodesk's vision for digital twins, how the launch went, what you've been learning?

Raji Arasu:

Yes, digital twins is an area of focus for us at Autodesk. And Tandem is our digital twin offering. We're currently targeting it in the AEC industry, but it’s something that lets you go across industries and it's almost a platform play if you think about it that way. There is a strong interest from our existing AEC customers, as well as what we consider as building owners. So both of them fairly interested in it.

Raji Arasu:

We enable our customers to build this digital twin and they use all kinds of data to be able to do this. First, they pull data from our design tools like Revit. They also pull data that is captured in our Autodesk Construction Cloud, which is our BIM data. All that stuff comes together in the sort of firing of this digital twin, and it provides them a dynamic multidimensional view of how the facilities designed, built or is in the process of getting built, is performing through its life cycle. So it's a complete life cycle of that facility and that project. It's a more immersive and realistic way to digitally simulate and experience that impact on the design.

Raji Arasu:

And as we connect Tandem to operation systems and sensors, it's both synchronizing and in real time actually creating this environment, this digital world, that instantaneously can be handed over to an owner. It's much better than the traditional handover mechanisms that we've had and it improves operability and that confidence that this is going to also inform my future design. Because in many cases, these facilities are going through just refreshes after refreshes of redesign, and so it's really important for them to feed the operating and the performance data back into the design data.

Raji Arasu:

And so you can imagine a digital twin actually firing all the way from a planning process all the way to operate and back again to design. It's more circular. It's going to drive the circular nature of how the lifecycle evolves versus the serial nature of how things happened in the past. One of our largest data center operators is eliminating over six to nine months of operational, just from day one of being operation ready to actually operate a new facility. And for me, personally, I think it's accurate, I think what you said, which is digital twins is the first manifestation of the metaverse.

Raji Arasu:

From what I call them, and we kind of kid about it, there are mini "verses." I can see where a metaverse representation of my home, which links a digital twin of my car, my solar system , and my motor system, and my neighborhood. All of this merging and a group of these digital twins coming together to interoperate and sync in real time. So I have this view of my world and my address in many ways. And I think that's why these “miniverses” and getting them right, getting them to work with each other is going to be the future of how the metaverse building blocks are born. And that's why I completely agree with you. It's this concept of, it's a first manifestation of a metaverse.

Diana Colella:

What I find interesting is that words like being able to be immersive and all these things, this is all M&E technology. And I think, obviously, Unreal Engine, you see now players that have been in media and entertainment that can actually enable these type of things in industries like manufacturing and architecture, engineering, construction, which I don't think everybody thought was going to be the case 10 years ago. And I think that's where our industry, from a media and entertainment perspective, has a big impact on these other industries, especially digital twin, because that's what we're talking about as well from media and entertainment technology. So anyway, I find that just interesting.

Raji Arasu:

Diana, that is so right because the real high resolution visualization and simulation of what game engines are capable of providing is going to make this really an immersive and interactive experience for many people. So that's absolutely right.

Marc Petit:

It's fascinating to see that the highly valuable data used to be the BIM model or the CAD model, and it's shifting over to that the most valuable piece of data, gradually becomes a digital twin. So let's stay on the topic of data.  At Autodesk University, Andrew Anagnost, your CEO, spoke a lot about common data environments and open data initiatives and mentioned that Autodesk's Forge is the way to provide greater interoperability. So can you speak to your goals with the Forge platform?

Raji Arasu:

Marc, I think one thing Diana mentioned is, she said in the future, content providers will see many, many different tools, like you talk democratization or even commoditization. I think it's going to be many, many tools and technologies will be used to create content. But data continues to be the crucial backbone. If you don't solve a granularity of data or metadata capture, if you don't solve for lineage, traceability, and you don't create a connected digital thread through this entire life cycle of the project, I think it'll continue to be a big laborious task for all the content providers to create this again and again.

