Microsoft Teams Custom Backgrounds and Firm Branding

Since the beginning of the work-from-home orders due to the global pandemic, LHB has been using Microsoft Teams much more intensely for many things, such as:

• Virtual Meetings
• Digital Water-cooler
• Digital Happy Hours
• Pandemic Leadership Organization
• Staff Training
• Live Events (presentations)

Initially, Teams only allowed the background to be blurred out and could show a maximum of four video feeds. Now we have up to 3 x 3 video and can select from a provided list of background images. Today's post shows how you can use custom backgrounds and touches on how LHB's marketing team served up a stack of images for staff to use and help with firm branding!

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New Book: Microsoft Office Specialist Excel Associate 365/2019 Exam Preparation

Anyone who follows this blog knows that I have many interests and find ways to develop them into training materials... like blog posts, staff training, conference presentations around the world and even textbooks! Today's posts will unveil my latest project(s)!

I have developed a new certification study guide for a topic that is not directly related to the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry... and, as you will see at the end of this post, a sister-book is already done and in the publishers hands.

Presenting my newest book:
Microsoft Office Specialist Excel Associate 365/2019 Exam Preparation

I feel this offering is very special in that I used my skills as an architect (WI) to develop compelling graphics which will help students better understand multi-step tasks. Additionally, as an educator, I know students have different learning styles. So this book also comes with 70 videos, flashcards and software! Yes, the book comes with a practice exam that mimics the real exam.

Key Features

• Explains everything current Excel users need to know about the exam process
• Covers the five main categories of the exam
• Includes practice exam software, videos and flashcards
• Reviews the Excel user interface and terminology

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Popular Enscape Blog Posts Refreshed

I recently had the opportunity to refresh three popular blog posts for Ensacpe, on their website. Combined, these posts have had tens of thousands of views so it makes sense to update them to represent the current state of Enscape when people, for example, find the post via a web search.

In case you have not been to the Enscape site recently, they have updated the blog design as shown in the following image. BTW, I co-authored the 'work from home' post shown here with lots of technical tips you can check out here.

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Review of Precision 5750 Laptop - What Dell Calls "the World's thinnest, lightest and smallest 17" workstation"

As one of only seven people in the world, outside of Dell, to have hands-on testing of the new 1/2" thick Dell Precision 5750 workstation-grade laptop with a 17" 4k touch display, I am extremely excited to share my review in today's BIM Chapters post... spoiler; this will be a game changer for many architects, engineers and designers in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry.

The unit is aesthetically pleasing, light , reasonably powerful, flexible and has an incredible display powered by an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with 6GB of dedicated GPU RAM.

What do you get if you cross my high-end Dell Precision 7730 laptop with my kid's Microsoft Surface Book? A Dell Precision 5750. You can quote me on that:)

The 5750 is not for everyone, e.g. large and complex custom architectural VR projects, but it is very capable as you will see in this review. I have tested everything from streaming 4k movies, to using Autodesk Revit, to Enscape's real-time RTX-enabled rendering engine, to using the HTC Vive Pro for virtual reality.

Disclaimer: I’ve been partnering with Dell and they sent me an early sample of the Precision 5750 for free to try out and share my thoughts.

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NVIDIA GTC 2020 Keynote Highlight

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang delivered his GTC keynote remotely from his home kitchen in California during the COVID-19 pandemic! They continue to amaze me with the new tech they develop every year. They have a section on RTX Graphics and show an amazing real-time rendered game with physics that I want!

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BILT-NA also Canceled this Year

Another not-surprising announcement, this week, that BILT-NA 2020 San Diego has been cancelled. They oddly call it postponed, even though I have to resubmit my approved sessions and it will be in a different location a year later... but, in any case it was the right move!

Next year, BILT-NA will be in Denver Colorado.

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AU Conferences go digital in 2020

Autodesk's Chief Marketing Officer Lisa Campbell let the world know that all Autodesk University events will be digital this year due to the global pandemic. Unfortunate, but a very good idea!

AU is a great learning and networking event for anyone in the AEC space. Last year I had the privilege of attending two Autodesk university conferences, in Las Vegas and London. Here are the two recap posts I wrote about them:

• Reflection on Autodesk University Las Vegas 2019
• Selfies from Autodesk University 2019
• Autodesk University London 2019 Recap

Here is a selfie of me with Autodesk's CEO Andrew Anagnost... from an Autodesk Expert Elite lunch.

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