Thursday, July 13, 2017

Carol Bartz and Phil Bernstein Signed my First Revit Book

Back in 2003 Autodesk was holding "Executive Briefings" around the United States. The main speakers were Autodesk's CEO Carol Bartz and Vice President Phil Bernstein.

I planned on attending the event held in Minneapolis. The timing was interesting as I had just finished writing my first Revit textbook. I called my publisher, Stephen Schroff at SDC Publications, and asked when the printed books would be ready. I was hoping to bring a couple to the event. Unfortunately the books would not be read in time, however Stephen offered to have three copies printed and bound separately!

I showed up not know what to expect, but found an opportunity to talk to both Carol and Phil about my new book. Anticipating writing this post 14 years later, I asked them both to sign the cover of the book (ok, just kidding) and then also gave them a copy.

Below is a scanned image of my very first, and I mean the very first copy, Revit book signed by Carol Bartz and Phil Bernstein.


As we all know, it is a small world, and as such there are two interesting facts about Carol, Phil and myself...

Like myself, 3M, Best Buy, Target and Caribou Coffee... Carol is originally from Minnesota. I actually just learned this from the Wikipedia page linked above (it must be true, it is on Wikipedia).

  • BTW, Carol went on to be the CEO of Yahoo.

Prior to working at Autodesk, Phil Bernstein worked at Cesar Pelli's office. Indirectly, Phil and I worked on the same project. He wrote the contract for the University of Minnesota - Duluth (UMD) Weber Music Hall. I worked on that project, drawing architectural details, wall sections and such, while working for the firm that was the local architect of record (FYI, I worked for SJA, which was acquired by TKDA). Click here to learn a little more about this beautiful project: https://sfa.d.umn.edu/about/departments/department-music/about-music/music-facilities.

  • BTW, Phil now a Fellow at Autodesk and a lecturer at Yale.

A fun little walk down memory lane... I hope you enjoyed it!