Raji Arasu:

It's almost impossible to fire up a digital twin that I talked about if all the data lives in their silo. So it's foundational to everything we are imagining together here that we solve for some basics. And we are doing this with what you might have heard Andrew talk about through a common data exchange. What that does is it creates granular cloud based data models. And it also creates a data transport model that is traceable, secure, and enables provisional sharing. Because I think that those are all super important when you are sharing data across trust boundaries. And then we create a consistent way to find all your project and product data in one place.

Raji Arasu:

So that's what we call a common data exchange. And by doing this, I think we amplify productivity for artists and creators. I'll tell you a few examples. When you talk about granularity of data, we expose some of the granular data through our APIs, to some of our manufacturing customers. They were able to leverage this data and generate a bill of materials in minutes through our APIs. And being in entertainment, artists lose valuable time today finding assets. They're searching for assets. They're sometimes creating these assets from scratch. We believe that some of these products would actually improve searchability and version control and shave away a lot of time from our artists in being able to create the scenes and the assets.

Raji Arasu:

The second one I think improves productivity in a big way is interoperability. Our customers can build these connectors and can move it between products. Sometimes Autodesk products, sometimes even non-Autodesk products. For example, non-Autodesk product design data would come into Revit. And sometimes, our customers pull Revit data into things like Microsoft Power Automate or other tools. And you can do this in a real time way when you have API and accessibility to these things. And we believe some of these connectors would be written by us and some of them will be written by our community.

Raji Arasu:

And this is all within that common data experience, and this sits within what we call at Autodesk, Autodesk Forge, our platform, and through Forge, we can actually expose these APIs that give you the granular as well as interoperable data. And through Forge, we can also make this data available in the form of other open data formats that we have talked about, which is like USD or openBIM in AEC. So this is really the foundational piece that enables open standards. It also enables in the future for multiple products to work together, reduces the handoffs, and maybe one day we can find out these digital twins and metaverses pretty quickly because the data's all in place.

Patrick Cozzi:

Let's move on to virtual production. So with ShotGrid and Maya, Autodesk is at the heart of virtual production workflows. What role do you see open source and open standards playing in this area?

Diana Colella:

So, first of all, things that now we're able to enable, like with the Maya Live Link with Unreal, for example, makes that virtual production so much... And with ShotGrid as well. I think USD changed the game for everyone, being able to now work together with the standards that are in place. We have to still keep building on it, but I do think that that's made a big, significant change in terms of how we're working together. I think products like, obviously, Maya has APIs, has had APIs for a long time. I'm a big believer, by the way. So one is, I'm very supportive of standards, but I'm also very supportive of open source.

Diana Colella:

I think companies who think they're going to build it all by themselves, I think that's not a great place to be. So, I think that is an area for us that we're really focused on. That's why we want to take part in all of these open standards, and even looking at some open sourcing ourselves. We're looking at a review tool that we have called RV, and we're looking to open source that, which is very highly used by our customers, highly used in the industries. And we're like, “we want to make Review an open source project." And we're like, "Okay, we're in. Let's do this." We are still waiting for them. But I still think that we're going to do that. I think it's extremely important, as we're going to continue to scale that we have to have these open source and standards conversations. And obviously, the Metaverse Standards Forum started this week, I think. They had a meeting and I'm very excited about that as well. I think it's great to have all these people around the table and have these conversations.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm glad you're calling out the difference with open standards and open source, because I think that's where we are. I think we have to reconcile how open source projects and open standards will converge... Because we can only afford one metaverse, right? So, we'll need to resolve our nuances and differences.

Another topic which is, I'm sure, important for the two of you. The cloud is clearly the center of the Autodesk strategy across all market verticals. So, can you give us a little bit of a sense of the adoption that we've seen of cloud in all of those workflows?

Raji Arasu:

I can take that. We are definitely seeing an increase in cloud adoption across our industries. Part of this, the pandemic actually boosted adoption in several key areas, but especially in parts of our customer workflows, where virtualization is feasible, and collaboration is needed. In M&E, we were starting to see even a few cloud-only studios up here right now, such as Untold Studios and a few other examples, and we expect that to continue to grow. Whether it's BIM360, Fusion 360, ShotGrid, or Moxion, some of these products that we have, our customers are increasingly adopting our cloud solutions, which is one reason why we’re leaning into cloud with the Autodesk platform we're building.

Raji Arasu:

We're starting with data in the cloud. This enables real time remote collaboration. That's the reason why we're focusing there first. However, we need to figure out the compute part of it. There are still barriers such as cost, bandwidth, latency. All these are factors that limit broader adoption of the cloud. So specifically for compute, we are taking a hybrid approach, where some of our customers want to localize work with clients on powerful machines that they already own. And in some cases like our students, they use Fusion 360, they want to run all of that on the cloud, from their device.

Raji Arasu:

It'll be magical one day, if at runtime, we can figure out how to auto detect your compute power and storage on a local machine and adjust accordingly, so we decide which part to run on the cloud and where we run locally. I think that will happen. That day will come. As cloud technologies and disruptors like 5G, multi-access edge computing services, all of these evolve. I think there is going to be a place where we can capitalize that sort of capability and build for it. But I think that would be the right place to be is where it magically happens for you. We can either use your local compute and storage, or we’ll be able to take you to the cloud and elastically enhance that experience. That's what we would like to be as a target state. But there's a lot of focus internally for creating a platform that's cloud enabled. And because a primary thing we want to focus on is real time and real remote collaboration for our customers.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, Raji, you had me have a flashback. I think it was 2009 where Autodesk tried to deliver AutoCAD trial over the internet, using the online technology. So that was like ... I probably remember.

Raji Arasu:

There are two veterans here from Autodesk, so I'm sure there's a ton of stories.

Marc Petit:

Long story, long story. But it was very promising, and it actually ... It ended up working. So, Diana, you recently acquired Tangent Labs in Moxion. How does this fit in your strategy?

Diana Colella:

I think it was like maybe six or seven years ago, we have this whole CTO council thing that we do at Autodesk. And we asked the question on like, "Hey, what does everybody think about the cloud?" And everybody was like, "No way. No way am I putting my data on the cloud," which was super interesting. I don't think they thought it was going to be as prevalent as I think it is today. I do think that COVID, like Raji said, it has absolutely accelerated that. So companies like Moxion ... So, I'll start with Moxion. Moxion is an on set tool, completely done on the cloud. People during COVID were not able to go on set, right? And there's hundreds of people on set. And so, what they were able to do was ... They had this product that they were working on that was all cloud based, very secure, all of a sudden be highly used by customers, because they were able to be on set, and look at shots, and make decisions right there.

Diana Colella:

So for us, we do think about production in the cloud. It has been something we've been thinking about since we acquired ShotGrid many, many years ago. Because what we believe is that in the film space, there's a lot of inefficiencies, and our customers want to solve that. They want not only Autodesk to solve that, but the industry to solve it, to be honest. And so, I think when Raji talked about Forge, that is the beauty for us around getting to platform for media and entertainment. It wouldn’t even only just be Autodesk. It would also be the industry players that will be able to help us, our customers actually, build these production-in-the-cloud workflows.

Diana Colella:

For Tangent Labs, one of the hardest problems, as we know, because we've talked about how many times have we created the city of Asgard? How many times have we created the hand of Thanos, right? How many times in games where you build assets in film, but you can't share them in games, right? Assets have always been a big major problem for us in the industry. So Tangent Labs had started building an asset management system. And so, we are starting with the data, and looking at the information model that Raji was talking about, the common data exchange model.

Diana Colella:

And what Tangent brought to us was really the talent, and also the thinking that they had been doing for 18 months trying to solve this problem. Because they also had Tangent Animation, which was the company that was building a lot of these animation productions. So we bought both Moxion and Tangent to bring over Jeff Bell and Hugh (Calveley) on the Moxion side, to actually help us, and get more insight into how we can do this in the future. So, there's more to come. I don't think we're going to stop, but we're definitely serious about and committed about being in this space, and doing things through the cloud.

Patrick Cozzi:

Great success story. And on this subject of acquisitions, Autodesk also just made an acquisition of a VR company called Wild. But we'd love to hear about how important XR is for Autodesk, and if you're seeing a lot of usage of it.

Raji Arasu:

I can take that one. When we look at Wild, we think of an environment which brings together design teams remotely in a way that they can actually create conceptual design or detail design. And these remote teams can do that within the digital project in a way that they can pull the data together. And there's a lot of data as you know, that we gather over the project life cycle, which it starts with design, but then you have BIM data and everything else. And this team, it's not just within this discipline, but even across disciplines. So you could have, essentially, your design team, your general contractor, and you could have your client, all of them actually working remotely through this tool. And that immersive and interactive experience that we believe is going to be truly beneficial for reducing project delays, expensive mistakes that happen later in the cycle, and earlier design decisions that I think are going to be really, really key.

Raji Arasu:

And I think as we look at this global investment around infrastructure builds and things like that, remote teams are just going to be the normal way. There's no way you're going to have locally the best architects, the best GCs, the best people working here. It's going to be global team working on these projects. And that's what this enables for us. There are more than 700 customers. I know we publicly share this information that are using this in the AEC space, and we've had huge demand for things like VIDA which, kind of is an equal in technology that we use in automotive. But I think this is something that we want to expand as a platform and have it serve multiple industries for us. And when we met [inaudible] and his team, it was exactly the same sort of vision in terms of enabling these conceptual design, and detailed design, and being able to work across teams. And so… We're just starting with design, but really excited about taking it into construction, and make processes as well, and really looking forward to that.

Marc Petit:

Great. So before we jump to our closing questions, Patrick and I always struggle with our guest list for diversity. And so today, we're privileged to have two high profile women in technology. So, I have a question for you. Are you satisfied with the current set of affairs for women in tech?

Diana Colella:

No. So look, I think that we're making some strides, but I think, look, I've been in the technology industry for 25 years. So, I'm the executive sponsor for Autodesk Women's Network. So obviously, I'm very passionate about this topic. I would say that we are ... You still see only one or two in the room versus more than that. And so, that's why I say no, because I feel like there's a lot more work to do in getting women in all organizations, especially in media and entertainment. But I would say the one thing that I know now that maybe I didn't know then is that, what's really important is that if you have that one or two right now, those are the people, the women that need support. Because I think what happens is there isn't enough support around them to stay, and actually really invest, and be committed to that diversity, and diverse opinions. And that just ... that people will think differently.

Diana Colella:

Whether that's a man or woman, it doesn't matter. But I do think that one of the areas that we could do better as organizations is support the women in these roles, especially when it's much more male dominated than other areas. So pretty passionate about that, I can go on that topic for a long time.

Raji Arasu:

Yeah. Diana and I can definitely go on on this topic. My upbringing, my dad never saw a difference between me and my brother when it comes to having equality in terms of our career aspirations and investing in us in terms of our academics and things like that.

Raji Arasu:

When I came here, it didn't feel so different. As you grow up in your career and you take on different roles, leadership roles, it starts getting lonelier. And I think that's when people need the most support to Diana's point.

Raji Arasu:

I can tell you, Diana and I are blessed with Autodesk. We have an amazing set of women on our board, and we have more women, I think sometimes, in our CEO staff than otherwise. And we are all hanging out and having a really amazing conversation, and that feels different. So the question is how do we recreate it in all levels within the company? And I think that's the hard part, is constantly being aware of it, investing in places where you think the person has 80% and the 20% can be built over time.

Raji Arasu:

And then half of it also, the women putting up their hand and saying, "We can take that on with 20% more capabilities that I need to build, or even 50%." And my job has been, and I know in all the conversations, going to them and saying, "You could do this. Take it on. You could do this. You could do role play. What's the worst thing that can happen? You could fail. And that's okay. That's okay."

Raji Arasu:

And I think that's the part, it's the failure. And it's that it might not still be enough for me, that sort of gets in the way of people taking these things. And I kept telling this, our job is to create the role models for the future. That's our job.

Raji Arasu:

So I think that's the key thing, is being able to be open about taking risk and doing it. That makes people open to taking on new roles and bigger roles in companies and being able to do that.

Marc Petit:

Well, thanks for sharing. Very insightful. Patrick, you can move on with our closing questions.

Patrick Cozzi:

Yes. So we like to close the podcast episode with two final questions. The first is, we've covered a lot of ground, but is there anything that we didn't talk about that you'd like to?

Raji Arasu:

All I can say is, I always want to talk about security and privacy. With everything that we just talked about in metaverse and sensors and digital twins, we're just going to be surrounded by all these intelligent data collectors. And I think our focus on how to keep us safe and data private and yet get the insights is going to be a constant challenge for all of us going forward. It comes with both the capability, including metaverse's identities and how we protect that.

Raji Arasu:

That's why I think the Web 3.0 is always viewed with some amount of skepticism. And until it gets to be critical systems that people feel good about governance and accountability and privacy, and all of that is going to be one that we greatly debate within our company saying, "Is it ready yet? Are we there yet?" or, "Can we use them?" That kind of conversation will continue to happen. I'm sure we'll see that and hear that in your podcast, in the future.

Marc Petit:

Well, it's funny you say this because we just recorded an episode on safety and privacy with Tiffany (Xingyu) Wang from the Oasis Consortium and Mark DeLoura because these are huge topics there, a bit uncomfortable for us who are, we like, we are comfortable with technology and file formats. We're a little bit less when it comes to privacy and identity and safety. But absolutely right. These are huge topics and we'll try to be part of that conversation as well.

Marc Petit:

The other question, is there an individual, an organization or an institution that you would like to give a shout out to today?

Diana Colella:

I wanted to call out the Metaverse Standards Forum. So first thank you, Patrick and Marc, because I know you guys have been spearheading it. I actually could not be at the meeting, but my group was at the meeting and they got a lot of benefit from that. But I actually get excited about these type of things because the fact that companies can come together, whether they're competitors, whether they're peers, whatever that is, and be able to have this conversation around the future of the metaverse. I think things like MaterialX, USD, OpenColorIO, these are all things that we've been invested in. And so I'm super excited for us to also be part of this. So shout out to creating that Metaverse Standards Forum.

Marc Petit:

Well, thank you. Neil Trevett has been an important part and actually this idea was born out of episode number two of our podcast was when we realized that David Morin, the open source guy didn't quite know Neil Trevett, the open standards guy, and we got everybody to talk. And I think now with 650 people, I don't know how we make an efficient conversation. That's going to be our challenge.

Raji Arasu:

And Marc, not to add another 600 or more. I actually do see a lot of value in the Metaverse Standards Forum and the Digital Twin Consortium. In many ways, they are going after ... You guys are going after the same thing in many ways. I think thought leadership, focus on interoperability, high compute data, ingestion, machine learning, all of that stuff, visualization, simulation. I wonder if there's ... how that will come together. But I think that I went up and searched all the players there and might be worth thinking through that.

Marc Petit:

Yeah. Especially since, I mean, it's not yet another standards organization. It's really a forum to inform and make sure the people in charge of standards actually take all the requirements to account.

Marc Petit:

We thought about reaching out. We actually had some inbound from smart building organizations, people who do BIM and everything. I think it's early. We need to find a way that works. Again, we have this ambition to be pragmatic and actionable. So we have to prove that. I think we have some on 3D interchange, like Diana mentioned, I think there are things we can be doing there. But yeah, we hope that, we need to coordinate so much. I mean, the metaverse about a fully simulated world, so we're going to have everything in there ultimately, so.

Marc Petit:

Well, fantastic Raji Arasu, and Diana Colella. It was fantastic to have you with us today. Thank you so much for your insight, for giving us a bit of insight on what Autodesk is about here and in the future.

Marc Petit:

I want to thank our audience. We still get very, very good feedback on this podcast. And we hope that by continuing to bring you interesting guests, you'll see value in it. So please, let us know. Hit us on social. Let us know what kind of topics, what kind of people you want to hear about, and we'll follow up.

Marc Petit:

So thanks again, Raji. Thanks again, Diana. Patrick, want to have one last word?

Patrick Cozzi:

Yeah. Thank you all for joining.

Marc Petit:

Thank you everybody. Bye-bye.